Frontlines: Troubled Waters needs to build a bridge

A couple of weeks ago, when John Waters was so deeply mired in a quagmire of controversy it wasn’t certain that he’d ever manage to clamber out again, I thought of writing a few paragraphs saying that in my experience he wasn’t the hate-crazed zealot that some imagine. But I decided to wait for Hot Press: it was here that we encountered one another more than 30 years ago. His contributions to the magazine, as I recall, were spiral-shaped and always intriguing. You’d wonder where he was headed and then discover he’d arrived.

We soldiered together later at In Dublin and Magill (RIP). It was part of his remit at In Dublin to select Letters to the Editor from the fortnightly bundles of argumentation. Except that he didn’t. Why publish letters attacking ourselves, he asked?

In vain did the late Derek Dunne and myself try to convince him that angry readers should be given a chance to answer back. Maybe, said John. But could they not publish their disagreements somewhere else?

It’s occurred to me that John’s overstated response to recent salvos aimed against him may reflect the same approach.

Times have changed. Hardly anybody now puts pen to paper and posts a letter to tell you you’re an asshole. Nor can you debate whether to publish the sentiment. Put on Facebook or sent by email, it can be scattered far and wide before you’re aware of it.

As well, the presumed anonymity of social media provides cover for cowards to spit streams of bile.

In his piece in Village a couple of weeks ago, John complained about the ferocity of the emails swamping his in-box. “You’re a fucking homophobe.” “Have the decency to apologize to Panti, and then drop off the face of the earth.” “Fuck you, you worthless piece of shit.” “Hi John…you are a piss stain.” “You, sir, are not just a bully but a coward.”

He was somewhat unnerved by verbal abuse when he ventured out: “It is not an exaggeration to say that I now regarded it as unsafe for me to walk down the street.”

He is not as alone as he thinks he is. Publish a piece supporting the Palestinians against the racist thuggery of Israeli colonisers and, literally with minutes, you will be denounced as an anti-Semite: “Fucking Jew-basher, you’d have been cackling outside the gas chambers.” An official of the Israeli embassy might join in the attack to lie about the argument you’d put forward.

Scores of emails will come in waves for days on end, likening you to Hitler, Goebbels, Goering.

Pro-lifers responding to any statement supporting a woman’s right to choose feel no compunction about deeming you a monster deserving of hell. Ever hear your mother described as “a slag (and) a fucking cunt to have drag (sic.) up a cunt like you”, John? I suspect not and earnestly hope not. But rile the pro-lifers and that’s what you get.

Talk on television about the Shankill bombers not being psychopaths but adherents of an ideology which puts small value on the lives of “the other side” and you risk being pursued through Aldergrove airport and out to the bus rank being shouted at all the way by a dozen men keeping pace behind and accusing you of “wanting Protestant babies killed” and threatening to have your throat cut.

Now that, John, might make you think it unsafe to walk down the street – or at least down particular streets.

Par for the course, comes with the territory. I evade a lot of it by not doing Facebook or reading blogs and, if my responses are sharp enough, deleting emails at the first syllable of deliberate misrepresentation.

None of this should be taken as attempted justification for what seems on the basis of his Village article to have been distortion of views he had expressed and of him personally. Some might say he’s let himself in for it by his own battering-ram and sword-slash strategy against those he perceives as his enemies.

He doesn’t enhance his credentials when he evinces a conviction that Catholics in Ireland have become an oppressed group. This is the reverse of the truth. One fact is all that’s needed: the Catholic church controls 90 percent of the Republic’s schools, in which they inculcate their own “ethos” and deny freedom of expression to others; pro-lifers are given free access to impressionable children, advocates of the right to choose banned from the premises. This despite the fact that the schools are State-funded and the teachers State-trained.

As the great Billy Browne (John used to manage the Freshmen) would have it: “I’ve never heard anything like it in my life.”

I rarely see John anymore. We live in different places and no longer work for the same publications. The last time we encountered one another was at the Electric Picnic. We had a friendly brief exchange. I hope we can again. I wish he wasn’t so enraging. But he’s not a bad guy.

I’m taking bets on who will represent the Royal Family at the centenary of the Easter Rising. It seems Sinn Fein is lobbying hard for the Queen on the ground that Our Patriot Dead deserve the top banana and not some minor nerd with big ears and halitosis. I’d support wee Prince George if he wasn’t so ugly.

Ante-post odds any day now.