The Eejit Doth Protest Too Much

John Waters

This is the video that John Waters does not want you to see.

 His solicitors threatened RTE with legal action unless it was removed from RTE Player, and of course, the chronically spineless execs in Montrose duly complied. Even though Waters is a well-known journalist with a weekly column in the Irish Times, he seems to prefer to deal with robust criticism by litigation rather than through open debate.


Rory O'Neill thinks that John Waters is homophobic, and he expressed this view calmly and with restraint. So what's the big deal? I don't know if Waters is homophobic or not, but I do think he is an arrogant, censorious, litigious eejit. That's my opinion, and in a supposed liberal democracy, I ought to have the right to freely express it.

 If John Waters wants to refute any of these criticisms, why can't he do so in his Irish Times column? When such a respected and widely-read forum as the Irish Times is open to him every week, why does he need to resort to litigation and censorship to deal with his critics?

 Methinks the eejit doth protest too much...

R.T.E. The Saturday Night Show Miss Panty... by mrpantyirl



UPDATE: The blogger Peter Ferguson (aka Humanisticus) has written an incisive, forensic analysis of Rory O'Neill's claim that John Waters, Breda O'Brien and the Iona Institute are homophobic. With regard to Waters, Ferguson refers to some rather nasty comments made by John Waters about "the gay lobby" in an interview with a UCD student newspaper two years ago. In my view, Ferguson rightly concludes that these comments display an "active irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals. It’s homophobia, even in it’s strictest form."