People who are amazing at utterly trivial pursuits, part XIV

UEFA on racism in football: good intentions, bad in practice?

European football's governing body seems to be taking a hard line on racism in the game. A good idea? Of course... you'd think. But I'm not sure UEFA has their priorities sorted.
From Football365:

Players who are found guilty of racist offences will be banned for a minimum of 10 matches under new UEFA proposals. The Football Association is to be urged to follow this lead and bring in a minimum suspension for any player found guilty of racism. UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino confirmed the European body is to double its sanction from next season and that all national associations are to be asked to follow suit. In the two high-profile cases of racist abuse by players in England, John Terry was banned for four matches and Luis Suarez for eight games and Infantino confirmed that UEFA now believed those sanctions were not tough enough. Speaking at the Soccerex conference in Manchester, Infantino told reporters: "We are saying that it should be 10 matches - it has been five matches and we will double it. "We will also submit to the whole of UEFA's member associations asking that all our members employ the same measures as well at national level. "The fight against racism is something that's very serious and we have to make sure that there is correct action and not just words."  The UEFA chief also said there would be partial closure of stadiums for a first incident of racist abuse by fans and a full closure for a second offence. The UEFA sanctions will affect all matches in European competition from the start of next season. Infantino added: "We have to have sanctions and they must have a deterrent effect and what we are proposing is if a player or official is convicted of racism they should receive a 10-match suspension at least. "If supporters at a club are found guilty of racist abuse the first sanction will be a partial closure of the part of the stadium from which the racist abuse took place. "For a second offence there will be the full closure and a minimum fine of 50,000 euros." 

Now, I think the deterrent measures for crowd racism are a fantastic idea. The biggest racism-related issue in European football is crowd behaviour, particularly in Eastern Europe, and finally UEFA seem to want to tackle this. But this has been such an obvious issue for a long time, and precious little has been done about it, I'm sceptical about how well the new regulations will be implemented. It's easy to do nothing about it; the powers-that-be at clubs are experts at not noticing racist crowd behaviour unless it is directed at their own players, and it's a lot to ask referees to keep an eye on it during the game. And what constitutes a severe enough racist incident to incur punishment for the club itself? Perhaps a sole hooligan throwing bananas at black players does not warrant closing the stadium, but what about a section of the crowd making monkey gestures? The officials will have the difficult task of determining at what point racist behaviour goes beyond the realm of individual punishments and warrants collective punishment. Under these circumstances, there may well be an incentive to underplay the extent of it. Then there is also the task of interpreting what exactly constitutes racism, which brings me to the next point.

The proposed heavy ban against players for racism might sound good in theory. But the two examples of racism from the English Premier League recently show how problematic this can be. Both Luis Suarez and John Terry were shown to have used racially-charged language towards black players, but the contexts of each incident have enough ambiguity to make their guilty verdicts quite controversial, and show that a blanket punishment is not really the right path to take.

Chelsea captain Terry was shown to have called QPR's Anton Ferdinand a "f***ing black c**t", during trash-talk between the two during a game. Seems straightforward? Terry's account of the incident went something like this... (these are not the exact words, I'm just summarising)
Terry: [something unclear]
Ferdinand: "What, did you just call me a f***ing black c**t?"
Terry: "Say what? Are you saying I called you a f***ing black c**t? No I didn't say that."

I actively dislike Terry as a player and a man, but I'm not sure he was really guilty here.

Liverpool's Luis Suarez is another player a lot of people hate (due to propensity for underhanded tactics), but again, I'm not sure he is really deserving of the punishment he received. His racist comment was made during a heated exchange with Manchester United's Patrice Evra, a French player of Senegalese descent. Suarez is Uruguayan. So bear in mind that both players are conversing in English, which is not their native language. Suarez allegedly called Evra "negrito", meaning "little black person" in Spanish, but this term is not regarded to be especially offensive in South America. To throw another element into the mix, Suarez himself has a black grandparent himself. While Evra's and Suarez's stories do differ slightly, it seems very possible that Evra construed "negrito" as the rather more offensive "nigger".

Again, enough ambiguity to make Suarez's 8-game ban problematic, in my opinion. Words cannot be defined as racist simply on their own; their context determines how offensive they actually are. Which is why mandatory set punishments are a bad idea.

Ronny Chieng at the Melbourne Comedy Festival gala

Ronny Chieng is garnering some buzz in the Australian comedy scene. He arrived in Melbourne as a law student (he was born in Malaysia and raised in the US and Singapore) and only had his first stab at comedy at 2009. I think his act could still use a little polishing but there's a lot to like. This short bit at the Melbourne International Comedy is a nice taster.



It's about time we had more Malaysian/Singaporean comedians (I'm lumping the two countries together because they are culturally so similar). Anyone who has hung out with people from those countries will know that there is something about the accent and manner which is intrinsically amusing; indeed Ronny reminds me of heaps of people I know.

Why celebs marry young

Slate has an interesting article up, entitled "The Economic Logic of Marrying Young (If You're Miley Cyrus)". While most Americans, as with most everywhere else, choose to get married later and later, pop stars seem to defy that trend.

