The Shewing-up of Dermot Ahern

national | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Tuesday May 05, 2009 02:45 by frequentblasphemer

Dermot Ahern's tribute to Bernard Shaw, WB Yeats and Augusta Gregory?

In the Irish Times Fintan O'Toole points out that 2009 is the centenary of the occasion when a play by Bernard Shaw, "The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet", was used to show up the absurdity of having blasphemy laws.

"A little more awareness of the historical context might have prompted a simple question: what year is this? 2009. And what happened a hundred years ago in 1909? Three Irish people made a deliberate feck of the blasphemy laws, exposed the idiocy of trying to enforce them and delivered a fatal blow to the intellectual assumptions on which they are based."

"We should have realised that a man as cultured as Dermot Ahern would come up with a novel and provocative way to commemorate this glorious centenary."

'Absurdity of blasphemy law revived by Ahern'
Full article at link