PC rugby
It's Six Nations rugby time again. Yesterday, England trounced Scotland and France routed Italy. Today, at 3 pm, it's Wales vs. Ireland in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. If Ireland win, it will be hard stop the lads in green this season. The BBC has rolled out an impressive looking Six Nations blog for the championship. Contributors include BBC commentators Nick Mullins, Andrew Cotter, Gareth Lewis and John Beattie, as well as rugby writers Jim Stokes, Bryn Palmer and Rob Hodgetts.
Just noticed that the blog's "House Rules" state: "We reserve the right to fail messages which:
Are considered likely to provoke, attack or offend others
Are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable
Contain swear words or other language likely to offend
But, like it or not, aren't these the very things that rugby supporters revel in? Rugby is not cricket. And neither is it PC. That's why people play and support the game. They love rucking, mauling, barging in the lineout, singing those filthy songs, drinking vast amounts of alcohol and escaping for a few hours the suffocating confines of the legal, accounting and medical professions that supply so many of the game's participants.
When Paul Dacre attacked the BBC's "cultural Marxism", he accused the corporation of being "intolerant and consumed by political correctness" and went on to say that it is "… hostile to conservatism and the traditional right, Britain's past and British values, America, Ulster unionism, Euroscepticism, capitalism and big business, the countryside, Christianity and family values." He could have added the ethos of rugby as well.
Comments
Eamonn, you're an intelligent man, so what in God's name are you doing invoking Paul Dacre's nonsensical pillorying of the BBC as a 'culturally Marxist' organisation? It's codswallop and you know it. I'm not spectacularly left-wing myself yet I still find the Beeb, both TV and Radio a bit too Blairite for my tastes. As for the rugby, come September I'll be cheering Argentina on against Ireland; we don't care much for the oval ball up in Sligo.
Posted by: Oliver Farry | February 5, 2007 11:29 PM
You might be interested, Eamonn, in this piece of judicious editing of the TImesOnline rugby forum, where a joke that is doing the rounds back home appears to have originated:
"...Ireland may well be missing Brian O'Driscoll as well as Shane Horgan and don't have the resources in depth to overcome such losses. However neither will England have the armoured cars and machine guns they had the last time they entered Croke Park!" Frank, Wicklow
It was brought to my attention by Blogorrah, but when I clicked on the link to TimesOnline, the comment had been 'disappeared', as you yourself would say.. There was however a reaction to it by a Nick from Guildford, who clearly didn't realise it was a joke; aren't rugby supporters such colourless, unimaginative folk?
I wonder then will Rainy Day be doing a special on News International own in-house brand of Politically Correct amending?
Posted by: Oliver Farry | February 10, 2007 1:05 PM