Eddie McGuire has earned himself a high distinction level lesson in insincere and self-serving apologies yesterday over comments he made about wanting to drown Fairfax journalist Caroline Wilson at next year’s The Big Freeze charity event.
“I’ll put in 10 grand straight away, make it 20,” said McGuire after first suggesting Wilson should take the plunge, before adding that “if she stays under, 50.”
It then got even worse as he asked North Melbourne president James Brayshaw and former Richmond coach Danny Frawley what they thought of his bright idea. Brayshaw thought it’d see “money piling in everywhere”, while Frawley offered to “actually jump in and make sure she doesn’t [come up]”. Welcome to Australia in 2016 people.
And you know what, they almost got away with it as no one in the media of the AFL batted an eyelid until a week later when, thanks to writer Erin Riley’s blog post about the comments, people around the country started calling on McGuire to apologize. Always a man of the people, he retracted his comments, but in classic McGuire style, he nevertheless managed to deny any fault on his part while at the same time blaming other people for getting offended.
“[I’m] really disappointed that these comments have led to these feelings from people,” he said, demonstrating the tried and true ‘shift the blame’ tactic of a classic non-apology.
He then quickly pivoted for the blame shifting to offer an apology and aligned himself as a champion for women in Australia. “I apologize and retract them in the spirit of what we’re trying to achieve, which is to look after women and children in our community.”
He then went the one-two punch of trying to pass off his comments as banter again, while at the same time invoking his peripheral affiliation with the White Ribbon alliance against domestic violence. “That was clearly banter, but on White Ribbon weekend we have to be vigilant about stamping out domestic violence,” he said, seemingly unaware of the hypocrisy inherent in that sentence.
He wasn’t done though, as he also had to make sure everyone knows that he doesn’t “see it as being in any way shape or form sexist”. Thanks for clarifying that Eddie.
For her part in all this Wilson has not been taken in by McGuire’s half-hearted retraction, calling bullshit on his claims the comments were just “playful banter”.
“The people listening at the time thought it was OK. I mean, this is … it’s like casual racism,” she said.
“Casual violent language might be meant as a joke but … I wonder how many times we have to draw this line in the sand between this sort of language and what is a joke and what is obviously completely unacceptable.”
Having found herself frequently in the crosshairs of commentators and owners like McGuire for her reporting on the Essendon-ASADA saga, Wilson knows only too well the answer to her own question. Too many times.
