Mike Procter interview

[honestbharani]

Well, it rather depends on what the abuse towards the family is, doesn't it?

Some of the most famous sledges fall into the realm of "abuse directed towards the family" (Brandes's line about McGrath's wife giving him a biscuit every time he ****s her & Marsh asking Botham "How's your wife and my kids?" off the top of my head), but I don't think either would be considered to be crossing the line of acceptability, would it?

I can't think of an occasion where one could say that of any racist abuse.

To be honest, if they were directed at a sub continent player, I do think they would have been considered just as offensive as any racist remark sledge...

 

[benchmark00]

HB - I find your line of reasoning pretty hard to swallow itbt

If you are trying to suggest that racism isn't a big insult in sub continental cultures, then why do sub continent players complain (quite rightly) when they are referred to by a racial term?

If we take the reverse and say that saying something about an Australian's mum isn't seen as a massive deal, you don't see any Australian/English/SAF player reporting players abusing their mums, do you?

 

[honestbharani]

Well, it depends on the type of racial slur.. In the examples you mentioned, there were swear words mixed up with racial slurs as well.. But just stating the word "monkey", for instance, would not have been the worst thing an Indian player had ever heard, at all...


And I do agree with you. Even SC teams seem to make a bigger deal of it.. I really dunno why. It could be because they are asked to report only these slurs (which again brings us back to who defines what is abuse etc) or maybe because they feel it will get more media mileage and eyeballs and maybe they are just used to the western style of thinking, even subconsciously.


Put it this way, if a SC player reports the word "monkey" and doesn't report the word "your mum is a whore" or something of that sort, I think it is a travesty. But I do not think things have gone to that extent yet.. Lehmann for instance mixed a color and a swear when he was racially abusing the Sri Lankan side.

 

[benchmark00]

Well, it depends on the type of racial slur.. In the examples you mentioned, there were swear words mixed up with racial slurs as well.. But just stating the word "monkey", for instance, would not have been the worst thing an Indian player had ever heard, at all...


And I do agree with you. Even SC teams seem to make a bigger deal of it.. I really dunno why. It could be because they are asked to report only these slurs (which again brings us back to who defines what is abuse etc) or maybe because they feel it will get more media mileage and eyeballs and maybe they are just used to the western style of thinking, even subconsciously.


Put it this way, if a SC player reports the word "monkey" and doesn't report the word "your mum is a whore" or something of that sort, I think it is a travesty. But I do not think things have gone to that extent yet.. Lehmann for instance mixed a color and a swear when he was racially abusing the Sri Lankan side.

I was thinking of the Lehmann incident when I made my post itbt, and the reason that was reported was because he used the word 'black' not because he swore at Jayasuriya (from memory).

 

[honestbharani]

well, the media and the officials concentrated on that word but do we really know why it caught the attention of Jayasuriya?


Also, the rules probably dictate that the players report racial slurs but not personal abuse. It might just even be a case of players wanting to report a number of incidents but could not do so as the rules state only racial slurs can be reported. We really need to know more if we are to comment with any certainty on this.

 

[benchmark00]

well, the media and the officials concentrated on that word but do we really know why it caught the attention of Jayasuriya?


Also, the rules probably dictate that the players report racial slurs but not personal abuse. It might just even be a case of players wanting to report a number of incidents but could not do so as the rules state only racial slurs can be reported. We really need to know more if we are to comment with any certainty on this.

'Using language or a gesture that is obscene, offensive or insulting' is a level one breach of the ICC Cricket Code of Conduct. While 'Using language or a gesture that is obscene, offensive or of a seriously insulting nature to another player, umpire, referee, team official or spectator' is a level two offence.

This means SC sides can report anything they want as long us it is offensive, though it only seems they report racial slurs, which gives credence to the theory that SC cricketers find racial slurs much more offensive than other insults.

