Connect: Rupert Murdoch has said Tony Blair told him that BBC World's coverage of Hurricane Katrina "was just full of hate for America and gloating about our troubles". (Murdoch used that egregious "our" because, although he's an Australian, he has US citizenship. He has also supported attacking Iraq.) Anyway, Blair's alleged remark is merely the most prominent in a debasing trend.
Kevin Myers claimed this week to detect "the sound of sniggering" echoing "over Europe's capitals" at the devastation wrought on New Orleans. I haven't heard it but Myers wrote of it on Tuesday. Who might have been sniggering? Which European capitals may have tittered at New Orleans's misfortune? How loud was this alleged mirth at death, pillage and intense hardship? So, "hate", "gloating" and "sniggering"? No doubt there were handfuls of sickos in European capitals - as there were in major American cities - who sniggered at the nightmare. But such sick people are aberrant and not remotely defining of general public reaction. To snigger at a once beautiful city, with corpses floating by in a flood of toxic sludge, is not just crass. It's vile.
Niall O'Dowd wrote in this newspaper, also on Tuesday, about "the spurious refrain" in Ireland that being anti-George Bush is not being anti-American. But there's very seldom anything spurious about such a position. Many Americans - almost two-thirds if post-Katrina polls are accurate - are anti-George Bush. Extremely few of these people are likely to be anti-themselves as well.
It is, in fairness, possible to cloak anti-Americanism behind an anti-Bush pose. Doubtless, some Irish people do. Again however, such people are aberrant and not defining of general public reaction. Political halfwits who regard "Bush" and "America" as utterly synonymous may confuse the two. Most people however know that, like them, a big chunk of the US dislikes Bush intensely.
Nonetheless, O'Dowd was right to condemn Vincent Browne and John O'Shea for objecting to Irish aid to hurricane victims. People in need are simply people in need. They were almost all black, of course, which exposed US racism (Ireland can't be smug in this regard!), but the fact that many of Katrina's victims make less than $8,000 (€6,590) a year is no credit to their country.
Reviewing Wednesday morning's papers with Eamon Dunphy on Newstalk 106, John Waters tried to minimise the wrongness of his support for the attack on Iraq by Bush and Blair. But tens of thousands of men, women and children have been butchered to death, thousands more maimed and large chunks of a country destroyed. Whatever happened to admitting being wrong?
Instead, we have recalcitrant politicians and commentators telling us that hateful, gloating, sniggering anti-Americanism has characterised the European (including the Irish) response to Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans. That, quite simply, is not true. In fact, it's preposterous and seems much more the peevish and petulant response it condemns.
It's true that given the arrogant and dismissive manner with which Bush and his neo-con cronies treated "Old" Europe, there has naturally been some Schadenfreude at the discomfort caused to him by his inept reaction to Hurricane Katrina. Yet any such human satisfaction, albeit not admirable, must be distinguished from any malicious pleasure at the plight of hurricane victims.
Otherwise, Europeans can be characterised as sneering, hard-hearted, cynical misanthropes. But that too is untrue and unfair because such cretins are no more prominent in Europe than in America or any other continent. Thus journalism suggesting these traits becomes mere propaganda and can be held to amount to nothing more than a shrill anti-European rant.
There are, of course, connections between Bush's devastation of Iraq and Katrina's devastation of New Orleans and polemicists will make of them what they will. Perhaps the principal lesson in it all is that nobody wants to be proved wrong. After all, who among the millions who marched against attacking Iraq really wanted to see that attack succeed? Or vice versa? It's easy to say "I hope I'm wrong . . . ". Yet who can really accept such a proposition? It becomes a matter of identity and if you're utterly wrong (even though everyone sometimes is) you can hardly be pleased.
But do you recall the gloating that followed the "Shock and Awe" obscenity, the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue, Bush's "Mission Accomplished" routine? It was ugly, extremely ugly! For that reason alone it's vital that the side which opposed attacking Iraq does not gloat. At this stage the millions who opposed Bush and Blair have clearly been vindicated. Abject lies were told by the other side.
It's possible, albeit extremely unlikely, that in the unforeseeable future the attack on Iraq will be retrospectively justified. History can be like that.
For now however, it remains a barbaric act made possible by contemptible lies. It's a sad day when a Labour prime minister of Britain tells the owner of Fox News that the BBC hates America. The truth is rather more simple: the owner of Fox News hates the BBC and its public ethos. The debasing trend for anti-European and anti-Irish journalism has become very peevish indeed.