When fans started booing Sydney Swans player Adam Goodes, the AFL and the media elite lost their minds. Booing is ugly and, to my mind, unwarranted, but many players have been booed over the years. Some, like Mark ?Jacko? Jackson, positively encouraged it. Goodes was a great player, but incurred fans? wrath by perceived unsportsmanlike play that was repeatedly let slide by umpires, and by his reptutation for, well, being a bit of a flog. Even as a Swans supporter, I began to find I had little stomach for him.
But Goodes is Aboriginal. So, the great and good of the Australian cultural elite naturally concluded that the booing was without question ?racism?. It couldn?t possibly be because fans thought he was just a jerk.
Now, another AFL player is being booed. But he is white and Christian, so the elite are mostly silent. Quote:
Hawthorn President Jeff Kennett says Geelong star Gary Ablett was booed yesterday because of his support for Israel Folau, with the former Victorian Premier chastising fans for targeting the player.
Mr Kennett said the booing came from both Geelong and Hawthorn fans at yesterday?s match at the MCG.
?This wasn?t I think just football related, it couldn?t have been football related because it was so extraordinarily consistent and so loud,? he told 3AW. End of quote.
Ablett?s father, Gary Sr, was vocal about his Christian faith. Gary Jr is less so, but still quietly unapologetic about being a Christian. Quote:
Ablett caught the public?s ire after he liked a controversial social media post by Wallabies star Israel Folau that said LGBT people, drunks and adulterers were going to burn in hell.
The two-time Brownlow Medal winner, took to Instagram this weekend to explain why he had liked Folau?s controversial post.
?I have always admired how strong Izzy is in his faith, it is not easy to share faith in the public sphere, and this is why I initially ?liked? his post,? he said.
?I understand that liking this post appeared offensive and this is why I chose to remove my ?like? from the post.? End of quote.
Ablett seems not to have learned that apologising does nothing to mollify the self-righteously ‘woke’. If anything, it only encourages them. Quote:
Mr Kennett said he thought booing was unsportsmanlike and that disputes over religious views had no place on the field.
?I don?t think on a sporting field the views that one holds politically or religiously should flow over onto the sporting field,? he said. End of quote.
theaustralian
For someone so prominent in football circles, Kennett seems strangely oblivious to how the AFL operates these days. Politics and religion are absolutely crucial to the AFL?s view of itself as a right-on moral crusader. As long as they?re the acceptable kind of politics and religion.
Unfortunately for Ablett, as for Folau, Christianity isn?t acceptable to the right-on elite any more.