We cannot yet, unfortunately, move on from the Gary Neville moral panic because the Daily Mail are still being entirely ridiculous about it.<\/p>\n
Happily, though, the rest of Mediawatch is on less febrile ground with the more typical collection of the media being less end-times-are-upon-us ridiculous about managers and goalkeepers and pundits.<\/p>\n
Fingers crossed for a Neville-free day tomorrow, although that might be asking a bit too much of the build-up to a friendly between England and Wales.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nevillegate: Day Three<\/p>\n
We\u2019re long past the head-shaking despair stage with the ongoing attempts by this country\u2019s rabid right-wing media\u2019s attempt to fill a quiet international break (it wouldn\u2019t do to think too hard about why a video from last week has become such big news this week) with a good old-fashioned monstering as they continue their quest to get Gary Neville sacked for doing free speech wrong.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve covered the whole sorry and entirely self-concocted media storm in exhaustive detail already here<\/strong><\/a> and here<\/strong><\/a>, and had hoped to move on altogether today. But we are going to keep pointing it out every time the Daily Mail<\/strong> put \u2018racist\u2019 in quote marks in headlines when absolutely nobody is using the word anywhere else, because it feels particularly despicable.<\/p>\n Fans turn on \u2018traitor\u2019 Gary Neville: \u00a31.1m-a-year pundit is targeted by protest outside his flagship hotel and at football club he owns after his \u2018racist\u2019 Union Jack rant<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s almost like they\u2019re actually egging him on to take legal action here, so they can turn hypocritical tail and play the victim at Red Nev\u2019s attempts to silence them. Never, ever underestimate wealthy conservative white men\u2019s yearning desire to be oppressed; it\u2019s the one thing they can never have.<\/p>\n At least the \u2018traitor\u2019 in that headline is a direct quote. It comes from a banner being held up outside Neville\u2019s hotel in Manchester yesterday, and later seen at Salford\u2019s game, which, thoughtfully and legitimate-concerns-edly, reads \u2018GARY NEVILLE TRAITOR SCUM\u2019.<\/p>\n Remember, this whole sorry load of old bollocks all stems from Gary Neville saying that division in this country is being stoked by \u2018angry white middle-aged men who know exactly what they\u2019re doing\u2019. You\u2019ll never guess who was holding the banner.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Ange fall<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot of quite reasonable points made in Matt Barlow\u2019s Daily Mail<\/strong> lament about the speed with which managers find themselves under pressure and facing the sack these days in the \u2018global soap opera of knee-jerk reactions\u2019 that the Premier League has become.<\/p>\n\n