Yesterday should have been the best day of Ollie Robinson’s life. He made his debut for England at Lords and took two wickets against New Zealand. Today he’s a racist misogynistic pig who, according to many, should be banned for life.
Someone went mining Ollie’s Twitter account and found a couple of allegedly offensive Tweets he had posted nine years ago. He was eighteen years-old at the time. The tweets are immature for sure.
My new Muslim friend is the bomb is certainly crass.
wonder if Asian people put smiley’s like this ¦) is juvenile. He made some immature comments about sex too. So fucking what? Who cares?
After the Tweets were publicised yesterday, Robinson was forced to take the walk of shame and apologise in a hastily arranged press conference.
“I am embarrassed by the racist and sexist tweets that I posted over eight years ago, which have today become public,” he said. “I am sorry, and I have certainly learned my lesson today. I would like to unreservedly apologise to anyone I have offended, my team-mates and the game as a whole in what has been a day of action and awareness in combatting discrimination from our sport.”
I wish that Robinson had just rolled his eyes and said “Fuck off!” We’d all be better off if the eternally offended were just told to fuck off once and for all.
Taking offence on behalf of somebody else has become a national obsession. It’s madness, but it’s also having a chilling effect on free speech and freedom of expression. Then again, that’s the point isn’t it?
Pretty soon, state and big tech censorship will be unnecessary. It will have been superseded by self-censorship. People will become terrified to say anything, lest someone else grab it and use it against them.
I say pretty soon, but evidence is emerging that this is already par for the course for millennials. God help them. They’re terrified of getting it wrong. Imagine dinner party conversations in ten years time. The lapses will be unbearable as guests frantically try to remember the socially accepted answer or position, before daring to speak.
We’ve all behaved badly at one time or another. We’ve all said things that we wish we hadn’t. To err is to be human. None of us are perfect. But our mistakes don’t define us. Nobody should have to fear that something they said 10 years ago or even last week, might cost them their job, or see them turned into a pariah.
Stop apologising to the woke. It only encourages them. Tell them to fuck off or ignore them.
