I admit that “Triple M airs bullshit” isn’t all that staggering a news story. It’s even less surprising when you find out it involved ex-footballers and football commentators. But nevertheless, it pisses me right off when a bunch of dudes act like arseholes in public in the manner of Eddie McGuire and pals last week.
Now as Danny Frawley did say in his apology, it was an attempt at humour. Of course it was. I mean, duh, clearly they were joking and I think it’s probably pretty unlikely that any of those gentleman have any genuine plans to drown Caroline Wilson.
And yes I often defend jokes that are seen as offensive. I don’t like people taking jokes too seriously, and I especially hate it when people react to jokes as if they aren’t even jokes. I’ve even defended Eddie McGuire in the past, incredibly enough.
But for a start, this isn’t a case, as far as I can see, of people not “getting it”. Nobody that I’ve seen is denying that it was a joke.
What people ARE saying, if I’m reading it properly, is that in this case, that’s not really the point. These guys aren’t comedians, and they weren’t playing characters. They were just being…you know, blokes.
And I’m starting to hate it when blokes are just being blokes. I’m starting to hate it when people of a male persuasion hang out together with other people of a male persuasion and spend all their time being as male as possible. Or at least I’m starting to hate it when they do it on commercial broadcasters. Couldn’t they keep their blokiness private? Spare the rest of us?
Because good god, that little chat these blokes had…it’s just so nasty. They are joking, OK, fine, but you know, and I know, that these dudes didn’t kick this joke off out of a desire to bring mirth to the masses. They wanted to guffaw amongst themselves about a woman they hate, and how they are big men and she is a stupid woman who must, from time to time, be put in her place. It’s pretty obvious even without the benefit of Eddie’s sour-mouthed rant on Wilson’s “black widow” qualities at the end.
There will be, as there always is, debate about whether Eddie and friends were sexist or not. It will be a stupid debate, but it will be had because people like to deny that their in-group is at fault in any situation. The main observations I would make on this subject are:
- We all know they would never have said this about a male journalist. Anyone can argue this point, but they know it’s true. It’s wilful denial of reality to pretend it’s not. You know, right? I mean, duh. It’s not so much that they’d never think of drowning a bloke in a pool, it’s that they see blokes as having the right to criticise other blokes in the sports pages, while Eddie and JB and Danny and Duck and their brethren have still to accept the right of women to do so. They wouldn’t have made this joke about a man. Never would’ve happened, and we all know it.
- If they HAD made this joke about a man…it still would’ve been nasty. It still would’ve been not a comedy routine but a mean, belittling slice of classic bullying behaviour. There is an added edge of nastiness from the fact it’s men ripping into a woman, but if it was, by some miracle, a man that was the target? Still a bunch of dicks.
And here’s the thing. I don’t think there’s any subject you can’t make jokes about. I don’t think shitheads making awful jokes on a terrible radio station is the most important thing in the world. I don’t really care whether they all apologise or not — most likely they’re not sorry anyway, and I always say a man who’s not sorry shouldn’t pretend to be. And I don’t think the men involved hate women or want to kill women or would actually be happy if Caroline Wilson came to harm.
But men don’t have to be dicks. Men don’t have to be mean to women — or to other men, for that matter. Men don’t have to go on the radio and chortle to each other about how much they hate that dumb bitch from the paper and imagine if we drowned her bahahahahaha.
Just like men don’t have to shout obscenities at women in the street, and men don’t have to grope women they don’t know in clubs, and men don’t have to call women bitches and sluts and cunts on Twitter just because those women said something they don’t like. In fact, men don’t have to call women bitches and sluts and cunts on Twitter even when those women have said something really stupid. Abusing strangers isn’t a necessity in any healthy lifestyle.
Men don’t have to do those things to men, either, by the way, and I strongly recommend they don’t. But it makes you a special kind of prick when you think that you don’t need to follow the rules you usually apply to your own behaviour towards other people, when the other people are women.
I mean, it doesn’t make you a monster. It doesn’t make you a murderer or a rapist or a genocidal dictator. There are worse things to be than a prick.
But you don’t have to be a prick. So why not try not being one? Why not try to be, you know, a nice guy?
And if you have been trying to be a nice guy, but you’re still Eddie McGuire or James Brayshaw…why not try harder?
