WAYNE’S WAVER
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

I’m sorry to strike at the core of your xenophobic inferiority again, but last week I was watching New York Giants get bladdered 23-10 by Miami Dolphins at a packed-to-the-gunnels Giants’ Stadium in New Jersey. Behind us, a man clapped right into my friend Jack’s ear at almost every “play.” Jack’s an amiable and humorous guy but eventually it got to the point where he muttered to me the next time it happened he’d plant the bastard and piss on him afterwards. It happened. Jack swivelled around and then turned back toward the front. He leaned over and said ruefully, “He’s such a fat fuck the only place he can clap is in front of his stomach – and that’s right behind my head.” The culprit couldn’t help it, not even with more knee space than you’ll ever see in your average English football ground. God bless America and its extra calories and leg room.

The episode interrupted my inner musings on the previous day’s pitiful result from England, at Spurs, where apparently we received an unexpected bladdering of our own and The Duke got booked for the fifth time. And thus, rightly, automatically suspended. Then the media roof collapsed on young Rooney in entirely predictable fashion.

I have not seen the TV lowlights of the game at Tottenham. No point, really. Until we repair a seemingly permanent hole in the centre of our midfield this kind of thing will repeat itself. We all know it. Anyway it cut short my chortling at Jack’s expense because he’s a pinky and was still reeling from their earlier rogering by Arsenal at analfield.

But it is obvious the media phoneys have done what I warned of in previous essays during The Duke’s emergence. That is, put the boot in on him when his form falters and/or his naiveté gains temporary upper hand. It is of course the supreme form of media cowardice and rightly despised by all true footy fans. Really the answer is in the fans’ own hands. Until they learn and apply the lesson the media will continue to manufacture garbage. The answer of course is not to buy their product. It really is that easy. Organise a boycott and use one element of the media against the other. The system is so one-dimensional, and media dopes so widespread, it wouldn’t be at all difficult if applied with determined analysis. Merseyside’s spontaneous destruction of The Sun’s local circulation was a classic example.

In this essay I will deal with the generality of the media approach and not with individuals. The latter will be dealt with later in the season when I will make a point by using their own methods against them. I tell you this in advance because there are some genuinely stunted people out there and I want to save them the bother of

(a) Assuming it is aimed at them (unless you are a journo, in which case you can feel suitably paranoid NOW you arsewipe)

And

(b) Sending me a tiresome e-mail of complaint which gets binned at the first opportunity.

As Evertonians though our main concern by some distance is surely the young player himself and how our club help him through this stage of his career. There can be little doubt all the right steps have been taken thus far. David Moyes is exactly right for the task and the board of directors have given him all necessary encouragement and freedom to deal as he sees fit. Moyes and Rooney are a marriage made in heaven. The biggest playing threat to the player is the level of ability and attitudes around him. At this point in our club’s history we have not assembled, nor can we afford, the kind of team we all want. At present we carry too much the weight of circumstance. As I long ago pointed out, after that the biggest conundrum will be his own character and how he understands it and applies it to his football. His personality and character are still evolving and there is no clear indication of which direction it will take. In a free country nor should there be, despite what our extreme right wing media – that is, virtually all of it – tell us. David Moyes knows this perfectly well. Which is why the untalented and useless media should be given the kind of short shrift you would rightly deliver to anyone who tells you how to conduct your life.

There are few uglier sights in our culture than that of a ubiquitous media ganging up to manufacture a spectacle to suit themselves and not the real issue at hand. This reaches farcical levels when heavily applied to the relative trivia of sports and entertainment generally. And it is positively sinister when you do a little research and note who the media owners are (there aren’t that many of them and they occupy the same right wing political spectrum), where they are located, who they employ, and their motives for their actions. Journalists of course are merely the messenger boys, the thuggish brown shirts employed to turn over tables, break beer glasses and kick a victim while on the ground. One tedious viewing of odious oafs like Andrew Neil and Kelvin McKenzie should be enough for your own common sense to show you what you are dealing with.

So here we are: Wayne Rooney has run into an inevitable bad playing patch and has got himself a fifth booking and suspension. We can easily dismiss the extreme chauvinism of other teams’ fans – during last season’s derby at analfield, courtesy of Jack, I sat in the middle of a group of pinkies and you had to hear the hate they were spitting at The Duke to believe it – as nothing more than jealousy. If nothing else we can understand the tribalism involved because we have all been more or less guilty of it in one way or another. Any fan who claims otherwise is a fool or a liar or both. It keeps the pot stirred and interesting so long as it doesn’t boil over. All sensible footy fans know where to draw the line.

But the media reaction is different. To understand it properly it is necessary to understand something of the closed, eternally looped world in which journalists operate. It is also important you never give them an even break, except if you happen to stand on a fibula or two of theirs, then kick them from arse hole to breakfast time. I better tell you I was joking with that last bit in case the stunted ones get upset.

