Irish Teacher: Why I don't think The Two Johnnies should be cancelled

The two men apologised for their mistake. That’s important. They needed to do that. But how might we understand their behaviour from a restorative-practice perspective?

The Two Johnnies - Photo by Ruth Medjber @ruthlessimagery

The scope of my column this week is arguably trivial; everything at the moment feels that way. But it’s written with the same heavy heart we’re all carrying inside ourselves because of Ukraine — a war that reminds us of so many others.

Whenever I hear the saying, ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions', I think of our cancel culture.

Cancel culture is bursting with good intentions. People get cancelled when they say something misogynistic or bigoted. Editing such sentiments out and cutting the flab from our moral muscle seems desirable. But when the impulse to delete or erase is satisfied, and our emotions subside, what comes next?

My school, like many, believes in restorative practice (RP). In short, it’s the opposite of cancel culture. Expulsions are rare in RP schools because when you approach the world with an RP attitude, you seek to understand before you judge.

So, in the case of bullying, a fight in the yard let’s say, you invite the bully and the victim together, to explore what happened and ideally, to come to some understanding.

RP doesn’t excuse or accept bad behaviour. It names it and seeks to prevent future bad behaviour. It ends in reintegration.

RP works. Very quickly you recognise the frailty stitched into humanity — the absolute, inherent imperfection in us all. You become attuned to anger as a secondary emotion. You dig for causes, explanations. You look to understand. This is not about agreeing or condoning. You might find an action despicable, but to simply cancel someone, does more harm than good. It fails to repair what has been broken.

As Limerick-based RP practitioner, Joe Power puts it: “Revenge is a low bar to set for ourselves as a society, and yet we do it all the time.”

I’ve heard reports of Russian students being bullied in schools this week. We pass our need for revenge down to our children, with potentially tragic consequences. We don’t learn anything. We react without thinking about future consequences.

A few months ago, the Two Johnnies invited me onto their podcast to discuss education, RP, consent, and sex education. They were warm and authentic. I remember thinking that — how important to have rural towns like Cahir on the media map.

The Two Johnnies faced potential cancellation last week for laughing at crude and misogynistic bumper stickers in a promotional clip. They are due back on air in a couple of weeks and I welcome their return.

The two men apologised for their mistake. That’s important. They needed to do that. But how might we understand their behaviour from an RP perspective?

Well, it was their first week. Podcasts and radio shows are entirely different beasts — one is wilderness, the other is strictly policed. Maybe they misjudged their audience; it’s equally possible their audience misjudged them.

Journalists have described their humour since the incident as ‘low brow’ and ‘gutter,’ and not to their ‘taste.’ Is there a class issue? Or does their afternoon slot on national radio break an urban/rural divide?

These questions are potentially irrelevant but it’s healthy to ask them anyway. It’s healthy to seek to understand why the event happened in the first place.

Whatever the context, there’s no doubt the material they shared was offensive but that’s not up for debate. It deserved to be called out, and Holly Cairns and others should be commended for doing so. The words were ugly. When you deal with bad behaviour, in school or beyond, it never sounds pleasant.

But how we deal with the wrongdoers next matters.

The two men apologised for the media post, saying “we are not perfect” and “we are learning all the time”. Is that enough? For me, it is. This time, at least. 

It was reasonable for them to be off air for a short period; it is equally reasonable they return. I would rather their fans, often young male fans, continue to follow two men with a positive agenda. 

I’d like to give these men a voice on our radios because they represent a huge number of Irish people. I’m interested in hearing and considering different points of view, even when they’re not to my “taste”.

RTÉ and the rest of us should be happy to move on. As Keith Walsh wrote last week: “Men need to do better! Let’s see if we can.”

Cancel culture dictates that one mistake of this nature is enough; they should go back to their podcast — back under the rock they came from.

I’m grateful this culture doesn’t exist in my school.

I wonder if our world might be better off without it too.