St Richard & Big Ron

It was a pretty good night for documentaries on TV last night. First up was St Richard of Austin a doc on filmmaker Richard Linklater. I've been a fan of his work since Dazed and Confused. I had seen his debut Slackers, but it was only when I saw his 70s teen high school film that I really took to him.

Although the film touched on his cinematic influences like Robert Bresson, it also highlighted how he had reworked philosophies from people like Albert Camus and made them his own. What really struck a chord with me was a lot of it centred round Linklater's hatred for having a real job and his dislike of people working in offices.

"There's a job. A career. And a calling."

Linklater seemed to be hammering home a point, of if you have to work in an office, just don't buy their corporate bullshit. It was nice timing, since at work for some reason they have begun to attempt to get me to treat my nothing job like it's some first step on a career path. I will be having a rant about this at a later date. What would have made this a 5 star doc was if the documentary maker hadn't been trying to go down that Nick Broomfield route of making himself a central figure in it.

Onto the evening's second entertaining documentary. What Ron Said, an examination of the comment that cost Ron Atkinson his lucrative job on ITV and his column in The Guardian. This was part documentary and part damage limitation PR exercise for Big Ron. Basically Ron realises what he said was wrong, immediately resigned and has apologised several times for his comments. However he feels he has served his time and that 7 figures a year position should once again be his.

Sometimes it was hard not to feel sorry for him. He so hates the thought of being thought of as a racist that he would do anything and go anywhere to disprove it. Including heading over to Birmingham, Alabama and going on a right wing radio station where they put 'Ron on Trial.' "You're out of order there..." He then had to listen bemused as a veritable Lynch Mob of Rednecks phoned in to offer him support.

He then went to the local university to ask a group of black kids why it was all right for them to call each other 'nigga' when he couldn't do it. "It's all or nothing in my book."

It also turns out that Ron has previous for this sort of thing. In 1990 during the England-Cameroon World Cup Quarter Final he was caught out saying that he would only get in trouble for a borderline racist comment if the Cameroon player's Mum was "watching up a tree."
"That was just a bit of banter."

Atkinson has a history of playing black players in his teams and some of them like Brendan Batson and Carlton Palmer appeared. Batson was somewhat surprised by what Ron had said and asked for an explanation and Palmer was gushing in his praise. It may have been telling that it didn't appear that Ron had a history of using language like that.

He visited a museum where racist propaganda was on display and it was testament to Ron's honesty that he commented so honestly that he was almost on the fringe of getting himself in to more bother.

In my opinion I don't think Big Ron is a racist. I don't believe he thinks that any ethnicity is better than any other. However what Ron is, is a bit thick. He's from a time where casual racist comments were acceptable, Ron just hasn't moved on. One thing that illustrates this was apparent last night, though not commented on. A clip of West Brom playing in the 70s showed the late Laurie Cunningham (I believe the first black player, to play at any level for England and went on to play for Real Madrid and Manchester United) cross for Cyrille Regis. The commentator, John Motson, exclaimed "The two coloured players combining well there." Now if he uttered that on Match of the Day this weekend there'd be an outcry. At the time it wasn't out of place. Black footballers were few and far between and Big Ron was proud that he had most of them in his team. Ron just simply hasn't moved his thinking on from that time. He's the kind of guy that believes that the words 'nigger' and 'darkie' don't hold any more offence than 'speccy' or 'fatty.'

What Ron struggles to comprehend is that having shown himself capable of a racist comment and ignorant thinking that his career should be over for good. I don't know why he thinks something like this should have a time limit. Former players like Frank McAvennie and Paul Gascoigne have tried their hand at punditry and the reason they no longer do it, is cos they don't have the necessary skills. They were both incomprehensible and frankly a bit daft. (Gascoigne being a wife beater, should never have been allowed in the first place). Atkinson has ruled himself out of punditry for similar and more serious reasons. While representing ITV he showed himself up as an ignorant buffoon, happy to use language that should be confined to history. If Ron was commentating on the next round of the Champions' League, I would not be bothered, but plenty of people don't get the chance to do that, and I think Ron's time is over.