Kicking the Politically Correct Football.
We used to say that what happened in the USA would be shortly followed by the UK – but these days Australia is the place to study for the diligent student of the politically correct.
I have taken an unexpected interest in the macho world of working class heroes – the sacred turf whence the ‘beautiful game’ (sic) is played. Once the province of the flat cap and pigeon fancier, a refuge from the working week, before ‘er indoors set out the working week-end, it is being steadily transformed into the ultimate politically correct arena.
No longer may Jews refer to themselves as the ‘Yid Army’ in case they offend themselves; Glen Hoddle was a passable England Manager until he offended the ‘thought police’ and netted Tony Blair on the Richard and Judy show (such a serious politician!) demanding his resignation for his weird belief that the disabled ‘were being punished for sins in a former life’; the FA stamped their little feet and squealed ‘racism’ when Luis Suárez called Patrice Evra a ‘Sudaco’ – a derogatory term for South Americans – and ‘South American’ is a race, already? Women’s football results are now routinely printed before the men’s football results in the Oxford Mail; Liverpool football club have an official list of gender and disability related ‘offensive terms’ that you are not allowed to utter within the stadium – and stewards wearing head cameras to catch you in the act should you shout out ‘you big girl’s blouse, or ‘bloody moron’ as some unfortunate player rolls on the ground complaining that Suárez has just consumed his left leg. Across the Big Pond, President Obama has embroiled himself in the controversy started when the Native American community leaders tried to force the ‘Washington Redskins’ to change their ‘offensive’ name.
The Yid and Redskins controversies tell us a lot about the craziness of PC. Both are underpinned by the central conceit of PC: that the ‘right’ of certain groups or individuals not to be offended trumps the freedom of speech of other communities. Neither the USA, nor yet, the UK, have gone quite as far as Australia in bowing – with nose to the ground – before the most hallowed groups of ‘might be offended’.
The Australian Football League is quite literally in a league of its own:
The AFL is committed to reflecting Australia’s cultural diversity by providing an environment which welcomes people from all backgrounds to enjoy our game as supporters, players, umpires or administrators.”
How do they achieve this? Well, first of all they draw a sharp division between their traditional supporters, the Australian version of the flat cap and pigeon fancier brigade, who are expected to shell out some of their hard earned cash to buy a season ticket or at least a ticket to the latest match where they can practise saying ‘Well played, Sir’ and ‘I say, you truly virile individual, methinks you protest too much’ should any player employ the Suárez tactic on a visiting footballer – and those from er, any one of 90 other countries, who may or may not be persons of various hues of the rainbow, but qualify as ‘new arrivals’ in football parlance…or ‘asylum seekers’ in old fashioned English.
“The AFL and Australia Post have invited more than 30,000 new arrivals to Australia to watch a game for free in round 18.”
Do not throw your passport over the side of the rustbucket you arrived on – you need to produce it to prove you are not a hard working Australian resident and are ‘culturally diverse’ in order to qualify for free tickets…
Even this left them with thousands of unused tickets, so the next day they came up with another humdinger.
Hijab football outfits. No kidding.
League boss Gillon McLachlan will announce the AFL-approved headwear range at an AFL breakfast in a speech outlining how important it is the football code embraces all cultures.
Is the AFL really interested in multiculturalism? Will they be releasing a range of football shirts incorporating the Star of David? Or the Coptic Cross? How about those with Pagan beliefs?
What happens to the hot-dog, succour for the alcoholically overloaded traditional supporter – will it be exchanged for halal Merguez sausages? Definitely forget the pork scratchings! Sale of alcohol? We couldn’t possibly!
The AFL approved wear for the multi-cultural supporter – on sale now!
It can only be a matter of time before the cry goes up for segregated matches, those virile males rubbing shoulders with the hijab covered ladies….swimming pools have been obliged to go down this route.
