Gordon was sacrificed to the baying mob with RTÉ’s help
THE first thing to realise about the vicious cancel culture that has scourged Gordon Elliott this week is that it’s nothing new. Ferocious othering, cruel humiliation and relentless scapegoating is as old as the hills, practised with relish down the ages since Adam and Eve got up to no good in God’s back garden. The destruction of Elliott’s reputation since that dreadful picture emerged of him sitting on the body of a dead horse was as unwarranted and unfair as it was shameful and entirely disproportionate.
Apart altogether from the extremely harsh penalty of losing his trainer’s licence – his livelihood – for six months, the man has suffered too much in a feeding frenzy of criticism that has been characterised by a complete absence of fair-mindedness and restraint.
Elliott, at 43, has already achieved a great deal in his life. Now, however, his extraordinary success only adds to his anguish as he sees his business slipping away from him because of a booming mistake, which, when set against the stinging punishment already inflicted, is minor by comparison.
Mob law has always been unattractive and its unbridled savagery disgusting. But now, in this shiny new social media age, the binary has escaped the machine and sharpened the appetite for sacrifice in our lesser angels, leaving people with a simple on-off choice between fully good or fully evil. And too many people lust for the fully evil.
MODERN-DAY scapegoating is now at our fingertips, with social media platforms providing access to precision targeting of hapless victims. Attackers adopt the principles of total war, knowing their remoteness from the battle site guarantees their safety. Drone-strike warriors, unstained by the blood of victims they have shredded.
Meanwhile, lives are being ruined, and on the broader scale free speech is threatened.
In his recent interview with the Radio Times, famous British actor and comedian Rowan Atkinson denounced this modern and extremely virulent mutant strain of cancel culture. The ‘Mr Bean’ actor said freedom to speak your mind was being eroded and he worried about the future.
He said: ‘What we have now is the digital equivalent of the medieval mob roaming the streets looking for someone to burn. So, it’s scary for anyone who’s a victim of that mob.’
This week’s unmerciful flaying of Gordon Elliott was not just conducted on social media. RTÉ facilitated the avalanche of outrage on radio as well. And we’re all entitled to ask if that is what the national broadcaster should be doing.
We know already how the multibillionaires who own and control social media platforms continue to wash their hands of responsibilty for the torment and terror they accommodate there – but surely we’re entitled to expect better from RTÉ.
This is neither an apologia for Elliott nor an argument that RTÉ should not have covered the ‘trainer sitting on a dead horse’ story. Of course they should. Further, they should also have allowed the public
to vent on the issue. But, as in all matters, things can go overboard and RTÉ’s facilitation of the expansive, crowd-in criticism of Elliott cascaded into ‘too much already’.
THE ritual thrashing of the man raises a whole suite of collateral issues, one of which is friendship. True friends and supporters are only any good to us when we’re in the kind of trouble that we ourselves have created. And while Michael O’Leary isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, his decision to keep his Gigginstown Stud horses at Elliott’s yard is an impressive indication to the kind of man he is. Stubborn loyalty – absent of approval – is precisely what Gordon Elliott now needs.
News that Cheveley Park horses, including the unbeaten Envoi Allen,
were being moved out of Elliott’s yard, and transferred to Willie Mullins and Henry de Bromhead, should have been enough to rein in the fury, even out of concern for Elliott’s workforce. But it wasn’t.
That’s because restraint is too old-fashioned a quality. The idea that real and otherwise decent people make mistakes and deserve a pass is dismissed as woolyheaded, frothy sentimentalism. Gordon Elliott was this week’s fresh meat, the latest fall guy whose crushing was meant, somehow, to wipe clean the obvious fears and sins of the unforgiving horde.
I, for one, hope they fail and that Elliott has the support and resilience to recover and prosper.
Secondly, all those fears and sins will be still there, waiting for that baying riot of inadequates, when this latest act of injustice is over.