An open letter to the DUP’s Jim Shannon MP
HI, Jim.
You’ve upset me.
Seriously, you have.
I know as a God-fearing, compassionate man that will not give you any satisfaction, but I thought it only right that I let you know, because plain-speaking is valued in Loyal Ulster, and as two men who share a Reformed faith background, I feel we owe each other a duty of Christian candour. So I’ll say it again: You’ve upset me.
You’ve upset me by telling me I’m an inherently bad person. And while I’m no paragon of virtue, I had considered myself a fairly decent person up until you dropped this bombshell. Now I’ve been forced to re-evaluate my own sense of self, and while that is proving a difficult and even distressing process, I understand that I’m doing so because of the intervention of a Godly man such as you, and that makes it a very necessary process.
I should point out before I go any further that what you actually said was that I’m inherently not good, and while there’s a semantic and philosophical argument to be had about whether that’s the same as saying I’m inherently bad, I’m taking no chances and conducting a full MOT check of my moral, spiritual and human worth. What else can I do? What else should I do?
The reason you called me an inherently bad person is that I said something about Charlie Kirk. What I said was that I was sorry he’s dead and I feel for his wife and young family. Pretty sure that’s not why you think I’m an inherently bad person, so let’s crack on. I said he was a fascist demagogue who said gun deaths were acceptable to protect the right for people to have guns. I said he was a hater of Muslims, gays, women and Trans people. I said he died while espousing those views (he was a man in his 30s who spent his time debating college kids and mostly but not always winning, then putting clips online as if he’d just out-debated Noam Chomsky). And I said in a country where signs from God are widely valued, this might be seen as a time for his supporters to stop and reflect. But, I said, it won’t. It will instead, I said, turbo-charge the hatred he espoused. And looking back over the past two weeks, I think it’s fairly safe to say that that’s just what happened.
And for this, Jim, you have consigned me to that wretched cohort destined to be knocked back by the Pearly Gates bouncers while you strum a harp on a nearby cloud and mouth ‘I told you so’ in my general direction.
But here’s what I don’t understand, Jim. I don’t understand how it is possible for a person to be judged a wrong ’un for telling the truth. Am I a bad person for pointing out in the midst of the deification of Charlie Kirk that he had in fact some very dodgy beliefs? Am I wrong to wonder why, as they prepare to give him the US equivalent of a state funeral and talk about erecting a memorial to him, that the things he’s on record as saying would get him banned from every talk show in Britain and Ireland? (And that’s a high bar because the BBC keep inviting Nigel Farage on and he once said if he didn’t get the Brexit he wanted he’d be reaching for his rifle.)
Listen, Jim. Not only did Charlie think that executions should be broadcast on television, he thought that children should be allowed to watch them. The word ‘extreme’ doesn’t begin to describe a belief like that. Nevertheless, you said Charlie is inherently good and I’m inherently bad. Or not good. Tell you what, Jim, you must have access to some seriously warped stuff that I’ve said in the past and forgotten about to put Charlie ahead of me in the goodness stakes. If so, thanks for not sharing it.
How about this, Jim? Charlie had something to say as 83-year-old Paul Pelosi underwent brain surgery to insert a plate and screws in his skull after being attacked in his home by a maniac with a hammer. As the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi faced up to a future with acquired brain injury and PTSD, Charlie called on some “amazing patriot” to come forward and bail out his attacker. Nevertheless, you think Charlie is inherently good and I’m inherently bad. I’ve never said anything remotely as shocking, vicious and inhuman, and I never will. I could go on, Jim. I could tell you what he said about black pilots and black women legislators. I could tell you the joke he cracked about Gaza being flattened. I could tell you what he said about gays. I could tell you what he said about women. I could tell you about his idea of children watching public executions as life lessons. Oh, the stories I could tell you, Jim.
I’m a coarse heathen, Jim, but I know enough about Christians and Christianity to understand that it is possible to have views as extreme as Charlie Kirk’s and still consider oneself – and even be considered – a model citizen. In fact, I’d say a sizeable majority of Christians in the US and Europe probably consider Charlie a decent spud despite his rather recherché views on children and executions and his decidedly laissez-faire attitude to lunatics with hammers. So I’m fairly sanguine about you giving Charlie a generous amount of slack when it comes to assessing the good in him.
OPINION: Jim Shannon MP
What’s a bit harder for me to understand is why I’m accorded absolutely no leeway when it comes to my transgression, which I suppose may be some nebulous idea you have about de mortuis nil nisi bonum (although being nice to the dead is not a principle that the DUP have applied with any degree of consistency over the years). I invite you to look ouevre by over, Jim. Sorry, over my oeuvre. It’s a sizeable one: the decades of Squinter columns, the Robin Livingstone columns, the editorials, the online contributions, a book, even. And I invite you to extract from those millions of words just a few that make me inherently a bad person; or, if you prefer, inherently not a good person. I understand that such a task will take a while, so I’m happy to wait.
You may think that my being an Irish republican makes me (and millions of others) a bad person; you may think that my agreeing with the UN Commission of Inquiry that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza makes me a bad person; you may even think that my believing that men should keep their noses out of women’s bodily affairs makes me a bad person. But I’m going to have to insist that you find something other than utterly quotidian and mainstream positions of mine. You’re going to have to find something that the vast majority of people and organisations – including, I assume, the DUP – find racist, for instance (like me being suspicious about black pilots and me thinking black women are stupider than white women).You’re going to have to find something morally unhinged (like me wanting kids to watch people being fried to death on TV).You’re going to have to find something deeply and alarmingly misogynistic (like me saying women should forget the old work thing and stay at home and have babies).
You can go ahead and search. Or you can let me help you save a hell of a lot of time and tell you that in approaching 40 years of journalism you won’t find anything written by me that comes within a Biblical ass’s roar of the kind of vile stuff that Charlie Kirk routinely came out with in his short time in the public eye.
The good news is that you can still go on liking Charlie Kirk, and you can still go on not liking me. But if you tell people you don’t like me – or if you tell people I’m not a good person – I’m gently suggesting that in the future you explain why. It’s what Jesus would do. Isn’t it?
Bottom line, Jim? You think me saying what Charlie said is worse than what Charlie actually said. I’d love you to point me to the Bible verse that tells us not to speak the truth as we see it, because I can point you to a Bible verse that says the complete opposite: “Have I now become your enemy by telling the truth?” (Galatians 4:16.)
I had to look that up on Google because I know nothing about the Bible, but it’s a question worth answering, Jim, don’t you think?
