Rod Liddle - Cunt of the highest order

[Guest Han_shoots_1st!]

Steven Gerrard rides trial by mediaRod Liddle

Is there a devilish, shadowy conspiracy to stop Liverpool winning the Premier League title this season? Or are Liverpool retreating into their unlovable role as perpetual victims once more? I have the horrible feeling that Steven Gerrard’s arrest (and subsequent charging) for some alleged fracas in a Southport nightclub will lead, some way down the line, to black armbands, wreaths strewn around the gates at Anfield and maybe a minute’s silence before the next home game.

 

Liverpool’s fans have been quite magnificent these past few years, rock solid in support of their manager, fervently behind their team even when getting the run around by Havant & Waterlooville and Barnsley - a model of patience, forbearance and loyalty. In other words, proper football supporters as we once understood the term. But they do not always react well to adversity apparently imposed from outside. And this time around, with Steven Gerrard’s arrest, they are being chaperoned back into their whining laager by the national press. It’s not fair, etc, someone wants us to lose the league, etc.

 

One commentator - who also, presumably not coincidentally, was the ghost-writer of Gerrard’s award-winning autobiography - laid it on with a particularly broad trowel. “No-one walks alone at Anfield” the article began, before detailing how poor Stevie would find everyone rallying around, with “Sammy Lee delivering a few words of encouragement” and the backroom staff bowing and scraping and Rafa putting his arm around the shoulder. And then stepping out proudly at Deepdale in the FA Cup tie against Preston North End because Stevie G “possesses the mental strength to sprint out of the tunnel and impose his phenomenal game on proceedings, perhaps by bashing the opposing centre-half on the cranium inside the first minute”.

 

Well, okay, he did not write that last bit, that was me. And it may be unfair on Gerrard because, of course, the whole affair has not yet come to court and “Stevie” might be an entirely innocent party, which is precisely the subtext of how he has been judged so far by his employers and by much of the national press.

 

Compare and contrast, if you will, with the way football supporters are prejudged in much less grave matters (see right) or indeed with the calumny heaped (rightfully, I reckon) on the shoulders of that lovable but mischievous little imp, Joey Barton.

 

This is Steven Gerrard MBE we are talking about, of course, Steven Gerrard of England - and to read some of the encomiums in the press you might think that he had just embarked on a course of chemotherapy or recently returned from a tour of duty in Basra or suffered a sudden triple bereavement, rather than been arrested for allegedly occasioning actual bodily harm in a nightclub at two o’clock in the morning. Innocent until proven guilty, for sure, but such a presumption does not necessarily have to imply a requirement for beatification.

 

And we haven’t even begun to deal with that exacerbating circumstance, Mr Gerrard’s deep love and veneration of the music of Phil Collins and the suspicion, unspoken so far, that he may have requested the unfortunate DJ to have played In The Air Tonight or some other noisome sliver of Mr Collins’s vapid 1980s bombast.

 

Hell, sure, it is a tough time for Steven Gerrard right now, but it is probably a rather tougher time for the alleged victim, what with those four stitches in his forehead and the fact that, according to several reports, he is a Manchester City supporter.

 

Should Gerrard play at all, with this charge hanging over him for the next three weeks (and perhaps longer)? I am not entirely won over by his manager’s insistence that playing for Liverpool will have a magical rehabilitative effect on Gerrard. “The best thing for him and for us is to just focus on the football,” the manager remarked. Benitez has also said that he knows Gerrard as a “nice lad”, to which we might respond well, fair enough, who could possibly gainsay such a judgment?; but the whole business smacks just a little of what we might call self-interest.

 

I wonder if Benitez would have been quite so indulgent had, say, Robbie Keane been banged up for 20 hours after having been accused of clobbering someone while on the razz at two o’clock in the morning at a nightclub. I have my doubts. Gerrard is crucial to Liverpool’s title hopes; they can do without Torres just about, but not Gerrard.

 

Still, as I say, Gerrard is innocent until proven guilty and, beyond that, in theory I have nothing against players celebrating in a nightclub until the early hours after a football match. The notion that they should not be allowed to do so is yet another imposition that separates the players from the fans and establishes them as a sort of weird super-breed, devoid of morality, fragile of constitution and too stupid to be allowed out on their own.

