Bell end exposes Calzaghe's drug taking and good punditry
‘Fans of (Joe) Calzaghe…will be shocked by the News of the World’s bombshell revelations,’ pontificated Mahzer Mahmood via the Sunday redtop. The ‘revelations’ – since admitted by the former super-middleweight world champion – are that he has occasionally taken cocaine.
Fan or not – are you shocked? Rich, famous thirtysomething on the celebrity circuit with a shedload of time on his hands occasionally takes party drug? I bet ‘fake sheikh’ Mahmood was almost wetting his salwar kameez or whatever the hack was wearing this time when he realised he had another celebrity in the bag.
I wonder how many tabloid journalists occasionally dabble in cocaine? Yet a distinction they offer is quite true. Calzaghe has (or had) a clean cut image to protect whereas most self-respecting people would rather perform oral sex on a mangy dog than admit they were a hack of this ‘investigative’ nature.
I was going to offer you a detailed study of the piece, going into the why and wherefores about how almost all of the Pulshitzer Prize-winning copy is absolute garbage but it would only serve the purpose of making the self-styled heroes of the piece even more self-satisfied than they already are.
Who comes out of this looking the most sleazy? Calzaghe, duped into a meeting and naively open with people who are obviously good at lying – or the writer of the piece?
This isn’t in the public interest (quite different from what the public are interested in, of course) and to label themselves ‘investigative journalists’ does a disservice to reporters who have actually contributed to the improvement of public life through exposing wrongdoing worth public attention.
The opening sentence of the piece says Calzaghe has been ‘forced to seek help’. Nowhere in the rest of the article do I see this supported by anything anyone says. All Calzaghe said in his statement was ‘It is not a major problem in my life but something which I am actively addressing’. Never let the facts get in the way of a good tale, eh?
For us fight fans, here are some of the bombshell revelations that will definitely have us outraged:
On Ricky Hatton: ‘His punch resistance has gone as far as I’m concerned’
On Naseem Hamed: ‘He’s quite a size now’
On Amir Khan: ‘He can’t fight a puncher’
On footballers: ‘They’re arses, overpaid clowns’
The gall of the man.
Here's a good piece on Mahmood, by the way:
Submitted by Ian McNeilly on 29 March, 2010 - 21:23