Can it be right for the young Muslim lovelies to be gazing upon men in shorts with bare legs, who have even been known to remove their sweat stained shirts and toss them into the stands? No, what Australian football really needs is women only matches with women only players – in hijabs. Then they will be truly multi-cultural.
Laugh at your peril. Sharia football should reach Britain in time for the next cup-final.
Abdus-Salām United v.Qur’an Park Rangers.
- Moor Larkin
July 17, 2014 at 12:57 pm -
re. the Yids…
“The legislation used to arrest the three men has since been altered. The word “insulting” has been dropped from section 5 of the Public Order Act, which included reference to “using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress”.”
http://www.tottenhamjournal.co.uk/news/crime-court/charges_dropped_against_spurs_fans_yid_chants_1_3403080
“Baljit Ubhey from the CPS said that as a part of standard procedure, a “senior level review” of the cases concluded there is “insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction, and that the cases against Peter Ditchman, Gary Whybrow and Sam Parsons should be discontinued”.” - Amfortas
July 17, 2014 at 1:20 pm -
Of course the muslim ladies of Melbourne should have a footy stripe hijab. Of course they should be supporters of the AFL. Men in tight shorts and tank tops four sizes too small for health? Why, in the ladies rooms below the Mosque in Noble Park, the talk is of little else.
As for racist talk, we shall have no talk of that now that a big, beareded Abo footy man who fingered (‘scuse the term) a little girl in the stands for calling out ‘Ape’ has been made Ustrayan of the Yeear. It would be unustrayan, innit?
- Ian B
July 17, 2014 at 1:24 pm -
There is a strong class element to PC; rather broadly, it is an attempt to impose middle class standards of behaviour on the lower orders (often by force of law). This is why they so keenly target proletarian-associated activities like football and pubs, both of which are considered to be havens of vulgar lower class behaviour that has to be stamped out.
It has to be said though that there is nothing new in this. Forcing people to drink in licensed pubs was meant to force the vulgar proles away from the sight of decent (matronly) persons, but it backfired when the pub itself turned into a major cultural centre and icon. The massive growth of sports in the Victorian Era was overtly an attempt to reform the lower classes with “healthy” pursuits that would in particular take their minds off sex. And drink. Etc.
So football has always really been about social engineering. In this new Victorian Era, it is unsurprising that it would become a major focus of the hankie-flutterers.
- GildasTheMonk
July 17, 2014 at 3:37 pm -
An interesting insight
- Moor Larkin
July 17, 2014 at 4:39 pm -
I was never quite sure whether the celebration of the White Horse Cup Final was about the power of the police or the social cohesion of the British Male in extremis. Playing the white man with a straight bat and all that. It made Hillsborough look a model of organisation and yet barely anyone was even injured, never mind crushed to death. Of course back then the authorities hadn’t come up with the idea of penning the British inside metal cages and then locking all the emergency exits.
http://www.oldstratforduponavon.com/sitebuilder/images/wembley3-620×413.jpg - Johnny Monroe
July 17, 2014 at 8:23 pm -
The Victorian middle classes also encouraged sporting pursuits amongst the ‘lower orders’ to distract them from some of the passtimes they’d engaged in for centuries, such as cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bull and bear-baiting, throwing cats into stagnant pools with dogs waiting to tear them to shreds if they managed to crawl out alive, and attending public executions. Compared to that lot, a game of association football seems a fairly harmless bit of ‘social engineering’, doesn’t it?
- Ian B
July 18, 2014 at 12:52 am -
They’re only indirectly connected. Bear baiting etc were prohibited by law in 1835, so didn’t need a replacement activity. It was the end of a long campaign by Sabbath-obsessed Christians who saw them as something unacceptably fun you could do on Sunday, when you should be spending the whole day in Church or contemplation of God. They had been for centuries also against sports of any kind for that reason. The main thing people liked to do on Sunday was go shopping, so they banned that too (1855) causing a riot in Hyde Park; sunday being peoples only day off.
