THE ROONEY-ENGLAND SAGA:
WHY THE MEDIA IS MISTRUSTED, DESPISED EVEN
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion in a free society. The philosophical problem is how some opinions are more equal than others through mass exposure.

For instance, our opinion, voiced openly in a local pub or on the internet or in the local letters column or in a quick quote on radio or TV carries nowhere near the same mass impact as an employee newspaper columnist or TV commentator. Furthermore, media employee opinions are concocted and presented by a tiny number of individuals and editors. In turn these are decided by the policies of media owners. Almost all major media owners are based in London or outside the country. It won’t take much of your own research to show the truth of this.

On Merseyside this has had serious resonance ever since the Hillsborough disaster and the eighties. During that time our city was subject to the kind of propaganda barrage of which – and I don’t use these words lightly – Josef Goebbels and Julius Streicher would have been proud. In recent years the attacks have become more quiescent, nothing more, and that only because the nation eventually became sufficiently disgusted with the kind of muck and politics manufactured at the time by media thugs like Kelvin McKenzie at the Sun and Andrew Neil at the Sunday Times. Both of them of course were employees of Rupert Murdoch, corrupt right-wing media owner both here and in the USA. But they aren’t on their own. They are merely the most obvious examples. You would be hard put to name even a so-called “liberal” mass media outlet in Britain.

This is reflected even in sports reporting. Again, do your own research on how the media dealt with apartheid in sport. As another example I can recall Brian Glanville once saying in a piece in the Murdoch press of Ardiles, the gifted Argentinian midfielder, that he had “impeccable right-wing credentials.” At the time, mothers were gathered in Buenos Aries protesting the “disappearance” of members of their families at the hands of a murdering fascist regime. Since then, football reporting has got worse and worse. Who can forget the appalling attacks on David Beckham for his sending off in the World Cup in France against, ironically, Argentina? Attacks, moreover, which led to the worst barracking campaign I have ever seen in English football. It was irresponsible incitement of the worst kind. Sadly, it was and is all too typical of the kind of overpaid media numbskulls who now smear the game with phony hype and other lies.

In fact the English national team is surrounded by the kind of reporters and reporting which wouldn’t be out of place in Der Stürmer in 1937. The tabloids, all of them, are a national cultural disgrace. The broadsheets are not much better. All of them are a direct reflection of monopoly right wing ownership. If international football has become a soap-opera, then the England team has become the East Enders thereof. Small wonder our national team has attracted too many of the kind of fans who wouldn’t be out of place in a Rangers-Celtic match. Nor is it sufficient argument to show other countries also have their own brand of nationalist loonies amongst media and fans.

So I wasn’t too surprised when we got all this overblown garbage about Wayne Rooney, the international team and a meaningless match in South Africa. Guess who the media had a go at? Surprise, surprise, the curmudgeonly slobs, Melledrew Tendency to a lickspittle, all attacked David Moyes and promoted a difference of opinion into a row with Sven Eriksson and the FA. It’s all so familiar it is laughable. Something has to keep these useless infoclerks in propaganda work. MiniTrue lives.

Firstly, as an avid England fan I want our national team to be the best and to win as often as I want Everton to win. I don’t have a problem with this. There is room enough for both. If anyone wants to narrow their mind to less, then that is their choice and no concern of mine. I can’t be bothered with narrow-mindedness, and that includes those who act in reverse, who exclude their home team at the expense of the national team.

Second, if David Moyes says he doesn’t think Wayne Rooney should go to South Africa – for whatever reason – then that is good enough for me. David Moyes has earned the respect of all Evertonians this season. His peers have already voted him Manager of the Year, an incredible achievement in his first attempt at running a top class club. He has easily earned the benefit of doubt. It doesn’t make him right every time, but it does mean people like me will take his word before anybody else’s where Everton are concerned. This is particularly true of young Rooney, whom Moyes has obviously decided needs a different approach. Moreover, there appears to be real warmth between the two. Therefore, much as I like Sven, he and the FA – ESPECIALLY the FA, see below – will have to take second place in this instance. And the media, all of it, can go shag itself with the blunt end of a ragman’s trumpet.

What it shows once again is just how ridiculously metro-centred this country has become, how out of touch with the majority of its citizens. The sports media are no more inoculated against this than any other London-based lickspittle. But I’m damned if I want a seventeen years old player, even one as gifted as Wayne Rooney, to be at the beck and call of a bunch of untalented and overpaid media no-marks who helped create current institutionalized corruption in the game. As I see it, David Moyes has taken a stand for Wayne Rooney and common sense, let alone Everton Football Club.

Which brings me to the Football Association. This is as rotten-to-the-core an organization as ever had contact with The Beautiful Game. Lest we forget, this is the same bunch of cheap hoods in cohorts with most of the media who helped create the present cartel of the so-called Premier League. This is the same bunch of lying, gutless crooks who have failed to protect our youngsters and their dreams from the leeches, agents, media spivs and salesmen who still suck out the game’s lifeblood and give nothing in return. These are the same people who ask us to trust them and not David Moyes.

It’s only my opinion of course but here’s my message to the FA and the media: GET FUCKED.

And that’s after careful thought.

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