Alex Dunn can't help feeling the witch-hunt that scrutinises Wayne Rooney's every faux-pas to the nth degree ultimately helps no-one
The Insider - Alex Dunn - Follow me on Twitter @skysportsaldunn Posted 4th April 2011
American comic and agent provocateur par excellence Lenny Bruce once quipped 'life is a four letter word' and as Wayne Rooney travels to work today in his Aston Martin or Bentley or Lamborghini he might just be feeling the same if the Football Association rules that he has brought the game into disrepute and hit him with a suspension.
Back in 1964 Bruce was twice arrested at the end of his act at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, NYC, for charges relating to obscenity and for some, only a similar conclusion to what occurred in the East End this weekend will suffice.
Saturday's blue tirade into the mouth of a Sky Sports camera encapsulated Rooney'sseason to a tee. Here was a young man angry at the world, who even in a moment of euphoria felt the need to unleash a verbal volley that matched the one against Newcastlea few years back in terms of ferocity.
Banished to the stands of Upton Park as a punishment for showing a lack of what Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin called for back in the sixties, Sir Alex Ferguson clenched a fist and with a series of hand movements orchestrated his supporters to unleash a stirring rendition of 'we're Man United, we'll do what we want'. They do, according to their detractors.
Saturday's blue tirade into the mouth of a Sky Sports camera encapsulated Rooney's season to a tee. Here was a young man angry at the world, who even in a moment of euphoria felt the need to unleash a verbal volley that matched the one against Newcastle a few years back in terms of ferocity.
In front rooms, bars, country clubs and drawing rooms across the country the collective shrill of china hitting the floor drowned out an audible gasp of shock on hearing language one had presumed had been lowered into the grave alongside Bernard Manning. This would simply not do.
That Rooney set a bad example to scores of young football fans who, whether he likes it or not see him as a role model, is undisputed, ill-advised and unfortunate but the hyperbolic reaction of many has the reactionary tone of those mortally offended by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross' misplaced phone-call to Manuel. Let's not forget, of the 38,000 that complained about the aforementioned incident only two complaints had been received in the week after the show was aired.
Whether my woolly liberal sensibilities are clouding my judgement is for you to decide, I'm sure you will at the foot of this column, but to persecute a player for an utterance that was no more unedifying than he had to endure in the preceding 79 minutes seems to surmise that respect is a one-way street. It's not.
There is something almost perverse about the view that the handing over of £40 gives a punter carte blanche to abuse any given player or manager relentlessly over the course of a game.
The common perspective opined is that £200,000-a-week is ample compensation to be the subject of personal attacks, to have your family abused, to have your private life chanted about by 40,000 people who will be disgusted to the point of writing a letter to the FA, or Sky, to express their ire should Rooney or any of his ilk have the brass balls to demonstrate verbal dexterity themselves.
In what other walk of life do people feel entitlement to act like a four letter word because they've paid for the privilege? Hollywood stars can command £20million for a film, and shoot a couple each year, yet if you pitched up in Tinseltown to the set of a Tom Cruise flick and chanted about his wife's sexual predilections for 90 minutes you'd be arrested. Try persuading a judge that the fact you'd once paid £6 to see Top Gun at your local Odeon gives you such an entitlement and you'd be sectioned.
By no means were all inside Upton Park indulging in baiting Rooney about his nocturnal activities, along with a couple of charming ditties about Coleen, but whether I'd pocketed £200grand or not that week, it would take a better man than me not to react in a similar way upon the completion of a hat-trick.
It would be to take the argument too far the other way to suggest Rooney is a wholly innocent party in this latest furore given he's shot himself in the foot more times than Charlie Sheen over the past 12 months but to veer on the side of the flawed artist than that of the aghast puritan is ultimately for the good of the game.
Pre his no-show in South Africa the United striker was considered to be up there with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi as the world's finest and in chasing what he's lost, whether through injury or a predisposition to self-destruct, he's became volcanic in his temperament; forever ready to erupt.
Rooney is at his best when he doesn't think, when he plays the game like a jazz player; free from the conventions of normal form and left to do what comes natural, or as one critic described Bruce performing his routine as 'nothing censored, nothing translated, nothing mediated, until he was pure mind'.
It's when Rooney thinks, conversely, that his game suffers and he can look clumsy, unsure of himself in possession. As such, when he hits form as he did so spellbindingly on Saturday, he plays with an abandon that conjures moments of finesse, his first two goals, that are too often undermined by the inappropriate, his verbal Tourettes. A Scouse beauty and the beast rolled into one.
That's no-one's problem but his own and Manchester United's but the manner in which we collectively bathe in glee every time the finest talent we've produced in this country since Paul Gascoigne, and let his tale be a cautionary one, puts a foot wrong or shoots from the lip is as nauseating as the fact he's so knuckleheaded to do it in the first place.
Those that don't abuse footballers at the match, or even on the sofa, those who genuinely believe that the next generation of footballers playing their first matches in parks or school yards this week have been unduly influenced by his behaviour, have every right to register their disgust but for the rest of us, we should do what Rooney should have done and keep quiet.
After all, even Bruce got a posthumous pardon and he made Rooney look like Mary Whitehouse
