The Initial Criticism Of Celtic’s Fan Media Now Looks Ludicrous In Light Of Last Week.

In the days after Celtic fan media held its first ever presser with Dominic McKay and Ange Postecoglou, the media response was spiteful, venomous and insulting.

The whole idea of it was treated with open scorn.

How dare our club treat us as equals with the mainstream press?

Was Dominic McKay out of his mind for sanctioning such a thing?

Today all of it sounds utterly ridiculous.

The media owes us an apology.

Since those disgraceful articles and editorials and barbs the whole situation has been upended.

Every word they said about us has backfired on them, spectacularly.

Far from being a collection of nutters incapable of behaving rationally, we now look amongst the calmest and most professional people in the room.

Which isn’t to say that we don’t lose the nut every once in a while, and get heated in debate … but just look at the lunacy and nonsense and bile filling up the environment in which we operate.

Even as I write this a national title is investigating its own journalists over their social media posts.

At least one of its employees actually penned a column on Alfredo Morelos which was described as openly racist.

A journalist at another paper started blocking people just the other day when he was pulled up because he referred to Kyogo as “the Jap.”

And even as all this is going on, a broadsheet editor allowed an article describing the racist Famine Song as a “bit of theatre.”

You actually couldn’t make that up.

Not that you have to, since The Daily Record itself once ran a piece, by Jim Traynor, which basically said much the same.

Over the weekend, Celtic fan media was being scrutinised like never before.

I have always been proud to be part of this community, but never more so than in the last few days when we’re under so much scrutiny and it has recorded such a pitiful return for our critics.

Thinking back to the media’s reaction to Ange and Dom doing that Q&A I really have to laugh.

Much of the press corps’ ire focussed on one question, the one asked by The Celtic Star.

But they would have found another excuse.

The characterisation of our fan reps as an embarrassing collection of weirdos and obsessives was wholeheartedly false; it now looks profoundly ill-judged at best when you consider what the last few days has exposed.

Ibrox’s fan media was always far more likely to disgrace their club.

But who knew that turning the spotlight, finally, on them would have revealed so much dirt on the press itself?

Who knew that there was so much ignorance and backward thinking amongst those self-styled guardians of the public good?

What an embarrassment is it for all concerned.

The criticisms which were levelled at Celtic for sanctioning a fan press event were absurd and idiotic even at the time.

In light of what we know has happened since I’d say the club and in particular Dominic McKay are owed an apology over that.

Nobody restricted the press that day.

Nobody jammed us all into the same room either.

Celtic certainly didn’t charge the media to attend, far less rewarded those who paid with having to share space with bigots, homophobes, racists and misogynists.

But then, as we’re learning, their own ranks contain more than a handful in a few of those categories anyway.

All of this has cast the criticism we got in the worst possible light, and there’s one more element I think I should mention, and bear with me as I make a bit of a leap.

It seems apparent to me that many of our fan reps will be from Catholic backgrounds.

I won’t say the majority; I neither know this or care about it.

But many of them, to be sure.

That’s why I find it fascinating, in respect of this, that a number of people have used the events of the last few weeks to re-open an old and multiple times discredited debate; the one on Catholic education and the allegedly “divisive” nature of it.

That so many of us are products of an education system which allegedly legitimises and even fosters division makes it all the more curious that nobody – and plenty are looking – can find any real evidence to support that idea in what Celtic fan media reps say online.

It’s almost as if, instead, our education has taught us to be tolerant and open and compassionate and understanding and welcoming.

It’s almost as if our outlook has been shaped around concepts like diversity and inclusivity; but how can this possibly be?

One of the things my education taught me was that if there are two sides of a debate you look at the constituent parts which make up those sides.

How can it be that in so many of the major issues I care about that I find myself lined up against the same sort of people?

Those advocating the abolition of Catholic education would do well to look at who their allies are, and wonder how they could have ended up sharing space with such bigoted trailer trash?

And whilst they do so they should ask themselves; are they sure that we’re the ones who come from an intolerant background?

That we’re the ones who were “forced” to consider others as different, and somehow lesser?

That it’s our schools that are the problem here?

Jesus, it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

That aside, today I feel a little vindicated.

Today I feel a sense of pride and some satisfaction, but it’s tempered with sadness as well because I genuinely want to see the media win its war with the gutter dwellers of Ibrox, those people who drag down their club and shame this country … but in light of what we’re learning I think we’re owed an apology first for the way we, and Celtic, were being perceived not that long ago.