Perhaps one of you has a ‘hard copy’ of Friday’s Independent, and you can tell me which one of its doughty scribes wrote the following:
As the ambassador has probably learnt already, unlike Israelis, Irish people actually don’t mean what they say, or say what they mean. For we tend to use words like Arabs do, as a pose and a dramatic statement, not as a literal and analysable declaration of the truth.
Well, I think it’s a ‘literal and analysable declaration of the truth’ to say that whoever wrote this is a bit of a bell-end, and that he doesn’t actually mean what he says, but is in fact using his words as a pose and a dramatic statement. But because I’m Irish, there is no way of knowing if I mean what I say. In any case, I will repeat my assertion that whoever wrote this is a bit of a bell-end.
There’s a element of cowardice lying behind the use of racist characterisations of your own identified people as an alibi for your racist characterisations of other people. If I say that Muslims are congenital terrorists, this is not rendered any more acceptable by my observing at the same time that Northern Irish people are congenital terrorists. If a Cavan man says that Jews are miserly, should he be let off the hook because he is from Cavan?
0 Responses to “Meaning It”