 

It is certainly true, too, that the way we view our footballers - and celebrities in general - has changed considerably in the past 15 or so years. They are no longer revered by the public quite as they were but are more often the repositories of (more often than not, drunken) disdain, hostility and even violence.

 

This is partly because they have traded in their honest pro credentials for celebritydom, effected through the outrageous wages they are paid each week, which, you have to say, exceed the value they bring to their clubs. The money they earn and the lifestyles they enjoy seem to offer carte blanche to any normal person to subject them to derision and vituperation, which may be unfair, but it is comprehensible. It sort of goes with the territory these days, and nightclubs are, for the likes of Steven Gerrard, accidents waiting to happen.

 

 

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Scum.

[The Dude Abides]

Can't be arse reading all that, so give me the gist of it if you'd be so kind.

[Dan Vito Corleone]

More importantly, can you provide the link for the story please? Thank you.

[Bubsa]

Here be the link.

 

Steven Gerrard rides trial by media - Times Online

 

P.S. - what a plank

[Jose Jones]

A little cheeky, and a lot wrong, and certainly written to get a reaction - as are most opinion pieces. Seems to have worked.

[The Dude Abides]

Probably tells ya all you need to know, to those of us that have never heard of him anyway.

 

Rod Liddle

 

Rod Liddle is the most controversial commentator on sport in the British media. Previously the editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and now a columnist with The Spectator, he brings an often outrageous and always provocative fan's view to The Sunday Times every week

 

He's obviously not trying very hard. :whatever:

 

I read the first paragraph, and really, why go any further than that?

[Guest simon]

Reminds me i must go shopping tomorrow cheers.

[Dan Vito Corleone]

Can't say as I've ever heard of him.

[billdon]

wouldn't worry what that kn*bhead writes, he is just trying to be controversial and goad people into a response, better to ignore the dipstick

[Bubsa]

It's almost like he's writing to be controversial, though. Seriously, what's the point?

If there was a point, I'd nominate half of these forums up. They'd have a field day!

[SpeedyG]

I hadn't heard of him. Clicked on some of his articles and came across a moan about the police being banned from the BNP. Not fair apparently!

[Franny DelMucho]

yet another journalist who is prepared to let his own self righteous opinions and feelings of bitterness and resentment (is that a word?) get in the way of him/her actually producing something worth reading. the majority in the national press are wind up merchants. he's having a go there saying footballers are overpaid but i am certain if someone offered him 100 grand a week he wouldn't turn it down the fucking gobshite.

[RoboRiise]

I get the Sunday Times every week and have almost posted on here about Liddle's column on several occasions. Each time, I've decided that it just isn't worth the effort.

 

For the benefit of anyone not familiar with him, he's a Millwall fan. Need I continue?

[GJM]

I get the Sunday Times every week and have almost posted on here about Liddle's column on several occasions. Each time, I've decided that it just isn't worth the effort.

 

For the benefit of anyone not familiar with him, he's a Millwall fan. Need I continue?

 

I no longer live in the UK but was also once a regular Sunday Times reader. At the risk of attracting a lot of flak, I have to admit that Rod Liddle's column was one of the first things I'd read of a Sunday morning.

 

He does seem to have an almost pathological urge to offend people, but, most often times, his targets are (I think) well chosen, and he has a talent for pricking the cozy liberal consensus with insightful humour.

 

He also, on ocassions, allows his rather juvenile caricaturing of people/social groups, to get the better of him, largely I think, because he gets some childish pleasure out of offending for the very sake of it. The first few lines of that article being a case in point, although I don't have a problem with what follows.

[lfc4eva99]

Makes me happy though, if cunts like these can get jobs as Journos, I ought to get in when I apply for my post grad...

[DT]

Don't you see that the reaction proves his point that scousers/Liverpool fans don't take too well to criticism perceived to be coming from the outside?

 

Doesn't matter what the subject is.

 

Fucking hell, some on here practically endorsed glassing the dj because he was a Manchester United fan. And then we wonder why no one seems to like us.

