Girl, 13, was rude, but she's not the bully

[nero_bolt]

Way over the top and what the media, the football clubs, social media and the big tough hard man of AFL hero Adam Goodes have done to this 13 year old is appalling.... 

Adam Goodes vs a 13-year-old girl. Seriously?

I DETEST racists. But the monstering of the Collingwood fan who shouted at Sydney footballer Adam Goodes is shameful.

She is just a 13-year-old who was at the football with her nan. She wasn't happy.

Collingwood was being thrashed and when the bearded Goodes took another possession in front of her, she shouted "ape".

This is very rude. I wonder at her parents. It's also possibly racist, though she insisted she didn't mean it that way. Whatever, she needed a talking-to.

Goodes heard the abuse, and pointed her out to security. A bit over the top, since she's so young, but Goodes has Aboriginal ancestry and no doubt understandably feels such insults more keenly than I think reasonable.

Still, he's widely admired, has been showered with almost every prize in footy, and was playing in the Indigenous Round honouring players of his background. What should one girl's abuse matter against all that?

Well, to Goodes it was so "shattering" the game itself "means nothing". No one in the TV commentary team, the police or the AFL seems to have dared treat it as any less catastrophic, no doubt for fear of seeming racist themselves.

I suspect the Indigenous Round also encouraged them to see the girl as a white racist caricature instead of just one very young teenager. So security marched her off, without even her Nan for support, as national TV beamed her face around the country.

Police then grilled her for nearly two hours - two hours! - even though she was immediately repentant.

Bravely, she offered to apologise personally to Goodes.

Now get this: police then asked Goodes if he wanted to press charges. Press charges? Against a 13-year-old who was clearly sorry and scared for what she'd unthinkingly blurted out?

Are people insane?

Goodes, at least, drew the line at that. But still it wasn't over. Goodes and AFL chief Andrew Demetriou held a media conference next day at which    Goodes declared: "Racism has a face. It's a 13-year-old girl."

Seriously? Goodes even said he felt like he was being bullied at school.

Excuse me, but in this confrontation - with Goodes, police, the media, the social media and the AFL on one side, and a 13-year-old girl on the other - it wasn't the girl who seemed the bully.

Perhaps Goodes realised, because he added: "She's 13, she's still so innocent. I don't put any blame on her."

No? Then why this public shaming?

Only later did Goodes take a call from the girl, who told him she was sorry. By then, the TV stations were rowing back a bit.

Replays of the incident belatedly blurred the girl's face, though she's since been named, and Channel 10 interviewed her saying how ashamed she was.

To repeat: This girl is only 13. This bullying of her is a scandal.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/girl-13-was-rude-but-shes-not-the-bully/story-e6frg6n6-1226650913020

[nicnacs_4u]

I believe Eddie is from Irish immigrant parents....but I could be wrong?

Hi Nic.

Hi back at you lovely lady:-x

[debra9275]

😮 I just heard what his comment was Nic, just thoughtless after what happened over the weekend

[debra9275]

& he's older than 13

[nero_bolt]

Shame on the witchhunters.  Is Eddie “King Kong” McGuire now Adam Goodes’ “face of racism”?

Adam Goodes after a 13-year-old girl yelled “ape” at him during a game, for which she was publicly named, shown on national television, evicted, questioned by police for two hours, threatened with charges and vilified by sports officials, human rights commissars and media pundits:

Racism had a face...and it was a 13-year-old girl 

Miranda Devine on the family of the child,   who immediately apologised and said “ape” was not meant in a racist way:

THE 13-year-old girl vilified for accidentally making a racist slur against indigenous footballer Adam Goodes is the daughter of a single mother on a disability pension, from one of the most underprivileged and powerless backgrounds possible.

Yet the elites of Australia’s sport and media have not stopped smashing her and her family as racist rednecks…

“She is just a child,” says her mother Joanne, who is on a disability pension, with agoraphobia, anxiety and depression. “It’s been a media circus for a single word she didn’t even understand was racist.

He was a big bloke with a hairy face. That’s all she meant. It was one moment taken way out of proportion.” ...

“She was crying when (the security guards) took her away,” says Joanne…

So far she’s OK. Her sisters defend her from Facebook trolls, and the pastor from her small school of 138 students has visited.

“All the kids at the school have been great,” says [mother] Joanne. “They’ve turned it into a bit of a joke and everyone’s been calling each other ape.”

Samantha is a “very outgoing, full-on kid. She’s one for blurting stuff out but she won’t be blurting things out any more. She’ll be in her shell, I think”.

How merciless are the conspicuously compassionate. Where is the humanity here?

Again the question: was this 13-year-old punished out of all proportion because of the New Racism that gives us such things as an Indigenous Round?

Were the righteous invited to see her not as she was - the 13-year-old daughter of a single mother on a disability pension - but as the archetypal White Racist?

Are commentators likewise treating the 34-year-old Goodes as the archetypal Black Victim rather than a grown man reacting far too strongly to the stupid insult of a mere child?

Sinclair Davidson is damning:

Where I disagree with Miranda is on this:

Goodes is the least culpable, but his statement: “Racism had a face – and it was a 13-year-old girl” was hyperbole that fanned the hysteria, even if he did say it wasn’t her fault.

Later he tried to make amends by calling off the witch-hunt.

Bull. Goodes had two opportunities to call off the witch-hunt.

First when he ran back to point her out. On Saturday morning he claimed he could see that she was about 14.

Yet the security guards who removed her from the stadium, the crowd who swore at her, and Victoria Police somehow couldn’t. Never mind – at that point he could have decided to back off, but he didn’t.

The next morning, he could have said at the press conference that there had been an incident but the person involved had turned out to be a minor and that he didn’t want to make a fuss but rather the AFL etc. would be working with the girl and her family and then leave it at that.

But no. He chose to carry on about his hurt – completely indifferent to the hurt he had imposed on a child – and the face of racism in Australia.

Davidson compares our “face of racism” with 

More here:

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/andrewbolt/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/shame_on_the_withhunters_who_monstered_this_face_of_racism/

[janeababe]

Nero, do you actually have an opinion on all this, or are you just a cut and paste person too ;\

[newstart2380]

Now, I have ironing to do, so i'm going to attempt to do what I have been avoiding.

i will not comment on the name calling however just an observation, if I looked like your ID I could not be upset at being called an ape LOL

[j*oono]

Eddie should have phoned a friend before coming out with that joke.

[cherry*135]

Post 183

The 13 yo was not villified

The 13 yo was not evicted

[*notatroll]

I've heard lots of men referred to as an ape, or more usually as "you great ape!" Biologically correct but a socially offensive comment for some. We all come from Africa if you want to look far enough back and no doubt our far away ancestors were hairy and dark skinned.

Most men I know have gotten well used to that comment about them years ago. Maybe they breed them more sensitive nowadays? Maybe it's all them chemicals in their food.

[*hangten*]

If every single person who gets racial slurs/insults thrown at them constantly made such a stink over it all as this stupidity has been turned into we'd all end up with massive headaches after being grilled by the police for hours at a time. What a waste of law & order tax dollars that was!

I get called a Pommie or Pom something-or-other at least once every month or so but if I let that get to me my life wouldn't be worth living. (Moved here from the UK in '97)

What, you don't consider calling someone else a POM insulting and racist??? Well it damned well is if you're on the receiving end of it all the time X-(

Australia has always been the land of the insult no matter what background you're from and isn't likely to change in any hurry. Redneck attitudes never do!