The Sunday Times of London fired controversial columnist Kevin Myers on Sunday and removed his latest piece from its website amid outrage over the column’s blatant anti-Semitic and sexist comments.
Myers’ column, titled “Sorry, Ladies ― Equal Pay Has To Be Earned,” focused on the dismal wage gap between men and women presenters working at the BBC. It appeared online and in the paper’s Irish edition.
Myers suggested that two of the BBC’s female hosts, Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, were paid more than other women because they were Jewish.
According to screenshots of the now-deleted article, Myers wrote:
“I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC – Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted – are Jewish. 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. I wonder, who are their agents? If they’re the same ones that negotiated the pay for the women on the lower scales, then maybe the latter have found their true value in the marketplace.”
Elsewhere in the column, Myers wrote that it was possible men were paid more than women at the BBC because men “work harder,” “are more driven” and “are more charismatic performers,” The New York Times reported. He also stated that women do not possess “mastery of money” because they lacked characteristics like drive and logic.
Although the Sunday Times deleted the article from its website on Sunday morning, the column still appeared in newspapers all over Ireland. Critics called on the paper to fire Myers, and demanded to know how editors allowed such an inflammatory article be published.
In response, the paper apologized, with Frank Fitzgibbon, editor of the Sunday Times Ireland claiming “full responsibility for this error of judgment.”
The paper will also launch an investigation into how the article made it to print.
Myers has sparked outrage in the past for his incendiary points of view. In 2008, he published a column titled “Africa Is Giving Nothing To Anyone ― Apart From AIDS.” A year later, he publicly denied the Holocaust occurred.