The real villain is Channel Ten
Greg Baum | June 3, 2009
IF BEN Cousins is to hang, at least let it be for a hanging offence. Cousins' gesture in flipping the bird, so-called, to an unmanned television camera in the Subiaco changerooms on Saturday night has gone to all the usual courts: the AFL, his club's leadership group, the media and public opinion.
One by one, the verdicts are coming in. The public's is indifference. The media's lacks its usual trenchancy. The leadership group's was a fine, you suspect for thoughtlessness as much as vulgarity, half-suspended anyway. The AFL's was a suspended fine.
Why? Because Cousins' action was shocking? No; if "flipping the bird" ever shocked, it does no longer. It is shocking only as a glimpse of frilly knickers was once called shocking, tut-tut shocking.
Because it was obscene? Hardly; the colloquialism "flipping the bird", in its very benign-ness, contradicts it. Because it was offensive? Only to whomever it was intended, and no one, not even Cousins, can say for sure who that was. Almost certainly, it was meant for no one in particular, but was a reaction, mindless and reflexive, to the camera itself. Yet, selectively, some have chosen to take offence anyway.
Why? Because Cousins is a role model? Yes he is, for better or worse, and he has been both.
It is fair enough that role models are held to higher standards, not fair if those standards are impossible, not to every-waking-minute consciousness of all sensitivities and every innocent.
Because, from the AFL's point of view, it does not want to be seen to be licensing even a hint of the laxity that allowed Cousins to embarrass it and the game previously? Almost certainly.
Because Cousins has become an easy target? Incontestably. And it means some of his assailants have as much of a schoolyard mentality as his.
Actually, it is not Cousins' gesture that ought to be at issue here, but the airing of it. If it was immediately before a game, or immediately afterwards, Cousins could reasonably expect the camera to be operating, perhaps live. But this was nearly two hours before the game. It was not live, and would not have come to light at all except that someone at Channel Ten spotted it, and someone else thought to telecast it, after the game and out of context, gratuitously.
This, far more calculated and devious than Cousins' own action, was the real mischief. You only had to see the demeanour of the on-air presenters to know it; they were embarrassed.
So should Channel Ten be. A lifetime spent in press boxes tells me that Channel Ten would not have to search too far through its own archives to find examples of its own people in unguarded moments in front of non-live cameras, picking their noses, scratching their backsides or preening themselves narcissistically in the reflection from the lens. Other than at Christmas parties, they are excused their distractedness and vanities. But they did not spare Cousins.
Underlying, there is another issue. A footballer's world is privileged, but also exposed, on the field and off. The one sanctuary, apart from home, is the changeroom. Almost certainly, a scan of the unedited footage from Saturday night would show some players wearing nothing more than ankle bandages and an air of insouciance, but these were not telecast, of course.
Television cameras provide a fascinating insight into the mien and mood in this sanctuary, but it is only fair that they are used discreetly. On Saturday night, Cousins was indiscreet, but Channel Ten was brazen.
It says something of the balance of power in modern football that the AFL took the player to task, not the broadcaster.