Don't get me wrong, I know how serious SC people take abuse against family members, I just think you're being disingenuous when you downplay the significance of racially motivated abuse and the offence it causes to all people, let alone SC people/cricketers.

 

[honestbharani]

'Using language or a gesture that is obscene, offensive or insulting' is a level one breach of the ICC Cricket Code of Conduct. While 'Using language or a gesture that is obscene, offensive or of a seriously insulting nature to another player, umpire, referee, team official or spectator' is a level two offence.

This means SC sides can report anything they want as long us it is offensive, though it only seems they report racial slurs, which gives credence to the theory that SC cricketers find racial slurs much more offensive than other insults.

Don't get me wrong, I know how serious SC people take abuse against family members, I just think you're being disingenuous when you downplay the significance of racially motivated abuse and the offence it causes to all people, let alone SC people/cricketers.

Oh.. I am not disagreeing with you that at times players try to take advantage of how seriously racial slurs are taken in that part of the world.. Esp. the SC guys.. I am blaming them as well. My point is that "all abuse" can and should be treated the same way once it crosses a bare minimum. To me, the issue is when people make it seem as though the racial slurs are the worst a person can cop. There are equally bad personal insults out there that are dished out just as much and which deserve to be punished the same way...

 

[Burgey]

LOL. NO.

If he doesn't want racist **** to come his way he should shut his mouth and not indulge in sledging himself.



Thank you for pointing this out.

Some people are having a hard time grasping a simple point.

That's a dumb post Smail. You can't bracket all sledging with either abusive posts about family and racial slurs.

If I'm batting and someone comments on me playing and missing, or not timing a ball well, that's sledging. Do you think that gives me the right to turn around and say "Listen you black ****, I ****ed your sister last night"?

Come now. To suggest the person who I abused shouldn't be offended because they sledged me is absurd.

 

[CWB304]

I don't think the idea that "abuse is abuse" holds water for very long; it's pretty obvious that if someone was abused for (say) having a clashing shirt and tie or an unfortunate haircut and someone else is abused for their race, ***ual orienation or moral probity of their sister then the latter examples are graver offences, so there is demonstrably a hierarchy.

That aside, I'm not advocating a western cultural hegemony, but there has to be some recognition of the "when in Rome" principle. I don't take my shoes off on the rare occasions I'm forced to go to church, but if I went to a Mosque and refused to do it I'd be behaving like a prick, yes? I personally couldn't care less about removing my shoes, but as I'm aware my hosts do I'd happily acquiesce.

If my memory serves Harbhajan's alleged offence took place during the Sydney test? I'll admit I don't recall what Symonds reportedly said to him initially, but there's no way the off-spinner would've been unaware of the host nation's sensitivity towards racial abuse, especially in light of his previous (undenied) use of the term during the Australians' preceding 2007 tour of India & Indian spectators being arrested for making monkey noises and gestures towards Symonds.

If Symonds had called Harbhajan's mother a whore or whatever then he's an arsehole too, but your argument is at best of the "two wrongs" variety.

Tbh, I suspect that even engaging with someone like you is a complete waste of time, but I'll give it one last try. You've demonstrated such a variety of dishonest and underhand behaviour on this thread - straw manning, deliberately misrepresenting what other posters have said, etc - that you put me in mind of a global warming fanatic I was debating the other day who quite seriously suggested that the academics at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia who were systematically falsifying and deleting data which did not suport their theories about man-made global warming were justified in doing so, because their fraudulent actions were done "in a good cause".

You take racism very seriously. Good for you. But I can assure you that your noble support for the anti-racist cause does not justify the way you've been carrying on on this thread. In fact, speaking as someone who inherently sympathizes with your position, I would caution that your excesses have done your cause more harm than good.

In a previous post, you wrote:

"I think one instinctively understands racist abuse is of a different magnitude to calling someone a "See You Next Time"."

