media campaign of omarta
Ok lets talk briefly about the editing of reality, more specifically George Best and his media given sainthood. Don’t get me wrong- he was a virtuoso footballing genius by anyone’s standards and he gave a great lot of people a great lot of pleasure to watch on the pitch because of that, but when does this give you the right to be a complete shit off the pitch and then your family the right to tell us how we should remember him? “he would want to be remembered for his football career” we were told by a statement from his family, if you just want to be remembered for good things then surely your life should be largely made up of doing good things, then you wouldn’t have to rely a blanket media campaign of omarta regarding the last three quarters of your time on the planet. Really has anyone seen anything even slightly critical of the man in the last month or so? Not one mention of spousal abuse, infidelity, drunk driving or the selfish destroying of an organ transplant. Why the media should be working so hard to paint this man as the Worlds Best Footballer when it would be a lot easier to remember him as the Worlds Worst Husband.
There has much been made about his “natural” ability at football and the fact he rarly trained for matches is oft spouted. It seems to me that he worked harder at being the millionaire playboy than at football, are we sure that he wouldn’t want us to remember that? Even a little bit? He spent a lot of time building that reputation at the detriment of his health and it seems a shame that all that hard work is being whittled out of his life story.
If we owe anything to the memory of our dead shouldn’t it be the truth?
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The news has just announced the death of another one of my heroes- Richard Pryor, about two hours after writing the above. If there is any justice there will be a lot written and said about his life over the next few days by far more eloquent people than me, all of it true but none of it will be as funny as the man talking about his own life.
There has much been made about his “natural” ability at football and the fact he rarly trained for matches is oft spouted. It seems to me that he worked harder at being the millionaire playboy than at football, are we sure that he wouldn’t want us to remember that? Even a little bit? He spent a lot of time building that reputation at the detriment of his health and it seems a shame that all that hard work is being whittled out of his life story.
If we owe anything to the memory of our dead shouldn’t it be the truth?
************************************
The news has just announced the death of another one of my heroes- Richard Pryor, about two hours after writing the above. If there is any justice there will be a lot written and said about his life over the next few days by far more eloquent people than me, all of it true but none of it will be as funny as the man talking about his own life.
posted by Puck at 1:34 PM
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