THE SHOCKING news that the deranged Barcelona striker Luis Suárez has been undergoing therapy to cure him of biting opponents has left me numb. If thuggish nutjobs cannot savagely attack their foes, the beautiful game will soon be reduced to a contest of irked sissies. They will model for men’s fragrances.
And what of rugby – our great contribution to world hatred? In search of a TV movie with filth, sex, nudity, profanity and violence, I accidentally tuned into a channel carrying the Female World Rugby Cup.
There, astonishingly, were nimble women swerving past each other with all the dexterity of pushing trolleys in a supermarket. A truly girly display, showing why females should be withheld from suppressing riots. Keep them out of Parliament!
Suárez’s “rehabilitation” is conformal with the modern Western hand-wringing over murderers and decapitators. Were they abused as children – maybe by some evil uncle who fiddled inappropriately with their toes? Perhaps they felt “marginalised” because of their habit of crucifying cats? How did we miss their yearning for therapy?
Shrinks are indefatigable in purporting to know the billion-odd synapses and axons that make up the human mind. Put them on the state payroll to focus their swollen brains on the causes of… crime? I know I’m being very un-PC to use that word; but “behavioural disorder” is too long.
We would then have patient-quack conversations such as this:
Quack: “Dear little Johnny. Why did you pluck out your sister’s eyes and set that homeless man on fire?”
Johnny: “When I was young I suffered the grinding oppression of apartheid even though I was white, or actually, pink. And I was bullied at school because I went bald at 11.”
Quack: “Guard! Set this victim free!”
I’m certain that Suárez will volunteer to teach him the skills of rending on the sly once he arrives to coach Bafana Bafana.
Clearly the media are reporting viciousness arse-about-face. But then headlines like ABUSED TODDLER STRANGLES GOGO are iffy. The ANC is right – reporters must be educated to comprehend massacres and serial polyandry in context. As Janet Malcolm of the New Yorker puts it: “Journalists love one another the way members of a family – albeit a crime family – do.” And centuries ago Alexis de Tocqueville noted that “the hallmark of the American journalist is a direct and coarse attack, without any subtleties, on the passions of his readers; he disregards principles to seize on people.”
This might be why few viewers or readers can understand current events, such as why two esteemed hacks (Mzilikazi wa Afrika and princess Ranjeni Munusamy) are ripping each other’s eyebrows out over a tale that appears to involve Bulelani Ngcuka and Jacob Zuma, and who leaked Godzuma’s smears. A few sessions of joint grief counselling should soothe their passions.
Again, I cannot understand why the entire cast of a soapie called Generations should be summarily sacked for demanding a salary hike to R30 000 a week from R16 000. You wouldn’t get Tom Cruise or Scarlett Johansson to work for such peanuts. I just hope the enforcers are not called in with modern armoury (rocket-propelled grenades and ballistic missiles) to quell the discontent. Leave them in Parliament.
If the tap-tapping feeders of the printed or oral beast applied their remaining neurons to such issues, all would be light.
And we have to remember how much better off we are than under the tonnage of the big fat racists who now live in BEE McMansions or in trailer camps on the banks of the Orange.
In short, don’t shoot. Have your head read first – then shoot.