Leigh Griffiths. What’s he like, eah?
If you’ve read the press this week you might be forgiven for thinking; he’s such a hooligan. Such a bad lad. Such a wee ned. What a disgrace he is. The kind of guy Jock Stein would have kicked out of Celtic Park. He’s just been banned for one game by UEFA for tying a scarf to a post. What a thug. Why do Celtic continue paying his wages? Was he the guy who designed the banner last night? A lot of people wouldn’t be surprised.
This was all in the mainstream press.
There was worse on the forums, of course.
Total overblown nonsense, much of it.
You get used to the media doing this for Celtic players and ex Celtic players. How many times have you seen our name splashed on the front page of a newspaper after some scumbag has been jailed, playing on the merest, most tenuous, connection?
The year before last the press highlighted the case of an “ex Celtic player” of such unknown quality I could even properly find him on Goggle. Fortunately the CQN brigade were able to enlighten me. He was a reserve who played something like two first team games.
Even as I write this my Newsnow feed is filling up with more Griffiths bashing in the MSM.
Dear oh dear.
You’d think this kid had murdered somebody.
In the meantime, the same media is helping to promote Paul Gascoigne’s latest event, a live “audience” much like the one he was doing not that long ago. You’ll remember it for being fronted by a Loyalist killer, ending up in a sectarian sing-song, and a session with the man himself which ended in his being charged with making racist comments.
Yes, what a hero. What a role model. What a guy. And a media darling to boot. How they love him here in Scotland. How they revel in the stories about how much of a “lad” he was and how Walter “tamed him”. Oh aye, tamed him so much that he was still kicking his wife around years later. Look at him now. Bang up job, Smith. You really turned his life around.
The media apologia over this guy – “poor Gazza who just needs understanding” – has contributed to the state he’s in, because what he needed more than anything else was an end to all the adulation. Save it for those who’ve actually pulled themselves out of the shit, not for a guy who seems wholly determined to keep tunnelling down in it.
He knows his target audience so well, too. He will play to the gallery. He will probably do his flute trick. He will sing the bigoted songs. It will be a proper knees-up for those who see him as a hero not for what they think he is but for what they know he is.
Every bit as twisted and bitter and hateful as they are.
The media responses to these two men couldn’t be more different.
The same adulation is poured on scum live Novo and goons like John Brown.
It’s not for nothing we can’t stand the press or most of the people in it.