Hate's discourse

So Sunday I'm getting ready for the week. I planned to run, so I went to iTunes to download the latest World Soccer Daily to my iPod. I listen to it when I run because there are some lovely pointed opinions on there, and they distract far better from the pain of running than music does.

But when I get there, I see that Friday's edition of WSD was the last one. Why? Because the ever-opinionated host, Steven Cohen, touched the Third Rail of English Football, the Hillsborough Disaster, and the backlash against him apparently escalated from complaints to the show and Sirius, to a boycott--both reasonable, if you're so inclined--to threats against Cohen's family. Let's have that again, just to be clear: actual threats against the man's stepdaughters.

Look, the only way to touch the Third Rail of English Football is to do so in solemn tones about senseless deaths. Cohen didn't do that, and so he should expect, nay, perhaps even deserves however much stick Liverpool fans want to give. You want to boycott his show and encourage advertisers to do so, fine. You want to engage him online and on air about Hillsborough, bring it.

Let's not kid ourselves. Politicians and strategists make careers under the premise of "we can say whatever we want about the other side as long as we win." So when officials from Liverpool supporters' clubs made it a crusade to get Cohen off the air, going so far as to say he shouldn't be allowed to do football commentary any more, it shouldn't be a big surprise what came next. The dog-whistling worked, fellows, because somebody said whatever it took to win--in this case, it was apparently something vilely anti-Semitic (Cohen is Jewish), and directed at CHILDREN.

The real shame here is that bigoted asses, mostly in this country, many of whom are unlikely to have but the most tangential relationship to anything Hillsborough related, are flinging shit from behind a shield of presumed victimhood. How does threatening Steven Cohen's stepdaughters bring justice for the 96 who died? And I love the part where Kopites say that Cohen can't have received anti-Semitic threats because Liverpool's own Yossi Benayoun is from Israel. What? You mean that because Manchester United had Dwight Yorke and Paul Ince that there are no racists in Manchester? Because Middlesbrough had Mido that not one person on Teeside thinks all Arabs are terrorists? Right. Well then, the U.S. must be the most diverse and accepting society in the world, what with Michael Jordan and Barack Obama. Please. Tell me another.

So now I have to find something else to run to. Which is a very, very small thing, really.