Dark Forces

You know, I don't even subscribe to Sky Sports, but I've still always hated Richard Keys and Andy Gray with a vengeance. So, witnessing their downfall this week has been very satisfying. Best of all is watching them floundering around, trying to justify their sexism, clearly not grasping that they are the ones out of step, not the rest of the world. Keys, in particular, seems shocked to learn that the rest of the male population don't share his views on women. But of course, it's all a conspiracy, probably involving politically correct feminist lesbian communists. It's another step toward that horrible tyranny where our very thought processes are censored. At least, that's what intellectual power house Jeremy Clarkson thinks. When asked his opinion on the Sky Sports sexism scandal, the Top Gear guru opined that we were in danger of creating a situation where people would no longer even be able to think thoughts that differed from 'the norm'. Perceptive as ever, Jeremy. Surely the point was that Keys and Gray didn't just think sexist thoughts - they spoke them out loud. That was the problem. If they'd just kept their loathsome opinions to themselves, nobody would have cared.

Mind you, sections of the tabloid press kept up the sexism in their reporting of the case - printing pictures of the female football official at the centre of the duo's comments in various states of undress. Quite why it is considered relevant that she might wear a swimsuit whilst on holiday is beyond me. Would these same newspapers think it equally relevant to their reporting of the case to print candid shots of Andy Gray at the beach clad only in a thong? (Actually, if such pictures do exist, please don't print them. Ever.) But hell, it was serious enough for Rupert Murdoch himself to break off his secret meeting with Davros to come scuttling to London to sort it out. Sorry, what's that? He was in an economic meeting at Davos, not meeting Davros. Really? I actually think it far more likely that he was trying to cut a deal with Davros, evil creator of the Daleks, to secure a monopoly for Sky News in the reporting of the next Dalek invasion of Earth. Oh, and he wasn't here primarily to sort out Keys and Gray, you say? He was actually in London to try and force through News International's acquisition of the bits of Sky it doesn't already own. Presumably by blackmailing David Cameron with the threat that he'd release that porn movie Cameron unwisely starred in when he was at Oxford. Not that such a film actually exists, of course...