Last night someone sent me a clip of Keevins, on Clyde, mumbling his way through an answer on whether he still thought Sevco would win the league.
Until I heard that clip, I think I had half assumed that those who’d told me he said that were kidding, but they weren’t, of course.
Because he really is that stupid, he really is that big a clown.
What makes Keevins a clown isn’t that he actually believed that when he said it but that it’s pretty obvious, to everyone, that he didn’t. He said it anyway. His “fans” will say that’s just the way he is, anything to be controversial. In fact, nothing he says is particularly controversial anymore. You expect idiotic nonsense from him. That’s not the same thing. His every utterance has become laughable. He’s become a parody of a parody of a parody.
Keevins hates Celtic.
That’s the simple fact of it.
I know what he was once was, much as I know what he now is.
He is now defined by that obvious truth.
Doubtless, he would treat such an assertion with scorn. His contempt for his audience is mirrored only in its contempt for him. He doubtless believes this is some kind of victory, that upsetting people is part and parcel of the job. But this isn’t telling truth to power, or even just those who don’t want to hear it; in fact, time and circumstance have proved beyond doubt that he’s a moral coward, who actively shies away from covering any topic on Clyde which takes even a modicum of actual courage. The way he and other Scottish hacks refuse to entertain any criticism of the King regime or what’s going on at Ibrox is scandalous.
He won’t utter a word on the weekend’s sectarian beano at Linfield, for example, but he’s not short of a few things to say about our supporters and the Palestinian flags.
Attacking fans is easy. Attacking the media’s favourite club and the governing bodies … that takes guts.
Where is he on reform of the SFA? Fit and proper person criteria? The NewCo debate, and how he justifies the positions he and others hold on it?
He’s nowhere at all.
When it comes to us, though, when it comes to Celtic, this is a guy who defines himself by how hated he is.
I find that tragic, and sad, in someone who ought to have a fine career to look back on. But, bathed in the half-light of spite and vendetta which has characterised the last few years of his life, what he has instead is a Book of Grudges, and on every page is the name of our club.
It’s not for nothing that when he was asked to contribute a chapter for a book, looking back on his time as a “journalist” – and I use that term with a sarcasm that plumbs the depths of the Grand Canyon – that the story he chose to highlight wasn’t a great exclusive, or a tale of the best match he saw, or something that would have helped a young up and coming hack learn a few tricks of the trade. No, it was a story about how he was once thrown out of the Celtic Club in London Road.
Keevins has spent a lifetime covering the game here, and that’s the moment he found most memorable.
If ever there was a metaphor for a wasted career and a wasted life that’s it there, right there, in that pitiful example he chooses to recall.
He comes off, at times, like a guy who sees everything as a joke but he’s part of an industry that has failed every single supporter, everywhere, the very people he treats with such shocking disregard every single night on the radio.
This isn’t a guy to be taken seriously, and I’m only moved to comment on him at all because he and the rest of that industry still hold a lot of influence in football here. We’re still facing tremendous challenges in our sport, and I have no faith whatsoever in the abilities of Keevins or others like him to deal with them. Worse, I fear that their sheer ignorance and utter cowardice could actually make matters worse, as it almost did in 2012.
He and those like him who’ve hidden away from every major debate in the last four years can’t be trusted to come to the fore now, but he inspires special derision for the way in which he no longer tries to be objective or even reasonable. Like many people who once took a decision to adopt a certain public persona, the experiment has escaped the lab and he’s become that instead. It’s who he is now, a guy who doesn’t think before taking a contrarian view, he simply opens his mouth and lets any old nonsense pour out.
“It’s all about opinions,” they say on the show, as if every opinion had the same weight, the same validity, the same coherence.
That someone so dense, so dumb, so wilfully stupid, is an anchor on Clyde tells you exactly how low they set the bar.