A controversial Irish columnist was fired after his anti-Semitic and misogynistic article crossed the line.
Kevin Myers, a columnist for the UK’s Sunday Times was fired after the newspaper published an article it later regretted as “anti-Semitic” and “disgraceful.”
In the piece, Myers suggested that BBC presenters Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz earn high salaries because they are Jewish.
Sunday Times editor Martin Ivens said the piece, which appeared in the Irish edition and online, should not have been published.
Ivens has also apologized personally to the two women, the BBC reported Sunday.
Frank Fitzgibbon, editor of the paper’s Irish edition, stated that he apologizes “unreservedly for the offence” caused by the column.
“This newspaper abhors antisemitism and did not intend to cause offense to Jewish people,” Fitzgibbon added.
A spokesman for UK News, which owns the Sunday Times, said the column included “unacceptable comments both to Jewish people and to women in the workplace.”
An apology will also be printed in next week’s paper.
The general theme of the column was that men earn higher salaries because they work harder and deserve them.
The column, titled “Sorry, ladies – equal pay has to be earned,” follows criticism of the BBC after it was revealed that two-thirds of its personalities earning more than £150,000 are male.
Commenting that two of the highest-paid presenters, Winkleman and Feltz, were Jewish, Myers wrote: “Good for them.”
“Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity,” he wrote.
Feltz called the column “blatant racism.”
She also questioned how Myers’ article made it into the newspaper.
She described the piece as “horrifying” when speaking to guest newspaper reviewer Sophia Cannon on BBC Radio London.
The Algemeiner reported that Myers is also a known Holocaust denier, whose article denying the Nazi genocide of six million Jews was removed only this week from the Irish Independent website that hosted it since 2009.
Social media users took to Twitter to point out Myers’ article in which he opined, “There was no holocaust (or Holocaust, as my computer software insists) and six million Jews were not murdered by the Third Reich. These two statements of mine are irrefutable truths.”
By: World Israel News Staff