Once upon a time, men with high school degrees could obtain manufacturing jobs with solid wages and pensions that enabled them to marry and start families in their early 20s. Now, with the chances of nabbing a pension about as good as “winning the World Series,” as the Knot Yet study puts it, young blue-collar Americans can’t pay for a wedding, let alone a house and kids. But pop stars, of course, don’t have that problem. Nor do they, like middle- and upper-class women, need to worry about finishing college and working for several years before contemplating getting pregnant. They won’t be sacrificing a $10,000 annual bump in salary by marrying too soon; instead, they’re probably making more in their late teens and 20s than they’ll ever make again. And getting married might well help their brand. (Having a baby certainly will.) In other words, celebrities marry young not because they’re more mature than the rest of us (clearly) but because they have the means so much of America lacks. The move may be driven by youthful impulse, but it is also, in a strange way, logical. They’re just doing what so many of us would have (ill-advisedly) done as teenagers if we’d had loads of cash and legal independence from our parents: married our first loves.

I think that's partly true. But another reason is at least equally important, which I have observed in my time working with professional footballers, who also tend to marry young. A celebrity, particularly one seen as particularly attractive, gets to pick from the top of the dating tree. Someone in that position gets many more opportunities than the average person to hook up with someone, AND the perceived quality of those they are hooking up is higher. I say perceived quality, because celebrities get to date other celebrities, wealthy businesspeople, and people with model looks, which are societally-approved as high-calibre partner choices, even though those things are hardly guarantees of compatibility or nice personality. So if you are in the public eye and deemed to be attractive, you can have more access at age 22 to hot potential partners than the rest of us would have had by age 35. It's not surprising then if you decide that you have met the love of your life at 22. 

Of course, fast forward a few years, and you are still in the public eye and still married... those attractive potential partners are still around you. So it's no surprise that a lot of celebrity cheating and divorce goes on as well. It's not that celebrities are any worse than the rest of us at having relationships, it's just that they are presented with far more opportunities to screw them up.

On Pope Francis

So we have a new Pope. Pope Francis, also known by the rather cooler name Jorge Mario Bergoglio. And lots of people are unhappy that the new pontiff is not some shining light of progressivism. Pope Frankie is a conservative who staunchly opposes birth control, abortion and gay marriage.

And yeah, that's disappointing. But really, what do we expect? Of course a 76 year old man who has never ever had sex is going to have archaic views on sexuality. And no man is going to rise up to the head of an organisation like the Catholic Church without his peers ensuring he has the "requisite" views on those matters. So if you expect anything different, you probably just need to adjust your expectations. In opposing modern attitudes towards sex and sexuality, he's only doing what he's supposed to do as an upholder of the tenets of the Catholic faith. He's a dinosaur, but
being a dinosaur is a prerequisite for the top job. We should expect no less. Just as the new Pope is reputedly a champion of the poor; that's a great testament to the man's character, but at the same time, it should be a prerequisite of any man who claims to represent the ideals put forward by Jesus Christ.

What we ARE entitled to expect from him though, is to also uphold some other principles that the Catholic Church is meant to uphold, in theory. Primarily, that it's not acceptable to molest children, and it's not acceptable to turn a blind eye to those that do. This has been the most glaring failing of the Church in recent history, because it holds such a high standard on sexual morality for others when it comes to such trifling matters as masturbation and premarital sex, yet sets such a low standard when it comes to dealing its own priests' rather more egregious sins of sexually abusing children.

It's a shame that Frankie boy doesn't have more intelligent views on the nature of human sexuality, but I'm not particularly disappointed, because he's just following the official doctrine. And besides, most Catholics, at least in the developed world, are going to go on jerking off, having premarital sex and using condoms anyway. But I'm pretty sure there is nothing in the Bible that says it's okay to fuck pre-teen boys. So the bare minimum we should expect from the new Pope is that he puts an end to the culture within the Church of sheltering or excusing paedophilia.

I'd suggest he send out this simple questionnaire to priests around the world.


Question 1 of 1: You find out that a fellow priest has had sexual relations with a number of children in his parish. Do you:
A) Inform the appropriate religious AND secular authorities.
B) Recommend that he pray on the matter.
C) Have him moved to another parish.
D) High-five him and compare notes.

Score: If you answer is anything other than (A), then you are not qualified to be a human being let alone a priest.


Next up, I solve climate change and the Palestine situation in three easy steps.

"How Americans Live Today" - the awesome faux North Korean propaganda video

This is the video that had lots of news outlets thinking it was a real North Korean propaganda film about America. It's a hoax, of course. But despite being hilarious and ridiculous, it's believable because the North Korean government has a history of hilarious and ridiculous propaganda. So enjoy.

Pigeons and snow coffee : yummy.

Where are all the Asian men? (@ Peril Magazine)

I have another post up at Peril Magazine. It's about why Asian women significantly outnumber Asian men in some parts of Australia.

It should be noted that most groups of immigrants to Australia, including those from European countries, have a sex ratio that is either approximately equal or slightly weighted towards women by several percentage points. (Women tend to be more willing to move overseas for marriage; the greater expectation men face to be the breadwinner might be an obstacle in moving to a place with uncertain work prospects, as opposed to moving specifically for work.) By contrast, the figures from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are unusually weighted towards males. Those likely represent cultures that are highly patriarchal; not only are there already more males than females in those countries due to higher mortality and gender selection at birth, but it would be more accepted for men to leave home to travel than women. But the figures for Japan, the Philippines and Thailand are startling; there are around twice as many women as there are men immigrating to Australia from those countries.

Check it here.