The Sports Movement on the other hand started among the upper eschelons, in the Public Schools. The Victorians started the extension of childhood that Progressives continue to pursue today (lately they’ve been calling for 25(!) as childhood’s end) so teenagers were staying at school, into the age where their hormones start bubbling. The public schools thus saw sports as a means of refocussing them onto something other than those interests, and tiring them out in the process. Once it took root as an idea at the top of society, the missionaries set about via the burgeoning religious networks and industrial philanthropists bringing the same to the lower orders.
Much of this same ideology is still with us; we still can’t shop freely on a sunday, and there is still the bizarre idea that sportsmen should be moral role models (even though giving lots of money to an alpha male has the opposite effect on him, leading endlessly to footballer scandals).
But anyway, bear baiting and dog fighting were already abolished.
- Johnny Monroe
July 18, 2014 at 1:31 am -
I take your point re these horrible activities being illegal by the time most of the major sports were codified, but they still went on – as dog-fighting still does to this day, alas.
- therealguyfaux
July 19, 2014 at 2:36 pm -
Two quick points:
(1) “Sunday observance” — Benjamin Franklin, coming to London and seeing the populace engaged in all sorts of business and pleasure on the Sabbath, noted that such would probably have scandalised the more puritan of the clergy in Philadelphia (famous for the phrase, “I went to Philly one Sunday, but it was closed,” which persisted well into the 20th C.), not because the people were profaning the Lord’s Day, but because the Lord seemingly hath not struck down these sinners for their abominable conduct, yea verily, even allowing them to prosper!
(2) Mid-20’s as age of “adulthood” — apparently the folks in America who created Obamacare thought so, as one of the provisions is that a person can be covered under their parents’ health insurance till age 26.
- Johnny Monroe
- Ian B
- GildasTheMonk
- JimmyGiro
July 17, 2014 at 1:47 pm -
Who voted to end democracy? Come on, own up, we know you’re out there somewhere?
At least the Nazis had the decency to grab power; the populace were told it was for their own good: the Fuhrer for all, and all for the Fuhrer. But where does one vote for the next wave of political correctness? Where do the movers and shakers convene, so that we may have our views considered as regard what enters the ‘manifesto’ of the political correctness party, in OUR democracy?
The moral relativism of political correctness appears to be: all is fair and equal, unless it is traditional in anyway shape or form. This is pure subversion of culture; and indicates the end of democracy by ‘democratic’ means. When people are forbade to judge between a hawk and a heron, but told what to believe, then the State has total control over the democracy. And what power would ever contradict its own potency?
- Mark
July 17, 2014 at 5:53 pm -
To quote C.S. Lewis
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult.
To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”- JimmyGiro
July 17, 2014 at 7:01 pm -
Indeed Mark,
Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB defector who worked as a journalist, pointed out that “the media can rape your mind”. The ancient Greeks pooh-poohed their experiment on democracy, because it allowed the stupid to vote. In our modern times, even the clever folk are befuddled by pseudo-science and sophisticated PR, verging on brainwashing.
Whether you are religious or not, it is fairly universal, apart from those who believe in reincarnation, that our one earthly life, is sacred to oneself. Therefore it is fair to say that it is one’s moral duty to defend it violently when all civilised options are denied us. The ‘niceness’ of political correctness is more likely to bring about public insurrection than not, simply because it broaches no compromise, the ultimate bigotry, and thus robs us of the civilised solutions inherent of a real democracy, with free speech and free thinking.
- JimmyGiro
- Mark
- GD
July 17, 2014 at 2:06 pm -
Just thank you…you have no idea how badly I needed 5 minutes uncontrollable laughter today.
- Demetrius
July 17, 2014 at 2:20 pm -
As an Alien on your planet, do you not realise the suffering that all this prejudice and adverse behaviour can cause? There are times when I am truly sorry I left my species zapper at home.
