AP

MORAL OUTRAGE WITHOUT MORALITY

Sport has become more than a game to many people, and it has increasingly taken on religious dimensions – as have many institutions and organisations in the modern West. Recent entertainment has been provided by the Australian Football League’s ban of four weeks on Izak Rankine from the Adelaide Crows for the offense of uttering a homophobic slur in a match with Collingwood. He could have blasphemed the God of heaven and earth, and the tribunal would not have blinked. Any whiff of homophobia, however, is in a different category. In order to be relevant, the media magnify events into crises, and so expressed outrage that the punishment was so light. Four weeks should have been five or six, or maybe stoning.

Rankine had broken the first commandment – perhaps the only commandment – in the World of Woke: ‘Thou shalt not offend the cultural elites.’ Since Rankine’s dismissal to the Naughty Corner in order to carry out his penance, he has grovelled and shown what is hoped to be suitable contrition, albeit not enough to be absolved by the AFL priesthood.

The whiff of heresy was soon complicated by a greater whiff of hypocrisy. It turns out that the entertainment lined up for AFL’s Grand Final Day in on 27 September is the rapper Snoop Dogg. By any standards, Mr Dogg has little to offer, either in terms of music or literature, but previous entertainers have included Gene Simmons who had apparently bedded some 5,000 groupies, and Robbie Williams who has sung of heroin and cocaine. Snoop Dogg, however, has a background in coarse homophobic lyrics. That is one thing, but recently he has added to his record when he told of taking his grandson to a Disney/Pixar film entitled ‘Lightyear’ which features two lesbians raising a child.

This may have led to his redemption in the eyes of the establishment, but Mr Dogg blotted his CV by telling of how bewildered his grandson was in trying to understand how two women could have a child. Not knowing quite how to respond, Dogg had an attack of common sense, and now says that he is scared to go to the movies. This is no venial sin. After all, Mr Dogg is set to earn up to five million dollars for appearing at the Grand Final.

Is this hypocrisy – Rankine gets rubbed out for four weeks, and Dogg gets $5,000,000? No, says the AFL CEO, Andrew Dillon, speaking from the chair: ‘We cannot vouch for every lyric in every song, ever written or performed by any artist who has or will appear on our stage’. However, we can be reassured that the Grand Final entertainment will be ‘family friendly’. It is a bit embarrassing that Snoop Dogg has just criticised a Disney movie for promoting the ‘queering’ of children. ‘Family friendly’ has become yet another rubbery term.

In any event, Mr Dogg has received an indulgence in this year of jubilee, while Rankine can be thankful that he escaped perpetual banishment, the penalty handed out to Israel Folau. The main concern for Mr Dillon now is the fear that there will be those in the crowd on Grand Final day who will misbehave and boo. They will have a choice – they can boo at Dogg’s music or the AFL’s lack of integrity. Or both.

– Peter Barnes