THIS WEEK’S BIG controversy involved a daft codger sharing his outdated prejudices with the world.
But enough about President Higgins’ tribute to the ruthless dictator Fidel Castro, we’re here to talk about Eric Bristow.
I was surprised as well as shocked by Bristow’s idiotic tweets about the courageous former soccer players who have come forward about childhood sexual abuse.
I mean, if we can’t rely on the veteran dart player community to handle difficult issues with sensitivity, who can we rely on? Must we now think twice before getting Phil Taylor’s take on the Syrian crisis, or Bobby George on Iranian nuclear disarmament?
In the middle of the justified public flogging of the arrows legend this week, did anyone else find themselves thinking “Eric Bristow? This is a bit… random”?
Of course the Crafty Cockney is enough of a public figure to deserve a hammering for views which, by their unreconstructed machismo, do much to prevent survivors of abuse from coming forward.
But still… Eric Bristow?
Before Twitter, barring an unguarded Big Ron moment, would anyone have even known what Bristow thought about football’s abuse scandal, or any other issue for that matter? Why would anyone have asked him?
And what if someone did press him for his thoughts? Wouldn’t most reporters and editors worth their salt have spiked the story to spare a now-irrelevant 1980s icon from embarrassment and, more importantly, the victims from yet more hurt?
Though it saw the airing of some old-school opinions, this was a very modern furore. For what could be more 2016 than the saying of unsayable things on social media, and the virulent spread of those things regardless of the consequences?
Nowadays we get to know what Bristow, or Donald Trump, or Gary Lineker, or Piers Morgan, or Kanye West, or Dustin the Turkey or any number of not necessarily qualified people think about any number of things. And sometimes when people say things on social media that are beyond the pale, like Bristow, society can find a way to police and punish them. But more often, these unpalatable and untrue things find purchase and oxygen, and fester and grow until one day they’re suddenly governing the free world.
If that’s the price we pay for free speech, it wasn’t the only glimpse of modern public communication offered by sport this week.
Theo Walcott faced the Match of the Day cameras after scoring Arsenal’s third goal in a 3-1 win over Bournemouth on Sunday. Walcott’s wife, Melanie, had given birth to their second child on Friday, nine days after the due date, and the winger celebrated in the customary baby-rocking style.
As a player, Walcott has often been criticised for poor decision-making under pressure, and when asked about the good news in his post-match interview, it was if he had suddenly been thrust into a one-on-one with Gianluigi Buffon.
Seemingly unable to compute the intrusion of something from real life into the entirely prefabricated world of football talk, what emerged was mangled gobbledegook.
“It’s been a long process on a personal level and I’m very pleased to grab that goal for Mel and obviously baby Arlo back at home, and of course [first child] Finlay as well,” said Walcott, polite and well-spoken as ever, but rubbing his head as if his brain was starting to hurt.
“Um… nine days overdue, so it’s just been, you know, wanting to play football but knowing something could happen, but I’m so happy I was there and now we can move on as a family and… I can move on and uh… hopefully perform to the level we showed today.”
This weird mix of heartwarming human interest and meaningless post-match twaddle was jarring for many viewers, who found it peculiar to hear Walcott describe the birth of his child as he might a protracted contract negotiation.
It felt like the natural culmination of modern sport’s desire to control the message, to filter and sterilise communications to the point where Walcott couldn’t say something natural about a moment of immense personal joy without consulting some sort of internal media training manual.
Beyond football, it’s also the kind of all-too-pervasive corporate PR speak that renders so much public discourse meaningless, the cloaking of real meaning behind stock phrases. So a baby’s birth becomes a ‘long process’, and the post-natal period sees you ‘moving on as a family’.
Meanwhile, Bristow’s offending tweets have now been deleted, replaced by a scrambled attempt to portray him as some sort of well-meaning but clumsy anti-sexual abuse campaigner. One tweet that remains reads “Trouble is nowadays u cant tell the truth what do u feel out there tweet me” (sic), followed by retweets of supportive messages praising him for telling ‘like it is’.
Saying whatever you want, or saying nothing at all appears to be the choice on offer here, which is no choice at all. But it’s better to deal with the new world of fake news and real bigotry as best we can, than to have the way we communicate neutered and suppressed by some sort of invisible thought police.
Which sounds like just the kind of thing Michael D’s idol would have gone in for.
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