- Amfortas
July 17, 2014 at 2:29 pm -
Are we to understand that you think Anna is an Alien on this planet? I am sure she would agree to be an Alien in France, technically, although as an Englishman myself I would have to support her should she claim that everyone BUT the English are Aliens, anywhere.
- Duncan Disorderly
July 17, 2014 at 8:40 pm
- Amfortas
- Ed P
July 17, 2014 at 2:56 pm -
Hijab-wearing footballers? Good! – there’s nothing so effective as advertising an idiotic stance to make people notice the absurdities.
I hope the Hoi Polloi (not an elitist or derogatory term,but literally “the people”) will soon realise the funny clothing disguises even funnier (& unpleasant) views and vote against it whenever possible.- Wigner’s Friend
July 17, 2014 at 3:49 pm -
I still have a wry smile every time I recall the 2 “ladies” dressed head to toe in black hijabs descending into a pool in Bahrain and going for a swim! Wet hijab competition anyone?
- obligato
July 17, 2014 at 3:58 pm -
Pedant alert…
As you point out. ‘Hoi Polloi’ translates as ‘ the people’ or better ‘ the many’, so you don’t need another definite article in front of it.
)I’ll get my coat…… ( note – not ‘me coat’)
- Ian B
July 17, 2014 at 6:10 pm -
That might be the most interesting pedant alert I’ve ever read on the internet.
- Ian B
- Wigner’s Friend
- Henry Crun
July 17, 2014 at 3:09 pm -
West Brom is about to be bought by a group of local Muslims. They will change the name of the club to West Bromwich Halaalbion.
- Mr Wray
July 19, 2014 at 5:34 pm -
Arsenal surely …
- Mr Wray
- Oi you
July 17, 2014 at 3:15 pm -
Hasn’t that veritable institution, Marks and Spencer been bought out by muslims? Whatever next?
- Jonathan Mason
July 19, 2014 at 2:28 pm -
Hasn’t that veritable institution, Marks and Spencer been bought out by muslims? Whatever next?
Halaal bangers and mash, multicultural style.
- Jonathan Mason
- Jonathan Bagley
July 17, 2014 at 3:37 pm -
Mark Lawrenson just got away with, “should be wearing a skirt”, when supplying expert punditry during the recent World Cup. Good job the match wasn’t at Anfield.
- Jonathan Mason
July 17, 2014 at 3:39 pm -
Luis Suárez called Patrice Evra a ‘Sudaco’ – a derogatory term for South Americans.
No, no! Luis Suárez is a South American and Patrice Evra is a French citizen who originates from Senegal. Suárez is said to have a black grandfather (i.e grandfather of visibly African descent) and Evra is a dark-skinned black African. (I define the word ‘black’ here because in UK official language ‘black’ does not mean ‘black’ but refers to a person of African descent who generally has black hair, brown eyes, and skin varying in color from very dark brown to pale beige.)
Suárez was alleged in the earliest newspaper accounts to have called Evra “nigger”, but then it turned out that he had called him “negro” or “negrito”, both Spanish words, the first of which means ‘black’ and the second is a diminutive form of the other commonly used in Spanish speaking countries. In his defense Suárez counterclaimed that Evra had called him Sudaca, a mildly derogatory term for South Americans. (‘Sud’ means South in Spanish and Sudaca is an abbreviation of Sudamericano.)
Some controversy arose because many Spanish speakers, including myself, pointed out that Negrito is not a term of racial abuse in Spanish. If you live in a multicultural society like South America or the Caribbean members of the same family (like mine) may vary wildly in skin tone and appearance and it is entirely possible that strangers may address a child or woman as “negrita” if they do not know her name. This term has about as much racial offensiveness as calling someone “blondie” or “ginger” in Europe.
