Columnists
Kevin Myers: Failure is actually what independent Ireland has always done best. We even failed at prosperity
THE Taoiseach's recent 1916 speech, and the warm reception the references to the "heroes" of the GPO got from the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, were depressingly illuminating.
Kevin Myers: I can say Americans are lazy and boorish morons. That's fine. If I say the same about Nigerians, I'm jailed
The most fascinating aspect of the debate about the future of Haiti is its absence. All "discussion" consists of assertions that "the west" must rebuild the country.
Kevin Myers: Wicked men played games with people's lives in North
It is one of the great regrets of my journalistic life that nobody ever asked me to be an informer, reporting on THE VITAL THINGS I KNEW to my handler (as we say in the business).
Kevin Myers: The English can't be trusted to take over the North again
There is one single abiding reason why we must hope that the Northern Executive is reassembled, and continues to fumble along in a pretence of government. That reason has nothing to do with the gibbering madmen of dissident republicanism, for they do not need an excuse to start a war: they'll do it anyway, as poor, gallant PNSI officer Peadar Heffron can testify to.
Kevin Myers: Disasters -- where would showbiz be without them?
It's hard to know where to start when human catastrophe occurs, and the breast-beaters come out of the woodwork. I do not make light of such calamities: only the sick and the wicked do that.
Kevin Myers: It's time to face the truth: we're not doomed after all
THE great global disaster has been predicted for decades now: the world is warming up, the mantra shrieks, and we are doomed unless we change everything. To doubt this is to become the 21st century version of a medieval heretic, in modernspeak, a "Denier"-- and political, social, and moral isolation await Deniers!
Kevin Myers: The scene is set for a historic cultural battle between freedom and liberté
France has, once again, been named as the best country in the world to live. And why not? The French are the most sophisticated and talented people in Europe; naturally, they have built the best country. I don't know how one group of people could have developed the skills to make them superior to their neighbours, but the French certainly have.
Kevin Myers: The Irish answer to national problems is to hide under the blankets and cry for mammy
There is the Dutch answer to national problems, which is to find a solution: and to judge from last week, there is the Irish answer, which is to hide under the blankets, and cry for mammy.
Kevin Myers: 'Elvis duped and cheapened by tawdry squalor of Vegas'
You will be all Presleyed-out tomorrow, the 75th anniversary of his birth, so let me get my spoke in now, to commemorate the life of Elvis.
Kevin Myers: It almost seems that priests and homosexuals have changed places in modern Irish life
Power in Ireland clearly likes to be naked, even when intellectual
Clarification: Padraig O'Gorman
The Irish Independent newspaper would like to correct inaccuracies in its article "Proposing a memorial for IRA terrorists is grotesque" by Mr Kevin Myers on Tuesday 2nd February last in which it stated and implied that a proposal from Coiste Cairde na Laochra to Enniscorthy Town Council to erect a granite stone memorial to honour five IRA men who died in Edentubber in 1957, was the "apparent wishes of the town clerk", Mr Padraig O’Gorman.
Kevin Myers: Terry sex saga is about gossip, not public interest
ALOT of components come together in the motorway pile-up story of John Terry, the England soccer captain, and his affair with another footballer's girlfriend and the wife's flight to -- where else? -- Dubai (cheated wives used to flee to fish and chips on a deckchair in Margate).
Kevin Myers: Lack of rigour among our academics is astounding
A measure of the utterly unprincipled submission of academic life to its primary ambition to be left alone was universities' failure to explore Ireland's role in the Great War
Kevin Myers: It wasn't our TDs' plan to make deportation almost impossible
There's a basic distinction in any democratic society between the legislature and the judiciary, and it's all too often forgotten -- especially by lawyers -- as to which should prevail.
Kevin Myers: The McLaren myth was of rugby on a Saturday with stocky men called Dougie and Murray
THE greatest moment in Bill McLaren's broadcasting career came at half-time at Twickenham in 1982 when a streaker ran across the pitch. "Uuagh!" he chortled in the half-Lallans that was his first tongue, "there's a young fellow there, and he's so excited he's taken his shirt off, heugh heugh heugh."
Kevin Myers: Our heroic media are not going after Gerry Adams as they would do a Catholic prelate
Everyone, including myself, has had a great deal of easy fun at the expense of the Robinsons. But, of course, they're easy targets -- they have no cultural power over nationalist Ireland.
Kevin Myers: Of course we must send aid to Haiti, even though we know most of it will be wasted
ONE of the first aid-planes to arrive in Haiti was Israeli. If the people of Haiti were gazing up, looking for aid from Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, or anywhere in the Arab world, they're still looking up, still gazing.
Kevin Myers: The essence of good land management is murder
It's a simple truth that no Green politicians are elected by rural constituencies. Why? Because country people there know that nothing is naturally natural. Everything in the countryside is managed, either through the brutal methods of nature, or by the hand and will of man.
Kevin Myers: Loyal sons of Ulster unionism were undone by a bright-eyed tea girl and her beguiling smile
The men of of Ulster Vanguard Volunteers came in from their manoeuvres near the glens of Antrim, and their Commandant-Colonel in Chief, Archibald McBigot, studied them with a proud if rheumy eye.
Kevin Myers: New force of Islamic fundamentalism in European life confounds liberals in the media
THE Galway Alliance Against War got a fair amount of publicity at the end of the year with their telephone call with Malalai Joya, the Afghan woman politician in hiding in Kabul.