I think this goes to the heart of the matter. You see, I live in the same country as you, and yet do not do not share your instinctive understanding. Although the colour of my skin is nearer to Muamba's than it is to that of the majority of people in the UK, I don't think the guy who made those stupid comments about him should have been imprisoned. Far from it. But we live in an age in which single-issue monomaniacs who lack all sense of balance hold sway in this area, as they do in "gay, lesbian and transgender rights", "climate change" (the craftily rebranded erstwhile "global warming") and so many other darling areas beloved of liberals.

Consequently a criminal justice system which routinely allows genuine criminals to go scot-free for want of capacity in our overcrowded gaols is called upon to deal - at great expense - with idiots who have simply expressed opinions in areas formerly covered by what used to be considered an inalienable right to free speech, but in which the state has arbitrarily decided to get involved. Once upon a time we would have accepted that the Muamba-baiter's real punishment had already been served; viz. the whole world now knows just how stupid and unpleasant he is. But that is not enough for those who make a living from enforcing political correctness: he must be seen to suffer!

To go back to the quotation from your earlier post, your claim to some universally shared instinctive understanding is clearly absurd, because you can only speak of the social context in which you write: the UK in 2012. Even your parents' generation, in say the 70s, would not have shared the same instinctive understanding. Much less those on the other side of the world, today or then. Does that not furnish a clue as to how and in what respect your reasoning processes are failing? Your touching faith in human progress and mankind's gradual moral improvement over time icontinually being disproved by events.

As for your parents - or those of their generation who did not share the new-fangled view that calling someone a "black ****" is an order of magnitude more heinous than calling him merely a "****" without the modifier -; are they monsters? Or Indians, who don't share your belief. Are they simply less evolved than you - do you expect them to develop your sensitivity to race issues with time -, or are they just wicked?

With all due respect to your rather nonsensical analogy, I will reiterate: abuse is abuse. There is, there can be no hierarchy. Once there is, then what immediately springs up like so many weeds is a fully-developed apparatus of Soviet-style nomenklatura and apparatchiks who get to decide whether three-legged pre-op transexuals trump disabled lesbian dwarves in the totem pole of offendability. These administrators would naturally be given powers to decide who gets the gaol sentence and who the lollypop in screaming fits of mutual abuse, based on the pre-determined hierarchy of privilege which naturally flows out of the line of reasoning you're advocating. I want no part in such totalitarianism. I would rather have genuine free speech, and if speech is to be regulated to curb abuse, then for the rules to be made absolutely clear and non-discriminatory, with no particular groups being awarded special privileges.

You say you're "not advocating a western cultural hegemony", but that's precisely what you're doing. Cricket is played in places that are not as "advanced" as the UK; places where the guy who abused Muamba would have been teased for his stupidity merely and the incident forgotten the next day, rather than it becoming a cause celebre and feeding frenzy for newspapers indulging the British public in one of the "periodic fits of morality" to which Macaulay drew such disdainful attention. Yet you would export your racism cant to Mumbai, Galle, Islamabad and Kingston. Why? Is it because the English invented the game? If so, when do the stewardship rights expire, if ever? Your "when in Rome" comments are equally nonsensical: are you really positing different standards based on where a Test match is played? Once we start thinking in unnatural ways it always has absurd and ludicrous results which by themselves should alert self-aware persons to the fact that their mental compass has led them astray. Clearly you lack the self-reflexive capacity, and are quite incapable of perceiving the absurdity of your position.

Australians began the whole sledging rubbish; to be honest it is to be expected that there would persist even to this day a slightly uncouth edge to the mass of people hailing from an excrescence which was transplanted from and forced to flourish a whole world away from the cultural roots from which it should have been drawing daily nourishment. Hence I do not blame Australians for the distasteful 'ocker' ethos which they used to undermine the spirit of the game from the 70s onwards with this culture of senseless abuse. Like everything else, it soon became a race to the bottom, and the 'pioneers' (yes, Australians have pioneered something!) soon found like most bullies that they were rather better at dishing it out than accepting a taste of their own medicine.

