Ah, bless it's poor sensitive little soul

Dogs, blogs, and sensitive souls

There’s a weekly column from Tim Stillman on Arseblog. It’s always a good read. If you get a bit selective, there’s no need to read the ramblings of lunatics strangling the language on-line. Present company excepted, of course. You don’t get the condensed writer’s biography online, but it’s a reasonable guess that Tim’s a lot younger than I am, but can still refer to less hyper-sensitive times.

He writes about the ‘Mr Angry’ full page regular in the Arsenal programme back in the late nineties. Not so long ago, really. He puts it really well. Too rich for the delicate flowers around today. Current content is toned-down. Someone’s toned-down is my blandified, sucked-dry, no point writing it, no point reading it, no point whatsoever waste of decent paper and printing materials.

BLISS has been a member of a dog-folk forum for ten years, and they’re all just so nice. You can’t imagine any of them coping with the Arsenal place I’ve been with about the same length of time. They have a chap who’s getting all stroppy, yet admits to needing an afternoon nap and a liking for the sort of television that blokes really shouldn’t be watching. The Arsenal forum has some rules, but as you’d expect for a site with a sub-forum called The C**t List, they’re fairly relaxed (for example, you can’t propose any current Arsenal player or member of staff, or each other for C-listing. Everyone else is fair game.

This, I suppose, is my gripe with the kow-towing to the super-sensitive:

There’s nothing wrong with nice. Just not all the time. I don’t want my footballers nice, not on the pitch. I don’t want a team of Joey Bartons, stubbing cigars out in team-mate’s eyes on a night out. I do want them to have a bit about them when they walk out wearing the shirt. A bit of spite, definitely a ruthless streak. I want to watch ruby players who’ll start punching up at the drop of a hat, fast bowlers with a good bouncer in their armoury.

Perversely, it’s the most delicate flowers that can’t or won’t understand the nuances, who can’t seem to get a grip on the fact that the occasional drop of nasty is very much needed. No, a huge rugby player who will not take a backward step for eighty minutes on a Saturday afternoon will not shoulder his way past grannies in the aisles of Tesco the next morning.

Years ago, it wasn’t unusual, after someone had made it clear just why they’d taken offence, to think: he, or she, or all too often, I shouldn’t’ve said that. Or at least that saying that, while being what was felt at the time, may have been ill-advised under the circumstances. Now, almost universally after the offencee starts dripping on about this, that and the other, I’m thinking: get over yourself; or grow a pair; or just: “shut up, you perma-offended wimp.

That’s why it’s so important to fight any authority interference with the internet. Turn off the parental controls, the can’t offend anyone at all filters, and enjoy the free-for-all. You won’t like all of what comes your way. That’s how it is. Different strokes and all that. But it should never be bland.