Last night and today we’ve been treated to one of those uniquely Scottish spectacles, wherein the press is gushing over the actions of one player who’s broken the law and another who has amassed red cards like some people collect stamps.
(An appropriate word considering his propensity for them.)
It helps, of course, that both play at Ibrox. The ground where rehabilitation is easy. It’s tempting to suggest that if Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey declared an allegiance to Sevconia there would be no need for Making A Murderer season 3.
Those guys are believed to have been wrongly convicted; it doesn’t matter how the evidence stacks up at Ibrox. Justice moves swiftly, and usually in their favour, and no matter what happens the media is quick to forgive and forget.
So today we have the quite unbelievable acclaim being poured on to Nathan Patterson who has gone from being a player who jeopardised all of Scottish football to being one of its potential shining stars.
In less than two weeks. Record time, even for these hacks.
Let’s think here about what happened.
Listen, regular readers know full well that I lambasted our club over Dubai and said we deserved everything we got. Well, having said all that I feel I’m on solid ground when I tell you that the Ibrox Five and the club itself deserved everything they didn’t get.
There was no Scottish Government barrage of criticism. The governing bodies so far have said very little and the club itself wanted the issue brushed aside and already have two of them in the team.
But it’s the media who are the true disgraces here, as they wet their pants over Patterson when they were united in demanding that Bolingoli never show face in Scotland again.
We ate mountains of dirt over Dubai, and I agreed that we should … but the Scottish Government signed off on the trip and even helped us organise it. The SFA gave it the green light. We should have gone, but we had permission to go.
It didn’t save us from the full media onslaught.
The lack of any kind of similar response towards the Ibrox Five – the club’s second offensive of that type – absolutely stinks to high heaven.
You cannot have seen the way we were flayed and then compared it to the kid gloves treatment on hand here and not be appalled.
As for Morelos, a single moment of sportsmanship – no different than you see in football every other week – somehow makes him a sainted figure who some have even suggested should get the Fair Play award.
He will be the first person ever nominated for it who, in the same season, have twice been founded guilty of violent conduct in the aftermath of games.
It will be fun to see what happens to UEFA’s Twitter feed if they decide he merits a mention.
How many vicious, neddish incidents do you think we can dig up?
Morelos is an on-field hooligan, with the record, and the footage, which fully justifies that tag.
This has been a week which reminds us again that not every allegation of favouritism and special treatment is paranoid nonsense.
What are the unifying things that make Morelos and Patterson easy to forgive and has turned them into local heroes with our press?
The jersey they wear and the club they play for.
Don’t tell me that media bias is a figment of our imaginations; we see it every single day in things like this.
It’s as real as you, me, the Order and the Lodge.