Vilified Myers wants to meet JK Rowling
Three years after the author damned him with a tweet, Kevin Myers would like a meeting, writes Niamh Horan
JOURNALIST and broadcaster Kevin Myers wants to meet JK Rowling, the writer who played a high-profile role in his journalistic demise. Three years ago, the
Harry Potter author tweeted to millions of her followers a scathing response to an article written by Myers in the Sunday Times.
Rowling took offence at the column, which was headlined: ‘Sorry, ladies — equal pay has to be earned’.
“‘Women and Jews quite literally deserve what they get’. This filth was published in the Sunday Times. Let that sink in for a moment,” she tweeted.
In the days that followed, Myers was denounced globally and accused of being a misogynist and an anti-Semitic Holocaust-denier. He was also axed by the Sunday
Times.
Writing in the latest edition of the Spectator,
Myers describes the author’s summary of the piece as a “wicked representation” of what he had said, “even by Twitter’s sordid standards”.
However, he has also come to Rowling’s defence now that she has become the latest victim of a global
Twitter storm, over her opinions on transgender issues. Rowling came under sustained attack when she commented on an online article that referred to “people who menstruate” by writing, “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson have publicly distanced themselves from Rowling and authors have quit the agency with which she is affiliated.
Speaking about Rowling,
Myers told the Sunday Independent: “It is enormously serious when a woman as important as her is not able to make a serious point without being abused and vilified.”
However, when asked whether he feels sympathy for her, he said: “Sympathy is too strong a word but I do have some understanding about what she might be going through. I hope it’s not the end of her career. I am unstinting in my admiration of her work as a novelist but as a thinker, she is gravely flawed … we all are.”
He added: “I don’t think for one second she was aware of the life-ruining impact of what she was doing to me.” He had “no hatred or ill-feeling towards her. None at all. It destroys the person who carries it.
“I would love to meet her. The only way we can resolve these issues is by being humane to one another and by listening to one another.”
Asked if he had any advice for Rowling, he said she should “ignore the hatred” and stop voicing her opinions on “complex issues” on a medium which only allows for 280 characters.
“It’s important [to use] a medium where subtlety and nuance can be conveyed,” he said. “If she confines herself to the 19th century telegraphy of Twitter, then she will never be understood and she doesn’t deserve to be.”
He said: “Go back to the old-fashioned format of broadsheet and the internet form of it. It’s not as if she can’t write books. She is the most influential writer in English today. She is incredibly rich and, for the most part, incredibly popular. Maybe now she realises life is not about popularity.”
Myers is finishing another book of his own, Burning
Heresies, which is due out in September.
Published by Merrion Press, the book is a follow-up to Watching the
Door, his 2006 memoir which described events in his life and career up until 1978.
Asked what readers of the latest instalment can expect, he said: “As much honesty as is possible for me to put into a memoir that goes back to 1979 when I first started working as a freelancer in the Irish Times and I worked under Douglas Gageby, Conor Brady and Geraldine Kennedy.
“There will be revelations about my life and some of the internal workings of the Irish Times which will perhaps come as a surprise to people.”
He has also enlisted the help of a digital expert, Vivienne Mee. She has combed through tweets posted in the early hours of July 30, 2017 in order to establish the people who started the Twitter storm.
Myers says the book will include revelations about the events which led to his dismissal. “I have sat on them all these years,” he said.
Speaking about the vilification of Rowling for her views on transitioning, Myers said: “I believe we are in a crisis of identity and it’s not just about sex.”
Addressing the worldwide Black Live Matters movement, Myers courted further controversy by saying he believes “there is no such thing as black identity”.
Criticising brands such as Coca-Cola and Intel for supporting the movement, he said: “We really are back into apartheid days. It’s just a different form of it.
“It’s a complete refutation of what Nelson Mandela fought for and what Martin Luther King fought for, which is that we don’t speak about the colour of people’s skin, we don’t define people by their skin, but by the quality of their character.
“That is almost exactly verbatim what Martin Luther King said in his famous speech at Washington.”
He added: “There isn’t a binding identity based on skin colour. It’s extraordinary that people are even allowed to talk like this.”