Lads being lads no crime
Shakespeare was reputedly a bit of a philanderer. He married the older Anne Hathaway at a young age, and then Will, the lad, went out looking for some action. Boys or girls, white or black, they all came the same to bisexual Billy boy. And so I hope you will all join me in my campaign of ‘‘ban the bard’’.
Frankly, I think the lecherous Shakespeare is a disgrace and I would cut out his cankerous books from the body of our schools. I mean his actions demean women. He was the sort of bloke who just couldn’t keep his codpiece in his hose. King Leer, who needs him?
If only the Earl of Gillette had been Shakespeare’s sponsor. There would have been no more salacious tosh about ‘‘the Trojan’s trumpet’’ and ‘‘do you mean country matters’’ once Gillette had publicly shamed Shakespeare and withdrawn his sponsorship.
All right, all right, but you get the point. When is this corporate campaign to shame men ever going to stop. In case you missed it, Gillette ran an ad moralising about the behaviour of young men, even when they were simply roughhousing. They were also depicted bullying each other online, the latter an act far more viciously and frequently practised by girls. And so, it is not OK for boys to be boys.
Gillette, those arbiters of moral guardianship who have never exploited the poor for their own venal ends, backed up their message of zero tolerance of libidinous men by withdrawing their sponsorship of Hardik Pandya, the highlyrated Indian cricket allrounder.
Gillette have form at this sort of thing, although they were not quite so quick to condemn Tiger Woods for his philandering. In 2009 a Gillette spokesman said, ‘‘As Tiger takes a break from the public eye, we will support his desire for privacy by limiting his role in our marketing programs. This is supporting his desire to step out of the public eye and we’re going to support him by helping him to take a lower profile.’’
Yes, quite. Unfortunately for Pandya he is not quite so big a name as Woods, so Gillette were far quicker and more ruthless in taking the razor to him. Oh, and more sanctimonious. A spokesman for the company said, ‘‘Hardik Pandya’s recent comments do not reflect the values of Gillette.’’
Bilge and barnacles. I doubt whether Gillette has any values at all. It is a company, not a human being. It is a company with the bottom line of making profit for its shareholders. It is moved by the marketplace, not morality.
Unfortunately so is cricket, and that means we here in New Zealand do not matter very much. Firstly we were told that Jasprit Bumrah, the world’s highest-ranked one-day bowler, would not be coming on a tour that starts with the first one-day international in Napier on Wednesday.
But now the New Zealand public have been cheated even further. Both Pandya and
K L Rahul, India’s highest-rated T20 batsmen, have been sent home for comments they made on a chat show. To put this in perspective, Lala Amarnath was the only Indian player previously sent home by the Indian board (a political stitch-up) and that was in 1936.
So the crime of Pandya and Rahul must have been pretty severe to have attracted such a punishment. You bet it was. They went on a grubby Indian TV chat show, the host of which casts about for gossip, and boasted about their conquests of women.
Pandya said, ‘‘I am a little from the black side, so I have to see how they [women] move first. Then I can imagine the picture.’’ He then went on to talk about how he pointed to numerous women at a nightclub and told his parents, ‘‘I have something going on with each of them.’’
Now, this is clearly pathetic. It’s what the great Trumpster would call locker room talk. And if my son bedecked himself in jewellery, wore dark glasses and carried on like a proto Chris Gayle, I would be a bit disappointed in him.
But it is not the crime of the century. I am not aware of any women coming forwards and complaining of mistreatment. It’s quite probable they wouldn’t even recognise Pandya and he made half of it up.
But such is the hysteria of the times that these two lads are being punished and shamed. Goodness knows how the bed-bouncing Ian Botham would have got on, but he may have finished his career too shrivelled to have ever gone on those mighty walks for Leukaemia Research.
Never mind, Pandya and Rahul are up before the beak. The BCCI even wants India’s Supreme Court to appoint an ombudsman to investigate their actions. Well, it’s hardly a secret. It’s on telly for goodness sake. Still, public outcry, a synonym for Twitter and the like, means that the board is worried about its bottom line. Is this the same board that has routinely turned a blind eye to match-fixing?
The behaviour of these two boys is not even particularly outlandish. Boys will be boys. As Desmond Morris pointed out following the Tiger scandal, humans are the product of evolution from thousands of years ago when we stopped having a breeding season, sex took longer, the brain became this extraordinary computer and love took hold – but, and it was a big but, the distinct possibility of death meant the system required flexibility.
Morris depicted two urges in the adult male in order to ensure he passes on his genes: ‘‘The major strategy is to devote a huge amount of time and energy into rearing the offspring produced within his pair-bond. A minor strategy, surviving from his very ancient past is that, given a casual opportunity to father extra children, he will do so providing it does not disrupt his major strategy.’’
The modern age in which many sportsmen are demi-gods has thrown the absurd vanity of celebrity into this primal and evolutionary mix of sexual urges. In India it is further complicated by a male-dominated religion like Hinduism in which the Manusmriti, an ancient legal text, proclaims ‘‘a woman is never fit for independence’’ but is to be protected by father, then husband, then sons.
Is it any wonder that these boys sometimes say and do daft things. But they’re still just being lads. ‘‘Is this the best a man can get,’’ asks Gillette. No, what a daft question. A man can climb Everest or write Macbeth or paint La Primavera, or come up with yet another invention that saves our children’s lives.
But he is not likely to do any of these things if he is constantly being belittled for looking at a pretty girl walking down a street. A friend of mine, I kid you not, had his face slapped by his girlfriend of the time for looking up at a poster with a beautiful model on it. He did not sue her for assault, but moved on.
When one writes such things, it is almost obligatory now to add the rider that I support the #MeToo campaign. Well, so I do. All forms of bullying and harassment are a menace. And to that list I add the behaviour of Gillette and the Indian cricket board.
Shakespeare wouldn’t have stood a chance.