Eddie McGuire's Ape Escape

Standards tend to come in pairs in the media, and with sound reason. If you're a hungover news producer employed to libel-proof the bleeding obvious, you don't have time to fuck around trying to angle-grind obscure details into some one-size-fits-all ethical framework. The mainstream, by definition, is not a place for the round peg or the black sheep, unless one or the other performs the right kind of pirouette upon arrival.

Bitterness and bile aside, this is why a 13-year-old girl who calls a black football player an 'ape' is reported as having hurled a racial slur, whereas if you're the president of a football club and your name happens to be, say, Eddie McGuire, suggesting same is merely a 'gaffe'.

But I could be wrong. Yes… perhaps I'm just another whiskey-sick public servant rancid with cynicism, chain-smoking my way toward a Modafinil rage. After all, when Round One of the Adam Goodes story broke last weekend I endured many hours of newsroom discussion about whether calling a black man an 'ape' is even racist at all, and it was hard to tell if this was classic dry journo humour or classic bourgeois ignorance. Ill-feeling and isolation in the workplace aside, I sadly suspect the latter, or worse, a combination of the two.

There's been more than enough of this monkey business lately. Aside from the ongoing degradation of the noble Mr Goodes, two other examples of this entrenched disrespect spring to mind: there was David Morrow, the veteran Rugby League commentator making disparaging remarks about how dark they make 'em in Darwin, and, more recently, one Sergio Garcia, who promised Tiger Woods all the fried chicken the champ could eat at a press conference in Sawgrass.

Beyond the obvious, there are a few revealing commonalities between McGuire, Morrow and Garcia's remarks that differentiates them from the teenager who sent Goodes back to his childhood. For one thing, she pleads ignorance, ironically enough. Another is that she screamed her epithet in the heat of passion. The girl, who McGuire implied might be 'slow' during his apology on behalf of Collingwood, might be eligible to use one of the excuses for racism McGuire listed in his own shit-eating address on Wednesday. “Some people are racist,” Eddie said. “Some are abusive, some are angry, and some people make mistakes.”

On that, let's pause to note that being 13, retarded or both doesn't wholly remove individual culpability, and I certainly hope no one would presume to imply that the ignorance of a retard is some kind of proof of inherent prejudice, that racial discrimination is some kind of struggle or secret shame that all peoples bare.

No… that's a notion too vile to entertain, for now at least. Age and clinical mental state aside, the thing that separates the men from the girl, as it were, is how appallingly offensive these blithe white motherfuckers' attempts to restore their public images really are. It would take a new strain of cloistered asshole to believe that halfwit guttersnipe 13-year-old bitch when she claimed she didn't understand the connotation of calling a black man an ape. She may as well have 'apologised' by saying 'at least I didn't call him a Black Cunt', but at least she had the common sense to lie about it.

Unlike messrs Garcia, Morrow and McGuire. Their attempts to exonerate themselves rapidly degenerated into deeply insulting farce that very few reporters called them out on. When asked what prompted him to make the fried chicken remark, Garcia said he was 'caught off guard.'

Morrow, who is not famous for his racial tolerance, according to newsroom conjecture, began to fuck his own goat by tearily assuring the public that he didn't know his mic was live, before relating a grossly racist anecdote that he claims abstractedly triggered his comments.

As for Eddie, well, he simply wasn't feeling too fast that day. “I was tired,” he said, “but that's no excuse for a professional.” Eddie then went on to use that exact excuse about 15 more times during his 25 minute address, taking pains to make it clear that few have worked as tirelessly as he to promote racial equality and showcase The Apes of the AFL. When pressed as to why he suggested that the all-too-recently maligned Goodes should help promote King Kong The Musical, he explained that he was 'thinking of the old days.'

“I made a blue,” Eddie said. “It was a slip of the tongue.”

If that's a slip of the tongue, one can only conclude that Eddie must be hell on wheels when it comes to cunnilingus… but even he might not be slick enough to slide through the shitrain he's precipitated with this little 'gaffe'.

Someone who grinds a more righteous axe is Sacha Mirzabegian, the famous freelance sports reporter. He interprets Eddie's use of the phrase 'slip of the tongue' as a possible indication that discourse of that kind is normal for him in more relaxed settings. “If he was with his normal company,” he told me, “maybe that type of lingo is OK. We [the media] are not going as hard at this as we should. We cut her [the 13-year-old] slack – Eddie doesn't deserve it. The media chooses how hard to go depending on who says what. They're protecting themselves from future gaffes.”

Mirzabegian blew his cool on TV last week after AFL chief Andrew Demetriou's press address on The Great Ape Call. The rogue sporto accused Demetriou of being in 'PR overdrive', of obfuscating the issue and being soft on that feral little bogan twat. “There are kids in Africa, child soldiers, 10, 11 years old! She's 13!” He raved, and, having thoroughly terrified the two anchors, ended by saying, “scars, they don't go away.”

Indeed – it doesn't look like Adam Goodes's scars have gone away. He's the only man involved in this repugnant societal abcess to act wth dignity, measure and class. His payment, of course, was to be promptly assigned the station of Black Victim, this week's news-fuel, not a man, but a corridor-chat catalyst for content-makers taking a break from writing leads to debate whether or not the word 'ape' constitutes a racial appellation.

More racism:

Sergio Garcia Can't Wait to Serve Tiger Woods Fried Chicken

Rev. James Logsdon Doesn't Know Art, but He Knows He Likes Racist Art