Mark Bright v A Moron

Today a rank smell of an individual from the bad old days of football supporting past found itself banned for life from Carrow Road. He achieved this by tweeting a succession of racist and badly joined up thoughts based on, or around, the news that City had signed James Vaughn.

What this cretin failed to grasp was that once the ‘tweet’ icon is clicked the filth he was peddling gets disseminated worldwide. A social media platform is just that: social! If you don’t protect your tweets anyone can read them. Indeed within seconds of his tweet three or four Norwich City fans were challenging his views and making them known to the club’s chief executive, David McNally. The racist responded that his friends in a particular stand share his views and that it was us that had the problem, not him.

However, he did quickly delete a particularly offensive initial tweet.

You would assume that this would be where the story should have ended: McNally quietly banning the racist and the rest of us going back to discussing what we had for lunch.  No, events were about to go national*. Enter stage left Mr Mark Bright.  Yes, *that* Mark Bright, ex-Palace and Wednesday and now (shaky, at best) BBC pundit.

Bright saw the most offensive of the cretin’s tweets and understandably took real offence to it. I assume not only because of the racist nature of it, but also because it was about Vaughn, also a former Palace footballer, and also a black player; in addition I dare say there was a bit of paternalism at work too: wise old pro looking out for young new pro.

As established, despite being deeply upset and really angered by the idiot racist tweeter he didn’t let on and instead quietly stewed. Then he began to send out rather cryptic messages asking Norwich supporters not to follow him (confused actions because he was so angry?).  As there was no apparent context to his request (remember most fans had not seen or even heard about the racist tweet that started all of this) it came across as a minor footy sleb picking on a club’s fanbase for no reason.  Much bafflement.  When he eventually let it be known what had upset him, and City fans could finally understand what his beef was, there was blanket agreement that the racist must be dealt with.

However, there was now simmering anger and disbelief that everyone was being tarred with the same racist brush because of one bad, bad apple.  Not only that, but through Twitter Bright was now:

  • Belittling Norwich the city
  • Belittling Norwich the club
  • Belittling Norwich’s aspirations
  • Belittling the badge
  • Belittling the accent

As you can see during the height of the brouhaha his timeline was very busy. I suggested to Bright his responses were more about courting publicity as it seemed odd and out of proportion to blame all fans for one person’s actions – let alone attack all aspects of what it is to be a Norwich fan. He didn’t respond and thus missed the opportunity to return to addressing the problem in hand: racism. As a poster on a well known City fan site succinctly stated:

[Bright] has not tried to do anything vaguely constructive.

Instead of dealing with it appropriately, he has behaved extremely childishly, diverting attention AWAY from the core issue. (Link)

I cannot stress enough how wrong the tweets were that an offensive individual made, but ignorance works both ways. City dealt decisively and that moron will not be attending another game.  How about you live up to your name Mr Bright and apply a bit of intelligence to your ignorant but very public tweets too?

What do others think? Am I right? Or should Mr Bright be allowed to say what he wants?

*Story has made the 5Live news and BBC website

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 at 5:08 pm. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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