[Andy M]

This tells you all you need to know:

 

Liddle married his long-term girlfriend and HTV reporter, Rachel Royce, in March 2004 in Malaysia. They had been living in Heytesbury, Wiltshire, and had two sons together, Tyler and Wilder.[9] Six months later, Liddle moved in with Alicia Monckton, a twenty-two year old receptionist at The Spectator magazine whom he had been seeing for some years; his wife divorced him, and had ten bags of manure delivered to his office at The Spectator.[9]

It transpired that he had cut his honeymoon short so that he could go to comfort Monckton, whose mother had died.[10]

On 5 May 2005 Liddle was arrested for common assault against his then pregnant girlfriend Alicia Monckton. He was held under domestic violence guidelines which allow police to question suspects without cooperation from victims.[11] He later was given and accepted a police caution for the offence. Liddle was reported as having claimed to have accepted the caution as it was the quickest way for him to be released, stating that he "never touched Ms Monckton".[12]

 

LINK

[KevieG]

Goto 7:50. Dunphy loses the plot over Liddle. Classic TV

 

[kopitegaz]

Don't you see that the reaction proves his point that scousers/Liverpool fans don't take too well to criticism perceived to be coming from the outside?

 

Doesn't matter what the subject is.

 

Fucking hell, some on here practically endorsed glassing the dj because he was a Manchester United fan. And then we wonder why no one seems to like us.

 

Thats the thing though. It was some people on here. Not everyone, and not even the majority. I'm never interested in what the press write (as such), because if you let it, it will wind you up (thats you as in everyone, not you personally Pete). Liddle has not constructively criticised (certainly not at the start of the piece). He is deliberately on a wind up and though I can usually brush such things aside and see them for what they are, there are some who get caught up in the moment and are immediately wound up by things like it.

[stringvest]

I like Rod Liddle. His column is always provocative, which is the point, and he's always having a pop at one football club or another, even his own. He's an interesting guy with lots of opinions. You're not going to like all of them. He drives me half mad sometimes with the opinion pieces, but this one was fairly mild and was tempered by the fact that he said we were the few 'real' fans left. People have got to learn to chill out a bit and stop playing the victim so easily - you're reinforcing the point he was (half-seriously) making; it's all a bit depressingly predictable.

[Xherdan]

http://www.liverpoolway.co.uk/forum/ff-football-forum/72857-where-start.html

[Red '84]

i have to say i enjoy his pieces, he does look to rub everyone up the wrong way but he's at least diplomatic about it.

i think the point is a fair enough one, ie: the clubs looking after its own interests, but id hardly call it shocking.

[sparta7]

i have to say i enjoy his pieces' date=' he does look to rub everyone up the wrong way [b']but he's at least diplomatic about it.[/b]

i think the point is a fair enough one, ie: the clubs looking after its own interests, but id hardly call it shocking.

 

You what?

 

You are quite mad.

 

And to whoever said it above, some may call Liddles journalism provocative, some may call it being a Cunt. And it doesnt make people whingers when they point out that he is, indeed, being a cunt. It isnt just this article, he has a long history of having a pop at us, and it got wearing to the point where I just stopped buying the ST as I wasnt prepared to give money to an organisation that would endorse his week in - week out cuntishness.

[Barrington Womble]

You what?

 

You are quite mad.

 

And to whoever said it above, some may call Liddles journalism provocative, some may call it being a Cunt. And it doesnt make people whingers when they point out that he is, indeed, being a cunt. It isnt just this article, he has a long history of having a pop at us, and it got wearing to the point where I just stopped buying the ST as I wasnt prepared to give money to an organisation that would endorse his week in - week out cuntishness.

 

to be fair, news international as an organisation have never been shy about endorsing cuntishness from their jounalists and editorial teams, i'd have thought that would come with the territory.

[Red '84]

You what?

 

You are quite mad.

 

And to whoever said it above, some may call Liddles journalism provocative, some may call it being a Cunt. And it doesnt make people whingers when they point out that he is, indeed, being a cunt. It isnt just this article, he has a long history of having a pop at us, and it got wearing to the point where I just stopped buying the ST as I wasnt prepared to give money to an organisation that would endorse his week in - week out cuntishness.

 

 

diplomatic in as much as he has a go at everyone on an equal basis.

he's actually quite complimentary about reds fans in that piece.

the main focus of his ire is usually the modern match going experience or lack of.