"If a person can be said to have the wrong attitude, there is no need to pay attention to his arguments." -- John McCarthy
John Patrick McCarthy CBE (born 27 November 1956) is a British journalist, writer and broadcaster, and one of the hostages in the Lebanon hostage crisis. He was kidnapped by Islamic Jihad terrorists in Lebanon in April 1986, and held hostage for more than five years. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992.
McCarthy was Britain's longest-held hostage in Lebanon, having spent over five years in captivity until his release on August 8, 1991. He shared a cell with the Irish hostage Brian Keenan, for several years.
"A declining institution often experiences survival of the unfittest.""A true intellectual is a man who, after reading a book and being convinced by its arguments, will shoot someone or, more likely, order someone shot.""Alas few socialists are either benevolent enough to work hard at these occupations out of benevolence or self-interested enough to work hard at them for money.""Amateur bureaucrats are often even worse than professional bureaucrats.""An excessive knowledge of Marxism is a sign of a misspent youth.""An extreme optimist is a man who believes that humanity will probably survive even if it doesn't take his advice.""Asking a critic to name his favorite book is like asking a butcher to name his favorite pig.""Both politicians and journalists face situations which strain their honesty and humanity. My opinion is that politicians on the average stand up somewhat better than journalists.""Committing genocide on behalf of an institution generates greater loyalty to it than merely getting people fired from their jobs on its behalf.""Compassion is contempt with a human face.""Don't try to talk anyone out of concentrating his hatred on Ayn Rand or any other dead person. It can't harm the dead. Diverted to a living person, it might actually do harm.""Foolishness is rarely a matter of lack of intelligence or even lack of information.""Hard distinctions make bad philosophy.""Hardly anyone has noticed that in the Northern Hemisphere people stir their drinks counterclockwise, whereas the same people stir their drinks clockwise when visiting the Southern Hemisphere.""He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.""His ambition is to be the spider in the World Wide Web.""Honor among thieves is the ancestor of all honor.""If I owned Marseilles and Hell, I'd rent out Marseilles and live in Hell.""In human history, the desire for revenge and the desire for loot have often been closely associated.""Inside of many liberals is a fascist struggling to get out.""It is said that man doesn't live by bread alone. Sometimes this is unfortunate, because people who cannot live by bread alone too often kill other people in consequence of the fights they get into.""Language is froth on the surface of thought.""My hobby of not attending meetings about recycling saves more energy than your hobby of recycling.""My opinion is that he's a swindler and you're a sucker.""Never abandon a theory that explains something until you have a theory that explains more.""Of course, Third World leaders love you. By ascribing third world ills to First World sins, you absolve them of blame for their countries' failure to advance.""Once a person has killed other people on behalf of an ideology, he becomes rather devoted to it.""Proposals to forbid golf courses have about the same motivations as proposals to forbid skate boarding, although the rationalizations are different.""Self-righteousness has killed more people than smoking.""Slogans rarely convince the unconvinced. However, they do rally the troops already on your side.""Soccer riots kill at most tens. Intellectuals' ideological riots sometimes kill millions.""Suicidal terrorists may have short shelf lives.""The difference between a contemporary liberal and a socialist is that to a liberal the most beautiful word in the English language is 'forbidden', whereas to a socialist the most beautiful word is 'compulsory'.""The peace movement is a great force for peace. Some of the world's most quarrelsome people act out their aggressions through the peace movement.""The slogan was 'Don't trust anyone over thirty'. Sixty years later the slogan became, 'Don't trust anyone over ninety'.""There is only one thing more harmful to society than an elected official forgetting the promises he made in order to get elected; that's when he doesn't forget them.""We modern Marxists regard socialism as a historically brief transitional stage between feudalism and capitalism, necessary only in backward countries.""When I see a slippery slope, my instinct is to build a terrace.""When thugs by nature meet thugs by political conviction, 5-0 is not surprising.""With no more than six levels of misquotation, any statement can be made to say whatever you wish."
At the time of his capture, McCarthy was a journalist working for United Press International Television News. Following his release, he co-authored, with Jill Morrell, a memoir of his years in captivity, entitled Some Other Rainbow. In 1995 he sailed around the coast of Britain with Sandi Toksvig, making a BBC documentary TV series and a book of the experience. McCarthy attended university with Toksvig's brother, Nick. John McCarthy currently co-presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Excess Baggage, also with Sandi Toksvig.
His former fiancée Jill Morrell had campaigned for his release and public expectations of a re-kindling of the romance between them were high. The couple wrote a book together about his ordeal, but later separated amicably in 1994. McCarthy married Anna Ottewill in April 1999. He attended Lochinver House School then Haileybury College, Hertfordshire, and read American Studies at the University of Hull.
He is Patron of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and has been awarded an Honorary D.Litt from the University of Hull and the CBE
The 1993 HBO film Hostages, starring Colin Firth as McCarthy, was a fictionalized account of the Lebanon hostage crisis.
A critically acclaimed film version of the two men's kidnapping and incarceration was made in 2003. Titled Blind Flight, the British film was directed by John Furse starring Ian Hart as Keenan and Linus Roache as McCarthy.
McCarthy presented episodes of the BBC Radio 4 travel programme Excess Baggage.
The Stiff Little Fingers song Beirut Moon was inspired by John McCarthy's ordeal. It criticized the government for not acting to free him and was subsequently withdrawn from sale.
A major Sky Arts series, Art of Faith, presented by John McCarthy, was broadcast in 2008. The series, produced by Illuminations, was an exploration of the art and architecture of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. In 2009, production of a follow up series of Art of Faith began, featuring Buddhism, Hinduism and religions of the Tao.
In the second episode of the Christmas special of the British comedy programme The Office, David Brent (played by Ricky Gervais) explains how he would like to be interviewed by Michael Parkinson. His agent then says that Parkinson only interviews people who have done things. To which Brent replies, referring to journalist John McCarthy: "He had that guy in Lebanon who spent years chained to a radiator, what did he do? Nothing! He was chained to a radiator!"
