High Noon with George Hook.

BRENDA POWER
September 17 2017, 12:01am, The Sunday Times

Censorship and free speech based on fear not fairness — can I say that?
Brenda Power


Paul Murphy announced last week that he and fellow members of the Solidarity party would boycott Newstalk until George Hook was sacked for making inappropriate comments about a rape victim.

Clearly Murphy and his pals couldn’t abide remarks or behaviour that might cause distress to a vulnerable woman. So long as the vulnerable woman wasn’t a 65-year-old female politician, obviously, or her younger adviser. So long as the behaviour didn’t involve trapping women in their car for over two hours. So long as the comments didn’t include labelling them “whores”, “hags” and “bitches”, as Joan Burton and Karen O’Connell were called during an anti-water charges protest in Jobstown in 2014.

Murphy is a great defender of free speech when it comes to protesters shouting at women. Not so great, alas, when it comes to a radio presenter making a comment — ignorant, stupid and offensive as it was — that was clearly designed to provoke, because provoking is Hook’s job. It’s the job he’s been doing for years; those are the views he’s been articulating for years. And it’s the same show to which the likes of Murphy, and other grandstanding refuseniks of the past week, were delighted to add their male voices, on a virtually all-male station, whenever they got the chance.

But Murphy has apparently never met a mob he didn’t like, so when they came for Hook, he linked arms and piled in.

News of Hook’s suspension was greeted by a rapaciously righteous social media mob as a relief: they would never, they cheered, have to listen to his twisted, hateful opinions again. But this is a serious business. We need to find out who’s been forcing these people to listen to Hook; who has been chaining them to their seats and piping Hook into their homes and workplaces the same way Guantanamo inmates are forced to listen to Westlife.


Here’s the thing about free speech. For it to have any value, it has to be free. You have the right to inform, to reflect, to influence. You’ve also got to have the right to insult, to hurt, to outrage — and to be offended. Manners, civility and compassion should dictate how you choose your targets, but not the law and not the lynch mobs.

In a real democracy, you agree to be confronted by opinions you abhor
Alas, once again, we’ve established that free speech in this country means the freedom to agree with an approved, and strictly policed, doctrine. Say the wrong thing and you will be hounded out of your job, your career, your very sanity by that baying mob of the righteous, vying to outdo each other in their indignation. Once again, we are under the cosh of brutal censors who truly believe they are the only censors in the history of censorship to justify their censoring by claiming: “Ah, but we are right . . . ”

Hook deserves all the criticism he has provoked. His comments about a teenage rape victim deserving “blame” were outrageous. Suggesting a drunken girl is fair game doesn’t just shame every victim of sexual assault, it casts every man as a sexually incontinent predator. But Hook’s comments have flushed out an alarming amount of support for this view. Online comment threads, even on mainstream sites, were often 50-50. We need to know these views are out there so the next time a rapist gets away with a suspended sentence or an insulting cash payment to his victim, or a parish priest leads a queue of sympathisers to shake his hand, or a victim refuses to press charges, we’re not scratching our heads in bewilderment. That’s the whole point of free speech.

In a real democracy, you agree to be confronted by opinions you abhor. You understand that silencing a dangerous viewpoint is not the same as altering it. You dismantle echo chambers by breaking down their walls and exposing them to light. We fear heights, psychologists say, not because we’re afraid we’ll fall, but that we’ll jump. Censorship is an exercise in fear, not fairness. I sometimes wonder how many of our more vocal censors hasten to silence abhorrent opinions out of a secret fear that they share them.

Conservative wrote: »

Is it any surprise Murphy has it in for George, he had a dig at "Deputy Murphy" almost everyday of the week because he saw him for the fraud he is.

A privately educated son of a Mars executive who's rebellion wasn't getting a tattoo or listening to some punk rock but to become the complete opposite of what his parents are - a defender of the indefensible in society who will jump on any perceived injustice at a whim - an absolute misery guts.

These PPB (whatever factions they have now) muppets have an office near me in Dun Laoghaire. They're all about the working man until it comes to wearing Adidas shoes/carrying iPhones made in sweatshops.

Middle class obnoxious bunch of tossers the lot of them.

Don't agree with much else she said.

Vorenus400 wrote: »

Im surprised at Murphy as he appeared regularly on the show. He seemed well able for George too. Brenda seems to be more concerned with putting him down than addressing the current trouble.

Last I heard Brenda on the Hook show was right after trump was elected. She was going mad and claiming that it was pure sexist that Trump won. I wouldnt put much worth in her opinion

Lady Chatterton wrote: »

I agree with you about Brenda's comments after Trumps win, she made some sarky remark about Trump's son Barron looking bored, he was only 10 years old at the time. I thought that was particularly unkind of her. Young children of favourite people should be off limits.

Having said all that, I believe we need people like her, Myers & Hook who are actually prepared to share an opinion instead of censoring every word incase they offend people.

While Myers and Hook have messed up very badly, I do agree with Brenda (for once), we should challenge people's opinions instead of calling for them to be sacked. Sacking people like George achieves very little, sacking him will do nothing to help prevent rape where as some of his comments (not the victim blaming part) might have.

longshanks wrote: »

Who do you fine people reckon will replace him?

Brendan Bendar wrote: »

I'm afraid I don't agree, taking the ability to promulgate twisted and bitter opinions from people who seem to want to self promote themselves as 'rebels' and try to con the public into believing that they actually are, is a great weapon.

That's what Hook is, and this poster would opine that NT made a good decision .

But of course NT probably encouraged this to increase audience.

Corporate decision- got caught out.

Morgans wrote: »

Id like to think that if you happened to meet the wrong kind and was (god forbid) raped, that your father or grandfather would be there for you rather than making the point that you were in some way responsible for the rape, given that you hiked alone/walked home alone.

Lt Dan wrote: »

Hang on, if normal due process is on going,whether it was a court case, Tribunal or employment proceedings, the norm would be that people shut their mouths until the process has concluded.