Post by QPR Report on Nov 5, 2009 7:47:36 GMT
The Guardian/Marina Hyde
Spare us the phoney poppy apoplexyThe vitriolic campaign to bully all Premier League clubs into wearing a poppy on their shirts shames the memory of the fallen
With a tedious inevitability, the Daily Mail's campaign to divide the whole of Britain into people who wear poppies and people who are subhuman scumbags has reached the Premier League. But then, based on that taxonomy, where else was it ever going to end up?
In case you are not familiar with what we would be encouraged to refer to as "the growing row", the facts are these. At the time of writing 15 Premier League clubs have applied for special dispensation to embroider a poppy on their shirts for games between now and Remembrance Sunday, while – far more thrillingly for the Mail – five clubs have not. They are Blackburn, Bolton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Stoke, and while some have declined to explain their decision, a Manchester United spokesman has stated: "We don't think it's particularly necessary. We sell poppies around the ground and all our officials wear them and we work with armed forces charities in a lot of other ways throughout the year." Is hanging too good for them? Doubtless we shall find out.
Before we proceed any further I should make clear that I am an ardent supporter of the Royal British Legion's Poppy Appeal. Indeed, I am wearing a poppy as I sit typing this, and will replace it as soon as I lose it, and indeed the next 12 that go the same way before Remembrance Sunday.
But why must the build-up to Remembrance Day be characterised by these incredibly cheapening, confected rows? What does that sort of focus say? Thank you for fighting for our freedom to ring talk-radio programmes and explain why this is "typical Man United"?
"An absolute disgrace," spluttered a caller to Nick Ferrari on London's LBC radio of the failure of the Strictly Come Dancing contestants to pin a poppy to their sequins last Saturday night (although all the judges were wearing them). Having pointed out that the X Factor contestants were wearing them – as though that were the most meaningful comparison – Ferrari solicited his listeners to phone in and have their say on Strictly's act of near-treason. He appeared to be under the delusion that fanning a non-argument somehow proved his point, as opposed to being disrespectful in itself.
After all, isn't frothing yourself into demented indignation at the Blackburn squad's lack of a poppy the very definition of having way too much time to indulge in fatuous rows? It's redolent of that long-running, now mercifully expired argument about footballers not singing the national anthem in a manner acceptable to whichever Middle Englander wasn't really watching the game anyway.
The point so often ignored is that the second world war, in particular, was fought to allow people the choice in this and many other matters. Victory meant freedom from fascism, which makes Jon Snow's choice of words for this annual hounding of any public figure pictured without one – "poppy fascism" – particularly significant.
As Snow says, he wears one off screen. Yet whether players of the five refusenik clubs are wearing poppies off the pitch seems to be a matter of sublimest indifference to the critics, despite this being the newest of new traditions, having been dreamed up in 2002, and even last year adopted by only a handful of clubs.
Of course, it's nice that some of the shirts will be auctioned in aid of the British Legion – though shirts are auctioned every week, and it remains to be seen whether the poppy will confer any added value. But rest assured that all the positives will be lost in the argument about whether Rio Ferdinand's shirt has a poppy sewn into it. For two weeks of the year, certain elements stop insisting that footballers are not role models, in favour of demanding to know why they aren't wearing poppies when their job is to set an example.
At base, this is just another way of presenting footballers as cosseted ingrates. It was a matter of genuine surprise to me that the Mail's reaction to the pictures of Wayne and Coleen Rooney leaving hospital with their new baby wasn't a headline screaming "But where is Kai Wayne's poppy?"
So on Saturday, know that every late challenge, every sending-off, will be in the memory of those who fell in battle. Then accept the fact that media campaigns to foreground the poppies that are not being worn, as opposed to the ones that are, serve not as a memorial to the sacrifices made on our behalf, but as a reminder of our hard-wired one‑upmanship and infinite capacity to find ways to divide ourselves.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/nov/05/poppy-appeal-premier-league