Firstly, I suggest you rid your mind of any idealistic notion that mainstream media exist to provide you with dispassionate news reports for you to draw your own conclusions. The reality is, honourable exceptions aside, they exist to sell their product and present the opinions of their owners – which of course affects the presentation style and contents of everything they do. This includes sports reports. This observation is so obviously common sense it gets overlooked by far too many peons as they stumble over themselves in a mad rush to BUY the very stuff they complain of, thus perpetuating the infernal cycle. Since said media is financed and owned by a tiny number of individuals it is easy to see how a few instructive phone calls or e-mails to editors (and thence automatically to individual journalists) can direct propaganda in any desired direction.

That is the overview. It varies only slightly in detailed daily working. In other words, a policy stance will pervade everything produced by an individual medium outlet. On Merseyside we all know the profound truth of this, never better illustrated than the muck churned out by Murdoch-owned media. So don’t bother metaphorically shooting the messengers, go metaphorically shoot the owners, financiers and editors. Firing off a single letter of complaint is next to useless. Hit them where it hurts, by organised boycott, in the pocket, and watch them squirm.

If you think I exaggerate the extent of media manipulation I invite you to watch a great film by Michael Mann, “The Insider.” This is merely one dramatised example. There are many others for those with a lively sense of honour and curiosity. Go find them.

In turn it would be a denial of your common sense to think none of this spills over into sports reporting. Equally, it applies to reporting on Wayne Rooney. All of which leaves the media brown shirts with something of a presentational conundrum. After all, Rooney is so obviously potentially one of England’s greatest ever players the brown shirts almost have their collective head up their arse trying to keep their owners happy while acknowledging the youngster’s natural playing gifts and origins. It is a highly amusing spectacle, especially since few journalists have the will, writing talent or articulation to strike a balance. Most of them of course are simply full of bad intentions or self-promotion. All of this is accentuated whenever Rooney plays for England, an experience not dissimilar to performing in a circus before an audience of purple nosed media clowns. All of it reeks of downright nastiness and seedy, small minded mediocrity only slightly better than the petty minds of perennial contributors to your average footy internet forum.

Let’s get the record straight, you and I: Wayne Rooney is on the eve of his eighteenth birthday, he is still learning his sport, and he is still growing up. The last thing he needs right now is a bunch of divvies (in or out of the media) kicking him while he’s still learning. The idea that these piggish morons can impart something to him is laughable. David Moyes can give him more in five minutes than the rest, family excluded, can give him in twenty years. I have little doubt the media would attack Rooney’s family too if they felt it would help their ratings or sales. As we all know, the brown shirts have already been sniffing around their private affairs. Make no mistake, if they could dish some inconsequential dirt they wouldn’t care whose life got ruined in the process. And if Wayne should get into some adolescent scrape or other it doesn’t take much imagination to envisage the result.

At this point we better eliminate one of the standard whingeing excuses from the pigs in the media trough, those so brilliantly parodied in “Spitting Image.” This is the “we-don’t-make-the-news-we-only-report-it” diatribe. If only this were true. But it isn’t, and for the reasons I described earlier. The fact is it is the media who decide how to emphasise, how to prolong a “story.” At this level it becomes a propaganda sales drive directed by a few people. I have no doubt Josef Goebbels and Julius Streicher would glory in modern media methods. There is little evidence of a sense of proportion. We are right to be disgusted, we are right to treat them with contempt. Journalists ARE disgusting and contemptible, never worse than when they are dealing with Wayne Rooney. They are just as bad for going over the top after his performance for England against Liechtenstein as they were for going over the top after his latest booking.

Most footy fans accept by now the game is shot through with institutionalised corruption. Even low-level minders and clerks are on the take. But so is the media. Owners, editors and journalists can no more do a Pontius Pilate than can the football clubs owners, administrators and players. The difference is most of the media were/are accessories before, during and after the fact. In too many cases they actually HELPED CREATE the present situation. Media has active ownership is some football clubs. Which is why their attacks on Wayne Rooney are nothing more than small-mindedness, extreme cowardice and hypocrisy.

The point about all of this media reaction is how tediously predictable it is. I said as much in earlier essays and comments during Rooney’s emergence. It was only a matter of time. And here come the media porkers oinking away bang on programme.

In one respect only are the media wholly correct. At the end of their argumentative tether they usually say, annoyed, “You get the media you deserve.” This is indisputably true. If we buy their muck, they’ll keep manufacturing it. In every sense of the word, just don’t buy it.

This was never better demonstrated than at the end of the aforesaid Giants-Dolphins match. At the end, Jack was rightly infuriated by the blue-shirted Giants’ baffling inability to catch perfectly good throws from their quarter-back. He was on his feet yelling in increasing Noo Yawhk emphasis, “Catch the ball! Catch the BAWL!! CATCH THE FUCKN BAWL!!!” as it shot out of hands like a bar of soap in a bathtub. The he gazed at the thousands leaving early after the Dolphins got a final touchdown, and said, depressed, “Look: The Big Blue Exit.”

Where the media and The Duke are concerned, Just Say No. Make it A Big Blue Exit. (12/10/03)