Where Were You When It (Football) Was Shit?

Hey, we've never really needed Peter Sissons to point out the predominance of left-leaning ideology at the BBC, but the orgy of outrage at today's Sky Sports sexism non-story is astonishing even by their standards.

Don't get me wrong, Keys and Gray were monumentally stupid and their remarks rather puerile, but the orgasm of righteous over-reaction beggars belief.

All day long, it's been "are they bigots?", "how must they be punished?", "should they be sacked?", "should their balls be cut off?", "should they be sacked and have their balls cut off?", with any defence that football is a male-oriented game where - oddly enough - stupid and/or puerile remarks have always been prevalent, being dismissed as sexist apologism.

As one would expect, the Graun weighs in heavily too, with the usually world news-centric CiF posting up article after gleeful article, including this one by Georgina Turner writing about ... the comments to a previous CiF article on the same subject.

I don't suppose the fact that Rupert Murdoch owns Sky Sports may have more than a little to do with it, might it? It's a perfect whirlwind for the axis of lefty British media. Sexism is a big attraction, but sexism in Murdoch's empire is fucking irresistible!

Unfortunately, this leaves Keys and Gray as patsies - their lives to be now manipulated for the sake of political expediency. Georgina even describes 24 hours as "depressing as the length of time Sky took to react with disciplinary action". Yes, that's right, not quick enough! Someone of the left - you know, the ones who brought in employment laws so prickly that even sacking someone for tossing off on a secretary's desk requires serious deliberation - presumably considers that Sky were improper in not just throwing them out of the building instantly.

It's that important, see?

What a crock of shit!

Keys, it would appear, burbled a reference to one of the most lazily clichéd critiques of women, that being their lack of understanding of the offside rule, and this is being taken to mean that he doesn't understand the training that the lino in question would have received. Come on now, people, the guy's life has revolved around football for 20 years since he left TV-AM where he was known for his hairy hands while broadcasting to a predominantly female audience. I'm pretty sure he is well aware that the woman knows how to spot an offside, that's as lame an accusation as it's possible to get from supposedly educated individuals, even if only out for a politically-motivated turkey shoot.

I'm wondering where the outrage is towards TV adverts featuring women dreaming of a hunky guy to replace their fat, ignorant, useless couch potato husband; or the ones portraying men too backward to use a kitchen surface cleaner spray; or totally incapable of empathy or fashion unless they're gay? Because all men are pigs or potential rapists ... yes, you know full well opinions such as that are articulated regularly.

Now, just swap the genders above and imagine the professionally-offended nuclear explosion that would ensue. By comparison, Keys's remarks appear positively tame.

But there's one more depressing aspect to all this, encapsulated in a Georgina Taylor subordinate clause which is inherently North London in its crafting.

for some, laddish behaviour is more precious to their football experience than gender equality

What the blithering fuck? Football is - or always used to be - precisely about laddish behaviour. Lads would go to stand in the cold with their mates, following in the footsteps - and often the teams - of their fathers, I don't recall 'gender equality' ever having any fucking thing to do with the football experience.

Of course, the middle class lefties who have helped to gentrify the game, thereby pricing out large swathes of the working classes who supported it from its 19th century origins, are more interested in altering the politically-correct presentation than they are the raucous testosterone release it used to offer. They'll buy their hideouly expensive season tickets to illustrate an earthy appreciation of the working man's sport, but insist it adapts to suit their suit their equality and diversity-led sensibilities.

Nick Hornby, an Arsenal fan (where are they from again?) bemoaned the very phenomenon in Fever Pitch. He argued that the “vicarious and parasitical” nature of football fandom - alluding to the swearing and non-PC outlook of regular attendees - was a vital ingredient to the spectacle which has brought the less-tolerant to the party in the first place.

“Who will make the noise now? Will the suburban middle-class kids and their mums and dads still come if they have to generate it themselves? Or will they feel that they have been conned. Because in effect the clubs have sold them a ticket to a show in which the principal attraction has been moved to make room for them."

Now we see the Beeb/Guardian pincer movement demanding the last vestiges of male ribaldry be removed from even unguarded private conversations between Sky presenters.

How ironic is it that lefties should so deride Sky for this ... when the injection of Murdoch's millions was the very stimulus which sexed up football and ripped it away from those whose language and opinions the righteous despise.

Without Sky, the pathetic bile we've seen from Georgina, her Graun chums, and the BBC today couldn't have been uttered without attracting hysterical ridicule.