The second I heard that Michael Stewart was going to appear as part of Celtic’s virtual season ticket team I knew there would be anger in Sevconia.
You can read them like a book these days.
There was no way this wasn’t going to spark a detonation.
The allegation against him is simple; now that he is “working for Celtic” he is no longer “credible” as a journalist. It is arrant nonsense.
Sevco could have had Stewart on their own virtual season ticket show, but they didn’t have the ambition or the money to go for his kind of quality. Stewart was not hired by us because he is “Celtic minded” – to my knowledge he isn’t, it is his honesty and integrity that we admire about him – but because he’s good at what he does.
He would have gone to work for them, had they been able to afford him, and had they not suspected that it would enrage their fans. They have built so many conspiracy theories around Stewart already, and that’s their own damned fault. If they simply viewed him in the appropriate light – as a good journalist doing his job – there wouldn’t be all this hate.
Their own paranoia about him extends back months; this is simply an excuse for them to continue indulging in their hatred of him. It will re-open the wounds of the Jim Traynor affair, but then those wounds never did close just because Traynor is no longer at Ibrox.
On top of that, they have some brass neck talking about people being compromised.
Over the years, the BBC has hired EBT recipients and even paid people for contributions who were in the employ of Ibrox at the time. Sevco fans never batted an eyelid.
Stewart has never played for Celtic nor worked for the club media department in any direct capacity, and he’s not working for Celtic now … he’s working for the media company we’ve partnered up with, and that’s not the same thing at all.
You get weary of these Peepul and their behaviour.
Their hatred and anger spreads in so many directions you could exhaust yourself trying to chart it. Stewart was on their radar even before the Traynor story; the moment Celtic sites started to praise him for good journalism.
They don’t want good journalism.
That represents an enormous threat to the reality they cling to, and they cannot have it being questioned.
Stewart’s social media presence – where he is shamelessly political, liberal and pro-independence – is another reason for their suspicion and dislike.
But we’ve had to tolerate Gordon Smith on our TV and radio shows.
For decades Derek Johnstone wrote for a national title, featured on Clyde and worked for Ibrox at the same time. He is not the only example. Billy Dodds, Neil McCann, Alex Rae, Derek Ferguson and others have all trooped through the studios and news offices banging the drum of the club they played for. Michael Stewart’s BBC show colleague Steven Thompson got an EBT worth nearly half a million from Murray’s Rangers.
Celtic fans do not level the same hatred at him that Stewart gets from their fans.
Michael Stewart will not care about this white noise.
The BBC will continue to have him represent them on their various shows.
The gurning children will change nothing with their latest outburst of fury.
It never ceases to amaze me how furious they get to no positive outcome.
If I were Stewart I’d be laughing at them.
Shame he’s too professional for that.
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