Hearts fans sang a song in praise of Lee Rigby today.
I’ll give you good odds that tomorrow the Sevconuts do exactly the same.
The papers have been basking in the warm glow of his memory all week. Odd that, because until this week he was a guy who the whole country had forgotten. His murder, one of the most appalling acts ever to be committed on public streets, was something that the nation had moved on from.
And Scottish football?
But for banners at one club which shamelessly appropriated his memory in its orgy of militarism and its desire to extend its circle beyond the kind of people who can’t walk past a chapel without shouting an insult, and who’s principal fan organisation actually tried to raise money on the back of his name, he might as well not have existed at all.
But all week long, we’ve had the veneration of this guy in our press.
And today football fans sang his name.
And you know what?
None of them give a shit about this guy at all.
Respect the guy’s memory enough to at least be honest about that.
Hearts fans today, like Sevco did of old, are shamelessly appropriating his name for narrow minded ends.
To do what? One up a rival support?
No, to one up a couple of yahoos who sang a sick song about him whilst walking down the street.
And I wonder who’s the sicker; the people who celebrated his murder or those who would utilise it as a weapon to attack an entire support?
And the press, of course, is delighted because it lets them keep the actions of four or five guys in the news for another day.
The Record has been wallowing in this for a week like a pig in its own shit and today they have up the video of the Hearts fans singing the song and for no other reason than it lets this smear on the Celtic fans go on for another news cycle.
Where is the respect for the dead man?
Where’s the respect for his family?
You know, I’m willing to bet the family had never heard of the now famous Sunderland video until the Scottish hacks presented it to them for their comments. It’s bad enough that the far-right uses him for its disgusting ends … but now people here are using him to score cheap points in the stands at the football.
It’s disgusting. It’s shameful.
These people have no more regard for Lee Rigby than the scumbags who sang that song.
If pissing on the memory of a dead man is bad then surely standing over the body and pretending to care whilst trying to win an argument based on who can muster the most hate … well that doesn’t exactly cover you in glory.
These people aren’t immortalising him … they are immortalising a couple of idiots singing a sick song in the street.
This does nothing to help the man’s family get over his death. It keeps alive a sick twisted idea that the whole of Celtic is mired in hate … it’s a scandalous lie and it says more about those who believe it than it does about us.
It’s not like Hearts fans don’t have stuff to worry about; aside from Sevco theirs is the most shambolic club in Scotland at the present time.
I’d have thought they might want to focus a little more attention on that, and a little less on trying to push a corpse in the faces of rival supporters.
Shame on them, and anyone who’d try to use a dead man’s memory like this.