I love to read so-called liberal journalists railing against the right and their growing influence.
I love to read that because of the complete lack of self-awareness in some of their work.
I read those same journalists attacked Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn whilst they promoted Nigel Farage as a legitimate “voice” worth listening to and spoke affectionately of “Boris” as if he were no more than a jolly japester instead of a dangerous politician.
If our liberal media wants to understand how the right has come to influence large swathes of the country, they only need to look in the mirror.
They have spent years decrying the left and giving these goons legitimacy and we all have to live with the consequences of that.
Our sports media in Scotland has legitimised its own set of goons, individuals promoting their own brands and egos by talking the worst sort of trash. The Kris Boyd’s. The Frank McAvennie’s.
It is not a problem unique to Scotland, they have these people south of the border as well, but none of them are taken seriously down there. You won’t see their real media promoting the views of the likes of Robbie Savage; what would be the point?
If football punditry itself is a circus, then these guys are in the freak show tent sent up around the back of the Big Top.
The average fan has more intelligence in his little finger than these “professional” pundits could muster as a collective if their brains were wired together like fairy lights.
We all know that the words of the headline eejit are ridiculous and unworthy of serious discussion, which is why I’m not going to seriously discuss them … but our media refuses to dismiss this clownish commentary and instead gives it weight it doesn’t deserve.
But the same people who promote his sort of dire soup-stirring are the very same people who frequently decry the level of discourse surrounding our sport.
They are the very people who sneer at the blogs and the online community and talk about how the whole sport is surrounded by poison … but what do they think comes out of Kris Boyd’s mouth on a regular basis?
Sane rational analysis?
The TalkSport muppet does nothing but provoke listeners to a reaction.
He’s a highly paid troll, and the media down there ignores him whilst the hacks up here lap up his idiocy with Pavlovian relish.
Especially when it has an anti-Celtic bent to it, which is the key because there are people in our media – Mark Hendry, I’m looking at you – who will give coverage to any yahoo out there who says anything negative about us, no matter how stupid it is.
All the headline eejit has done in this case is indulge his bitterness and whatever sense of grievance he’s spent all these years nurturing about us.
I think we live in his head like a long-lost love that scorned him … it’s the only explanation for the pathological fixation he has with us.
Some of our hacks want to indulge that; that’s up to them.
But insisting that this joker is making a serious point – or has ever made a serious point or is even capable of making a serious point – only transfers his lack of credibility to them and to the titles they work for.
The Evening Times was once a serious newspaper.
It ceased to be that long ago.
In giving space to ludicrous commentary as if it was worthy of discussion, far less respect, it moves ever further away from that sort of status. It damns itself.