Last week, I said that a guy who puts his own name in the headline of his articles is a clown.
Today, Gordon Parks has given us further evidence of just how much the Village Idiot he actually is.
I’m not even going to critique his piece, especially the section on Larsson; it doesn’t deserve it.
I’ll say just this; anybody who writes that Patrick Roberts, on the back of a top class performance, has already “outstayed his welcome” in our game is hurting, and hurting bad, because that’s not commentary, it is undisguised bile.
Beyond that, I have absolutely nothing to say about the piece.
It is contemptible. It scrapes through the bottom of the barrel and sifts the dirt.
No, instead I want to take issue with Parks suggestion that he was accused of “having an agenda” in the reaction to his idiot column last week.
To the best of my knowledge nobody accused him of any such thing.
Having an agenda requires intelligence.
It requires thought.
It requires the application of logic.
It means having a plan.
It means pushing a line.
Last week’s article had none of that. It changed not one mind. It altered not one fact. Roberts is a Celtic player. On Friday he showed that he will be an immense asset to our club and he will improve the overall quality of the Scottish game.
Parks article was not written with any clear objective in mind.
Instead, it was a spiteful, petty, small-minded piece of excreta written by someone bitter and jealous and frustrated beyond the point of rational thought. It was spleen venting, using a national newspaper as a megaphone. And, with his name in the headline, it was shamelessly self-promoting.
Parks is a non-entity.
If he didn’t have a platform the world wouldn’t remember he existed.
Someone told me last week he’s a former footballer.
You know, I had no idea at all.
His playing career, to me, is like his journalism; if nobody had drawn my attention to it I wouldn’t have known he was alive. But his conduct now makes a lot more sense in the context of that information; we’ve all seen his type before, someone used to the applause, craving the acclaim of the crowd, even if all he did, as with his writing, was scale the first rung of mediocrity, playing in front of handfuls of fans, on wet Wednesday nights.
Now, like a tired old crone who should long since have quit the stage but goes on and on and on he seeks affirmation of his own existence wherever he can get it.
What a lifetime of “settling for” that man must have led.
No kid growing up dreaming of playing professional football ever harboured fantasies about “starring” in the lower leagues, and nobody who ever went to journalism school ever dreamed of winding up writing opinion pieces for The Sunday Mail.
Well, you can’t always get what you want, I guess.
Scottish football is in the midst of extraordinary times, and monumental developments. He masquerades as a journalist, but in fact he’s a blowhard … and all he’s blowing is his own trumpet. To reduce journalism to the level of trolling at a time like this … wow.
It almost defies belief.
Some will argue that in writing this piece I elevate his importance; it says a lot for how he’s viewed that a humble blogger like me could be seen to give him credibility he doesn’t otherwise have. If I were him, I wouldn’t be celebrating that kind of attention, I would be worried about it.
In point of fact, I’ve already written my real piece for the day; it’s on why Sevco fans, the followers of the old Rangers, should support Celtic’s call for an inquiry. I consider it a thoughtful contribution to the biggest debate in the game right now … a far cry from Parks’ self-serving, attention seeking and ludicrous rattling on the bars. This is a Kit Kat and coffee break piece; I’ve given it as much real thought as picking my nose.
And that’s really all he represents to me; something you’d wipe on the underside of the desk when no-one was looking, and from this point onward, no matter how desperate his wailing, how unhinged his writing, how deranged his arguments I will view him and treat him exactly as he deserves, which is to say as background noise and pay him no more heed than I would one of those mobile ringtones that sometimes annoys you on the bus.
This is the last time this website will ever mention his name.