Anyway the Football Association called in a Spanish language consultant who ruled that yes “negrito” was a racial insult (I don’t agree with this and suspect the consultant was a Spanish-Spanish speaker and not a South American), and our friend was suspended for 8 games, because soccer players, although they are allowed to insult each other in the grossest way while matches are in progress, are not allowed to reference each others’ ethnicity or skin colour, which clearly Suárez did. Whether Suárez really understood the offense and had received adequate training from his employers on the permissable formats for in-play insults is not clear. Personally I think he never really understood it, as he has remarked that the whole thing was something invented by the UK press.
Anyway, in the Dominican Republic people address each other every day as negrito, rubio (blondie), gordo (fatty), morena (brownie), and so on and nobody gets bent out of shape. The whole country is politically incorrect.
- Jonathan Mason
July 17, 2014 at 3:44 pm -
The Suárez/Evra spat has nothing much to do with racism, but was just a personal spat between two multimillionaires that got out of control.
- Moor Larkin
July 17, 2014 at 4:44 pm -
The best insult ever was another Liverpool player, who offered his anus to one of the opposition. It was so offensive that the ‘papers didn’t dare to make too much of it for fear of admitting publicly what the insult was all about exactly. An interesting inversion of Max Miller telling the Music Hall audience that it was all in their minds…
- Jonathan Mason
July 17, 2014 at 4:50 pm -
The cheeky bugger!
- Moor Larkin
July 17, 2014 at 5:15 pm -
When I said “best”, I think I meant “most outrageous”.
- Moor Larkin
- Jonathan Mason
- Jonathan Mason
- Engineer
July 17, 2014 at 4:48 pm -
On the other hand, too much enforced political correctness can backfire. You may recall that a certain A.C.L.Bliar (may the fleas of a thousand badgers infest his armpits) allowed his more virulent backbenchers to force through a ban on hunting with dogs a few years ago. I think it had something to do with revenge for what Thatcher did to the miners (which made for some interesting conversations between members of the Miner’s Hunt in Nottinghamshire and Peter Hain, at one point in the debate). For decades before the ban, hunt memberships had been slowly dropping across the country. Since the ban, hunt memberships have been steadily increasing, with quite a large proportion of the rural population turning out for the bigger events such as the Boxing Day hunts.
Don’t underestimate the bloody-mindedness of the riled Briton. We’ll knuckle down to something we don’t like if we can see a good reason for it, but if we can’t….
- Jonathan Mason
July 17, 2014 at 4:52 pm -
Didn’t the miners have whippets that chased rabbits?
- Moor Larkin
July 17, 2014 at 4:58 pm -
Hares I thought
- Engineer
July 17, 2014 at 5:26 pm -
Both. Don’t tell the lefties in Parliament though; it’ll destroy all their beautiful illusions.
- Engineer
- Moor Larkin
- Jonathan Mason
- erichardcastlte
July 18, 2014 at 2:55 am -
Sometimes I have to read forums like this to gain information as to what is happening in my adopted country. This whole scenario passed me by but they may be because I have nil interest in football.
This is certainly a marketing ploy to ensure every citizen is immediately inducted into football mania which is so prevalent that most news reports are rushed through so the reporters can get to the real news, a leisurely half hour report on footie.
There does seem to be a total lack of racism though in the game and that is most likely because half the fans and players are from somewhere else originally although Indigenous players are usually the ones most insulted.One thing I like about the country is the overall lack of racism in daily life but I really put this down to sunshine and a reasonably good standard of living. I’m sure underneath it’s there simmering away but when you have other things to occupy your time, why bother?. Even pedomania flourishes but not to the extent is does back in the UK. But they may be because we really don’t have a Tory establishment (we do have Tories though and many love Mrs Thatcher)
However if there is ever talk of a new Mosque being built that usually raises people’s hackles and no matter how many times I tell people that I am Jewish and live in a tiny terrace house in Melbourne just 3 doors from a Mosque and we all get on famously they still fear the worst.