What I do object to is the fleet hypocrisy with which the same loutish crew who thought nothing of making the most sensationally ill-mannered and base sallies to their opponents as a matter of course would turn on the Indians using the numen "racism" as a modern-day crusaders' banner. What we must not now do is to run interference for them by pretending that Harbhajan, who I'm in no doubt did call Symonds a "monkey", is somehow ontologically worse than the benighted Aussies who blazed the trail of abuse for having done so.

 

[uvelocity]

Monkey insults are not generally implied as racist in India

That's exactly the type of thinking which is at fault. It doesn't matter what you or India perceives as tolerable. Just the same as on the flipside it doesn't make it ok for me to insult an indian person's family.

Tbh, I suspect that even engaging with someone like you is a complete waste of time, but I'll give it one last try. You've demonstrated such a variety of dishonest and underhand behaviour on this thread -

What a wall of text. No way I'm going to bother reading that. Especially when you lead with tripe like the above. BB is quite a thoughtful and temperate poster and you are clearly bringing an agenda here and attacking a very good member. Back off.

A very delicate issue and all points of view should approach from a position of care with the idea of learning something about others.

And as an aside, I think some people are trying to win the thread and prove their country or culture to be in the right, or better, or even trying to prove (?!) what happened between 2 players or what didn't years ago and it's bloody ridiculous discussion.

 

[four_or_six]

Guys, can you please not throw insults around and keep on track... it's an interetsing enough discussion already.

 

[Burgey]

Nick Minchin posting denialist crap on CW. Who'd have thought?

 

[CWB304]

What a wall of text. No way I'm going to bother reading that. Especially when you lead with tripe like the above. BB is quite a thoughtful and temperate poster and you are clearly bringing an agenda here and attacking a very good member. Back off.

1. That's as may be, but he's behaved quite disgracefully on this thread, tbf. Numerous instances; just go back a few pages.

2. No, I'm not. Just refuting some of his more wrong-headed ideas about the racism numen.

As for your positional advice, I could easily raise the ante and tell you to stick it where the sun don't shine, but shan't, as I'm in a good mood today.

 

[Fusion]

1. That's as may be, but he's behaved quite disgracefully on this thread, tbf. Numerous instances; just go back a few pages.

2. No, I'm not. Just refuting some of his more wrong-headed ideas about the racism numen.

As for your positional advice, I could easily raise the ante and tell you to stick it where the sun don't shine, but shan't, as I'm in a good mood today.

You need to stop with these type of posts immediately please.

I'm also going to repeat the message left by four_or_six for everyone to avoid insults/abuse. If you have a problem with a post, please let us handle it as moderators.

 

[Jono]

Just like to say that every Indian and Sri Lankan (don't know many Pakistanis, only one and she's hot so no one would ever bag her as that would limit the opportunity to bang her) I know, whether they live there, are Indian/Lankan by birth or background, does not like being called racist names. So Smali not sure what this "racist is wrong by Symonds' culture but not others" is coming from.

 

[smash84]

Yeah, they certainly would in some places, especially the second one. You'd get away calling people racist terms but certainly not that.

Then there are those that Sanz posted that are as worse as any racial abuse, but as CWB said are something that you would get away with in a premiership while a racist term is big news.

I think the point which Smali was referring to earlier(albeit in a over aggresive manner) was that Western standards and ethics have dominated sports so far, but those may not be true everywhere. What is more offensive in one culture/background may not be in another and vice versa.

Tbh, I suspect that even engaging with someone like you is a complete waste of time, but I'll give it one last try. You've demonstrated such a variety of dishonest and underhand behaviour on this thread - straw manning, deliberately misrepresenting what other posters have said, etc - that you put me in mind of a global warming fanatic I was debating the other day who quite seriously suggested that the academics at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia who were systematically falsifying and deleting data which did not suport their theories about man-made global warming were justified in doing so, because their fraudulent actions were done "in a good cause".

