Oh Joey. You’ve really done it this time. You’ve really poked the wokerati bear with your frankly baffling analogy concerning Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward. We know why you’ve done it – the deafening silence of nobody noticing you must be excruciating.
But it is just sad. I read your autobiography and it was very good. Your ghostwriter made you sound intelligent, eloquent. You almost sounded likeable. You admitted mistakes and there was a sense that you felt remorse (although not much for the cigar incident). There was a lot to empathise with.
The overriding message by the end of the book was that you were taking steps to make yourself a better person, either through your work with the Sporting Chance clinic or through education. Heck, you even started a degree, announcing the fact with the inspiring message on social media that you had your “eyes peeled, ears open, brain engaged”.
If only you’d done one of those things on Thursday night when you posted on X that Aluko and Ward are the “Fred and Rose West of football commentary”.
This is not the time to argue about convoluted analogies – I am struggling to gauge the connection between serial murderers and the quality of football punditry – although given that you are fond of comparisons with notable figures, I am sure you won’t mind me saying that you have become the Ricky Gervais of out-of-work football managers.
Bear with me. The analogy stands up. You both have talent. You have made mistakes. You have revealed a caring, human side. But you have also both gone into battle in the culture wars with a smartphone pop gun, eager to whinge that “you can’t say anything” and you are only “saying what people think”.
The latter statement is probably true. But few can legislate for bozos dragging their knuckles across the earth, spouting misogynistic, discriminatory drivel, baiting the majority, under the guise of free speech. Before social media that sort of claptrap was confined to pubs. And at least they used to close at 11pm.
Anyway I digress. Your conduct on social media is genuinely sad. To use the proverbial teacher’s phrase, I am not angry, I am just disappointed.
I am sure you don’t really believe that women can’t commentate, nor that Aluko could “barely kick a ball”, as you sputtered on Thursday. I remember recently that you said to Piers Morgan that your reasons for hating women talking about men kicking a ball were because “it has the same rules but it is played slower”.
Does that mean you spout spittle-flecked bursts of rage at your local park every time you see 10-year-olds playing a game? Because not only do they play slower than Everton or Crystal Palace (the teams that Aluko and Ward were commentating on), they have different rules to senior players. Do you yell at boys’ coaches about how terrible they are? Or do you just reserve your ire for the ones in charge of girls’ teams?
I am sure you don’t. You seem an intelligent man. It is just that you have set your stall out as an anti-woke spokesman. Which is great for the dopamine hits when you get responses, no doubt. But it is neither big, nor clever. Put your phone down for a bit. Read a book. Start with your own. You might even like the main character.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/Av7kmwc
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