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Sunderland manager David Moyes. Photo: Reuters
Opinion
Home and Away
by Peter Simpson
Home and Away
by Peter Simpson

Football must slap down the PC brigade and their synthetic outcries of moral outrage

Sunderland boss David Moyes is the latest victim swept up in this trendy, looney-left Twitterati crusade after comments made to a female reporter

We’ve been doing the time warp in football la-la land, travelling back to 1960s China. Scores of hysterical, righteous young warriors carrying the big banner slogans of the snowflake generation of the 2000s and 2010s – along with older fanatics (who should know better but who want the young’s vote) – have been dispatching mob justice with all the zeal of Red Guards on social media, running roughshod over commonsense, decency, logic and natural justice.

The latest victim swept up in this trendy, looney-left Twitterati crusade is Sunderland boss David Moyes after he was recorded issuing a warning to a female BBC reporter that she might “get a slap” if she dares ever again to question his ability.

Believing the cameras and microphones were off, he made his remarks in a half-jokey way, though the other 50 per cent of his phrasing had a distinct Glaswegian workingman’s club menace to it, the kind of reaction you’d expect over a spilt pint of heavy.

The reporter had made a straightforward journalistic inquiry about Moyes’ future – a question deservedly thrown at those managers whose team are at the foot of the Premier League table and have not won once since December.

Watch: David Moyes’ comment

The incident happened some weeks ago and was kept out of the media because the reporter had the grace to accept the apologies made by Moyes shortly after he made his off-the-cuff remarks.

But some low-life mercenary leaked it to one of the UK’s newspapers, a tabloid publication that has been spreading fake news long before Russian Fancy Bears and other feckless nerds and cyber goons got online and social media decided to give up on facts.

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Moyes was forced to reiterate his contrition in front of the cameras this week as all around the loonies called for his head and immediate sacking.

Here was a man long admired for his trademark even-handedness and approachability, and now clearly distressed by his unusual crass outburst, a gross mistake, yes, but just a mistake.

Sunderland manager David Moyes. Photo: AFP

Moyes can certainly be defensive, and he’d never make it as a stand-up comedian because every time he tries to make light humour of things, he bombs.

He is, though, anything but a threatening, misogynistic woman-beater who deserves to be thrown out the game as those hiding behind their social media accounts would have it, including politicians and so called “social commentators”.

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He will, rightly, receive sanction from the English Football Association, including attending a special course to remind him of the 21st century’s sensibilities and the wafer-thin sensitivities of the bubble-living metropolitan liberal elite, as well the delicate, cottonwool-wrapped fringe student lobby, who bizarrely draw so much water by taking offence at everything and anything that does not fit in with their warped view of the world.

Moyes’ one stupid mistake and the reaction to it says much about our political-correctness-gone-mad climate.

As it is, the only person walking with their head held high from this sorry saga is the female reporter, who accepted Moyes’ first and then most recent apology unconditionally, presumably recognising that it didn’t reflect the character of the person expressing them.

To illustrate the insanity upon us, there is a renowned journalism course at a top London university whose students recently voted to ban some national newspapers because the views within the pages did not reflect those of the students. Really. It’s true.

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Recently, one middle-aged colleague who works within the activism sector was recently rebuked for calling a junior member of his team “me lad” because it was deemed patronising.

And at their citadel of free thinking and expression, Oxford University, a fringe group of students campaigned to have the statue of a 19th-century merchant taken down because his achievements exploiting the great scramble for Africa 150 years ago did not represent 21st century thinking.

That the man did not live in the 21st century was lost on the fanatics and the older dons who caved in, fearing a PR train wreck, which it was anyway.

One female MP said, via Twitter, that tolerating words such as those used by Moyes would “normalise violence towards women”. No, one man’s clumsy joke will not do this.

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The only thing these misguided fools are normalising is a society in which we can no longer speak to each other for fear of the thought police kicking down the door.

The only slap worth discussing is the collective palm-whacks of dismay on to foreheads by those of who still believe commonsense remains an admirable virtue and a far better social code by which to live.

We must resist the march of the idiots and their synthetic cries of moral outrage – not just in football, but everywhere.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Football must slap down the PC brigade and their synthetic outcrY
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