DAILY MAIL RUN POISONOUS PIECE ABOUT CELTIC, THEN TRY TO CLAIM THE MORAL HIGH GROUND
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 2 minutes ago
- 3 min read
I almost admire the level of cognitive dissonance one must have to channel every day to work at a paper like the Daily Mail. Almost, but not quite.
Yes, the rag best known for appeasing fascists both historical and modern was at it again today.
These disconnect between the two stories is such, its almost hard to believe they came from the same newspaper.
And yet, they both show the same total contempt for Celtic, our supporters and our openness as a club.
Celtic are a Shining Light in a Bland League, But That Won’t Stop the Hate
First of all, there was Callum Crowe’s venom-soaked editorial this morning, branding Celtic’s success this season “The Most Tedious Treble of All Time”
Where do I even start with this utter guff?
Well, first of all, you can tell a lot about a writer by his word choice, and Mr Crowe’s hard-on of hatred for Celtic is apparent from the get-go.
Celtic turned in one of their best performances of the season on Sunday, yet this clown chooses to brand it a “horribly one-sided contest”.
I wonder, did he think it was equally “horrible” when his beloved Rangers beat us 3-0 in January? I’m guessing probably not.
He doesn’t stop there though. He goes on to describe Celtic’s impending treble (assuming we can get the Cup Final out the way, which isn’t a given) as “one of the most boring and uninspiring Trebles any team has ever accomplished.”
Let’s just get something straight, no treble is uninspiring. To do it takes immense ability, endurance, and dare I say, a fair bit of good fortune.
Celtic have been around for 137 years. In that time, we’ve only done this 8 times (hopefully soon to be 9).
Such bitterness, from supposed journalists is not only demeaning to Celtic. It’s demeaning and disrespectful to the entirety of Scottish football.
Did the Daily Mail ever stop to think about why Celtic are this far ahead? Why are we on the brink of 9 trebles?
Any advantage we have has been earned.
It hasn’t been handed to us.
If you want to see handouts, go back to the 1990s and look at how one of Scotland's richest men at the time helped Rangers financially dope their way to 9 consecutive league titles.
Where was the expressions of frustration and boredom then?
There were none, because we all know the truth.
These newspapers, and the drones they employ, don’t have a problem with Scottish football being uncompetitive.
They only have a problem when its Celtic who are the team on top.
That’s the reality, and articles like this, where we can almost visualize the bitterness oozing out of every clammy pore of the writer as he churned it out, serve only to underscore that point.
The Daily Mail then tried to redeem themselves, it seems, in the eyes of the Celtic support, with a report condemning graffiti mocking the death of Pope Francis.
Those Smurfs on Smack, the Union Bears, have apparently claimed credit for this act of vandalism.
Which the Daily Mail went on to say was “targeted at their predominantly Catholic rivals, Celtic.”
This “both-sidesing” of the debate is something we’ve talked about on here before.
Only one club in Glasgow ever had a recruitment policy and a supporter base built on religious prejudice. It wasn’t Celtic. From day one, we have welcomed anyone, regardless of creed, color or religious ideals.
Rangers meanwhile, the old Rangers anyway, wouldn’t publicly sign a Catholic until 1989, and it wasn’t long before that they signed their first black player of modern times, Mark Walters.
Suffice to say, neither signing went down well with a vocal minority of the Ibrox loyal.
As I said in my earlier post today, Celtic’s history is linked to Ireland and to Catholicism, but it is not a fundamental part of who we are. You don’t need to Irish or a Catholic (I’m neither incidentally) to get what Celtic are about.
To this day, there’s a significant portion of the fan base at Ibrox who still resent anyone who isn’t “Staunch”, British, and Protestant.
I look forward to a day when that’s no longer the case. In the meantime, I’ll take no lectures on what Celtic’s ideology is from a publication as morally bankrupt as the Daily Mail.
Their grandstanding about “disgusting grafitti” might carry a bit more weight if it wasn’t immediately followed by comments from their readers saying “love it!”.
But then again, policing such things would require integrity, and effort. These are things which as we know, most of the Scottish press have long since given up on.