You take racism very seriously. Good for you. But I can assure you that your noble support for the anti-racist cause does not justify the way you've been carrying on on this thread. In fact, speaking as someone who inherently sympathizes with your position, I would caution that your excesses have done your cause more harm than good.

In a previous post, you wrote:

"I think one instinctively understands racist abuse is of a different magnitude to calling someone a "See You Next Time"."

I think this goes to the heart of the matter. You see, I live in the same country as you, and yet do not do not share your instinctive understanding. Although the colour of my skin is nearer to Muamba's than it is to that of the majority of people in the UK, I don't think the guy who made those stupid comments about him should have been imprisoned. Far from it. But we live in an age in which single-issue monomaniacs who lack all sense of balance hold sway in this area, as they do in "gay, lesbian and transgender rights", "climate change" (the craftily rebranded erstwhile "global warming") and so many other darling areas beloved of liberals.

Consequently a criminal justice system which routinely allows genuine criminals to go scot-free for want of capacity in our overcrowded gaols is called upon to deal - at great expense - with idiots who have simply expressed opinions in areas formerly covered by what used to be considered an inalienable right to free speech, but in which the state has arbitrarily decided to get involved. Once upon a time we would have accepted that the Muamba-baiter's real punishment had already been served; viz. the whole world now knows just how stupid and unpleasant he is. But that is not enough for those who make a living from enforcing political correctness: he must be seen to suffer!

To go back to the quotation from your earlier post, your claim to some universally shared instinctive understanding is clearly absurd, because you can only speak of the social context in which you write: the UK in 2012. Even your parents' generation, in say the 70s, would not have shared the same instinctive understanding. Much less those on the other side of the world, today or then. Does that not furnish a clue as to how and in what respect your reasoning processes are failing? Your touching faith in human progress and mankind's gradual moral improvement over time icontinually being disproved by events.

As for your parents - or those of their generation who did not share the new-fangled view that calling someone a "black ****" is an order of magnitude more heinous than calling him merely a "****" without the modifier -; are they monsters? Or Indians, who don't share your belief. Are they simply less evolved than you - do you expect them to develop your sensitivity to race issues with time -, or are they just wicked?

With all due respect to your rather nonsensical analogy, I will reiterate: abuse is abuse. There is, there can be no hierarchy. Once there is, then what immediately springs up like so many weeds is a fully-developed apparatus of Soviet-style nomenklatura and apparatchiks who get to decide whether three-legged pre-op transexuals trump disabled lesbian dwarves in the totem pole of offendability. These administrators would naturally be given powers to decide who gets the gaol sentence and who the lollypop in screaming fits of mutual abuse, based on the pre-determined hierarchy of privilege which naturally flows out of the line of reasoning you're advocating. I want no part in such totalitarianism. I would rather have genuine free speech, and if speech is to be regulated to curb abuse, then for the rules to be made absolutely clear and non-discriminatory, with no particular groups being awarded special privileges.

You say you're "not advocating a western cultural hegemony", but that's precisely what you're doing. Cricket is played in places that are not as "advanced" as the UK; places where the guy who abused Muamba would have been teased for his stupidity merely and the incident forgotten the next day, rather than it becoming a cause celebre and feeding frenzy for newspapers indulging the British public in one of the "periodic fits of morality" to which Macaulay drew such disdainful attention. Yet you would export your racism cant to Mumbai, Galle, Islamabad and Kingston. Why? Is it because the English invented the game? If so, when do the stewardship rights expire, if ever? Your "when in Rome" comments are equally nonsensical: are you really positing different standards based on where a Test match is played? Once we start thinking in unnatural ways it always has absurd and ludicrous results which by themselves should alert self-aware persons to the fact that their mental compass has led them astray. Clearly you lack the self-reflexive capacity, and are quite incapable of perceiving the absurdity of your position.