Visiting friends who drop by in Perth extol it’s virtues but it sounds horrible to me and I never want to visit as I hear about half the population are British immigrants.- Engineer
July 18, 2014 at 9:45 am -
I think by listening to the output of the British media, and even by reading the blogs, you maybe get a rather distorted sense of Real Britain. There are problems, some of them very localised, some more general; but there have always been problems of one sort or another. If it wasn’t Hitler causing bother, it was Scargill and his dodgy mates causing a different sort of bother, or the IRA spreading unpleasantness.
Most of us don’t live in the Westminster bubble. We live in Real Britain, where we still have weather, seasons, some fantastically beautiful and varied landscapes, more history and heritage than you can shake a stick at, neighbours who pass the time of day and share a laugh when you bump into them, Test Match Special, Gardener’s Question Time and enough tea to sink an ocean liner in. It’s a country in which you can do pretty much whatever you want, provided it’s (reasonably) decent, doesn’t frighten the horses, and as long as you don’t break the law too much. If you need any further reassurance that Real Britain is not so bad (as long as you take a relaxed attitude to life) see what Fat Steve wrote above.
It suits me fine. With no disrespect to the good people of other nations, I wouldn’t live anywhere else.
- Moor Larkin
July 18, 2014 at 12:54 pm -
There’s an old movie from 1955 I watched a while back, “I Am a Camera”. I haven’t read Isherwood’s book but this movie was hardly one to set the world alight. It was basically a story of the meaningless hedonism of an aimless young man, a dancing girl and their meaningless adventures in the milieu of Weimar Berlin. One particularly hedonistic scene involves a visiting American millionaire [who is later mentioned as having gone bankrupt]. The neat thing about the movie was that in the backgrounds of the street scenes you keep seeing these guys in the background either fighting or otherwise causing distress. At first you barely even notice them – it’s like a “Where’s Wally” scenario, there’s so much else going on to take your attention. After a scene or two it dawns on you that these are the “Brownshirts” but the subject never enters the narrative of the movie. As you continue to watch the pointless lives of the protagonists of the movie you even begin to feel annoyed because the movie is ignoring the “important stuff” and only narrating this personal and seemingly inconsequential tale. In the final street-scene the “Brownshirts” have moved forward into the foreground and actually bump into the main characters as they are busy beating someone else up and the characters move away, discomfited and wondering aloud to one another who those idiots are and what they are doing and how it has nothing to do with us…. It’s a very clever technique, but you have to know the story already in order to understand what the film is telling you.
- Engineer
July 18, 2014 at 1:24 pm -
Glass half empty…….glass half full….
Is everything perfect in modern Britain? No – and it never will be. It still does no harm to count your blessings, though.
- Moor Larkin
July 18, 2014 at 1:29 pm -
Some seem to be contending that we must always think of the children…
- Moor Larkin
- Ian B
July 18, 2014 at 2:23 pm -
I Am A Camera being the basis for the musical Cabaret, of course.
- Engineer
- erichardcastlte
July 19, 2014 at 5:36 am -
A good analysis and evident if you are viewing Britain from abroad. Your view is formed by the tabloids or the BBC no matter who much you distrust them. Then as you return, in my case very second year for a visit,you find a place that is unrecognisable, thank God, from the Daily Mail’s view of the world.
What strikes me though is that some myths are created though for the very reason the majority of people do not read the gutter press but are often influenced by it. Thus the Savile myth can propagate and flourish and seep into the public mind and be accepted- although of course when I speak to old friends they dismiss the whole thing as a witch hunt and money grab. - Fat Steve
July 19, 2014 at 10:29 am -
@Engineer -Nice for once for someone to refer to me by my full (deliberately chosen politically incorrect) name but what exactly are you referring to that I have written above ?
- Jonathan Mason
July 19, 2014 at 2:24 pm -
I think that is the same in many countries. What you read about the USA is often controversial, especially in the area of foreign policy, but the vast majority of people in the US are leading fairly happy and healthy lives watching Nascar racing in darkened rooms and eating junk food and guzzling tasteless beer while they play with their guns, and don’t want to leave the country.
- Moor Larkin
- Engineer
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