Australians began the whole sledging rubbish; to be honest it is to be expected that there would persist even to this day a slightly uncouth edge to the mass of people hailing from an excrescence which was transplanted from and forced to flourish a whole world away from the cultural roots from which it should have been drawing daily nourishment. Hence I do not blame Australians for the distasteful 'ocker' ethos which they used to undermine the spirit of the game from the 70s onwards with this culture of senseless abuse. Like everything else, it soon became a race to the bottom, and the 'pioneers' (yes, Australians have pioneered something!) soon found like most bullies that they were rather better at dishing it out than accepting a taste of their own medicine.

What I do object to is the fleet hypocrisy with which the same loutish crew who thought nothing of making the most sensationally ill-mannered and base sallies to their opponents as a matter of course would turn on the Indians using the numen "racism" as a modern-day crusaders' banner. What we must not now do is to run interference for them by pretending that Harbhajan, who I'm in no doubt did call Symonds a "monkey", is somehow ontologically worse than the benighted Aussies who blazed the trail of abuse for having done so.

It is one of the longest posts I have read on CW and one of the best too.

Summarizes things perfectly from my POV.



@uvelocity.....dude the post is definitely worth reading.

 

[smash84]

Just like to say that every Indian and Sri Lankan (don't know many Pakistanis, only one and she's hot so no one would ever bag her as that would limit the opportunity to bang her) I know, whether they live there, are Indian/Lankan by birth or background, does not like being called racist names. So Smali not sure what this "racist is wrong by Symonds' culture but not others" is coming from.

When did I say this?

 

[Spark]

Oh.. I am not disagreeing with you that at times players try to take advantage of how seriously racial slurs are taken in that part of the world.. Esp. the SC guys.. I am blaming them as well. My point is that "all abuse" can and should be treated the same way once it crosses a bare minimum. To me, the issue is when people make it seem as though the racial slurs are the worst a person can cop. There are equally bad personal insults out there that are dished out just as much and which deserve to be punished the same way...

Isn't this kind of the point? You're replacing one arbitrary, subjective metric... with another arbitrary, subjective metric.

It's not necessarily the idea that racist abuse is necessarily better or worse somehow, it's subjective and cultural. It's the idea that it makes no difference that I find objectionable, that someone it's all equivalent.

There's a bit of conflation going on in this thread. I've said in the past that people too often equate sledging with gutter-mouthed abuse, which is often not the case. Telling someone who's under pressure to hold their place that they're not good enough to play at that level is absolutely designed to undermine their confidence and self-belief, yet I would find it rather extraordinary if that were defined as "abuse".

 

[Jono]

When did I say this?

These two quotes disturb me:

"If Symonds can't cope with racist **** because that is a no no from the value system that he comes"

Firstly, its not Symonds "value system" that is against racism, its pretty much a universal value. Barring a few dickwad countries, most are signed up to conventions and agreements discouraging and outlawing racism of all kinds. So its not about "not being able to cope with racist ****", because no one should ever have to. Its not an Australian or western expectation.

"If he doesn't want racist **** to come his way he should shut his mouth and not indulge in sledging himself."

Quite frankly, if I walk into someone's house and piss on their couch, that still doesn't give them the right to racially attack me.

It is appalling that you think sledging warrants racist jibes in return. Two wrongs etc.

I understand the viewpoint that calling someone a mother****er in India is more insulting than Australia or England. That's fine, but why do you have to use that as justification for racist taunts, when racism in India is seen as extremely horrible as well.

 

[smash84]

Quite frankly, if I walk into someone's house and piss on their couch, that still doesn't give them the right to racially attack me.
It is appalling that you think sledging warrants racist jibes in return. Two wrongs etc.

QUOTE]

What gives you the right to piss on their couch?

If I go and do that and I get racially attacked I won't blame the other person. If anything I have done worse by spoiling his property. What has a racist slur done anything in return accept for making me feel bad about something?