The Daily Carlo: The facts blow 'alcohol-fuelled violence' claims away so let me buy boooze post 10pm you bastards!

Day Four of my Daily Carlo plot to blog every day and here is my fourth one! I am on fire!

I never thought I'd make it so far! To be honest, when I launched this new Carlo-Internet initiative on Tuesday, I was far from convinced I'd still be alive by Friday, what with my "lifestyle choices" that have been described variously as "less than optimal for living a long, healthy life" and "how the fuck is he still breathing?"

But I think what has got me this far is definitely my new fitness regime. Yes, thanks to the NSW state-wide 10pm closing time for all bottle shops, I am now in better shape than ever! What with my constant sprinting the bottlo at five to 10 every fucking night!

 Reddit.com/drunkspiration captures the struggle.

But asides from possibly being the only thing stopping my body from total collapse, what possible good does this 10pm shut down do?

I mean, I don't want to repeat myself here. I have already pretty decisively exposed these lock-out/shut down laws in NSW for what they truly are: a plot to give James Packer even MORE billions via his "magically excluded from the lock-out laws" Star Casino, and now I am just waiting for the Walkley Award it shall inevitably earn me.

But still... there may been some of you out there, who just REFUSE TO LISTEN and STILL think maybe this shit is about "alcohol-fuelled violence"... which is an argument I have NEVER understood.

Like, obviously I get there is violence involving people who are drunk in our society. Christ, I know there is drunken violence. The fucking Daily Telegraph WON'T FUCKING SHUT UP ABOUT IT.

But what the violence has to do with being drunk has never been clear to me.

Because, and really this is an area in which I feel I have some expertise, I have never noticed that getting drunk leads to any particular increase in violence. Or "king hits". Or "coward punches". Or whatever the fuck the Daily Tele, whose journalists are famous for their sobriety, are banging on about now.

Like, I have been very drunk many times in many pubs. God knows how many. Over many years. I mean, I like getting drunk. And I like pubs. 

And yet I have somehow manage to refrain from king hitting a single bastard (and fuck knows I've been in pubs with many people just begging for a decent king hit) . 

In fact, I had seen no real violence at all of any note in any pub until I went to Darwin in 2013 (for a comedy gig for a refugee rights group, so you know, thanks government for torturing innocent people, otherwise I'd have never gotten the chance to see the NT!) 

While there, I ended up in some dodgy bar on what they like to call a "main road" in Darwin, drinking with Robbo, who lives up there, and Conehead, who came up for a trip.

Suddenly, at the table right behind us, these off-duty soldiers launched, with no warning, into a brawl that sent beer and chairs flying and only my rapid action in securing our table's beers prevented them joining the sea of spilt booze spreading across the bar room as bouncers rushed over to try to separate two furiously wrestling soldiers, trying to kill each other over God knows what.

Whatever it was, it was clearly not an issue easily resolved, because an hour later, as we sat out on the tables on the footpath, we could see two sides on the road squaring off, headed by the protagonists of the brawl inside the pub.

They stared each other down and shouted abuse before finally fresh kicks and punches started flying in a kinda pathetic half fight in which each side displayed its incompetent failure to actually get a kick anywhere near the other while seemingly imagining they were just like Jean-Claude Fucking Van Damme... 

And you watch that and get a sense of just how horrific it must be to be a poor fucking peasant in Afghanistan or Iraq occupied by these numbskulls, whose only form superiority is their fucking heavy weaponry.

And you know, it was hard to draw the conclusion that the problem here was they had just drunk too much. I mean, they clearly had -- but so had I!

I had just performed a fucking stand up set in a city thousands of kilometres from Sydney to about 20 people as part of an ill-advised, failed and totally well-meant attempt by these activists to "reach out" to Darwin's redneck community to explain why "blow up the boats" -- a solution advocated to me beforehand by a local -- was perhaps a bit problematic, you know from a "let's not murder innocent people" sorta perspective.

So you had better fucking BELIEVE I was drinking. And yet somehow, I managed NOT to be involved in an all-in-brawl. Maybe I just have incredible self-restraint, or maybe, I dunno, the whole "drunkenness leads to violence" thing is utter bullshit.

Turns out there is some solid evidence behind the "it's utter bullshit" view.

Yes, ABC News ran an article headlined "Alcohol-fuelled' violence not caused by alcohol but by 'macho' culture, anthropologist Dr Anne Fox says", that states:

Amidst the introduction of one-punch laws and lock outs, the main concern has been the so-called alcohol-fuelled violence that goes with drunkenness. But one anthropologist believes it is not a result of the booze itself. 

Dr Anne Fox has specialised in the study of drinking cultures in countries around the world for the past 20 years and has been looking at Australia and New Zealand ... 

"Australians, like many other people worldwide, have a very pervasive belief that alcohol can transform your behaviour, that it's a transformative substance, that somehow there's this genie in the bottle that can make you behave a certain way," she told PM's Mark Colvin. 

"Alcohol - as all of the scientific literature shows, which we've reviewed very extensively in the report - cannot be considered a cause of violence. If it was, we'd see uniform levels of violence among all drinkers." 

Countries such as Iceland consume more alcohol than Australia but report less violence. 

"They have a stronger culture of preloading, they have 24-hour bar opening, they even have high rates of gun ownership, but in Iceland there is almost no recorded violence," she said. 

"It's simply not a violent society and they have no belief that alcohol causes violence, and therefore you really don't see any violence in Iceland."  Most of Southern Europe follows this pattern, according to Dr Fox .... 

According to Dr Fox, alcohol "cannot hijack someone's better nature and make them violent" and the term alcohol-fuelled violence is not accurate. She said the focus should be on the causes and triggers of violence itself ... 

"Your inhibitions are just social rules. Anthropologists for decades now have been finding through international cross-cultural studies that the way you behave when you're drunk is mostly the way that your culture teaches you to behave," she said. 

"You can see across the world that people behave very, very differently, despite being morphologically similar human beings and drinking the same amounts of alcohol." 

She said Australia has a macho culture. "We see that it's not so much the patterns of drinking or the levels or consumption that determine how people behave, but other features of culture that are magnified through drunkenness," she said.

YEAH!!! So fuck off with your "alcohol-fuelled violence" bullshit! And most of all... LET ME BUY SOME FUCKING TAKE-AWAY BOOZE AFTER 10PM!!! FOR GOD'S SAKE!!! 

Of course, no one could disagree that the violence used to justify these laws is terrible. There is clearly a problem in our society -- but it is cultural problem not a booze problem. the problem is the macho culture and its ever-present twin -- misogyny.

And not only is blaming alcohol for this missing the real culprit, it is way of avoiding even acknowledging the problem. And this isn't just alcohol, but drugs in general -- as the somewhat ridiculous scandal involving a whole lot of rugby league and rugby players apparently enjoying putting coke up their nostrils shows.

It really says something about the nature of our society and how fucked up our priorities are. Here we have charges and claims centred on the apparently shocking that a bunch of professional sports players enjoyed cocaine at such events as a players bucks night and a post-season booze cruise.

You might think that is something of a personal matter, at most unfortunately a legal matter due to draconian failed drug laws. But no. This threatens to tear apart an entire club, the Gold Coast Titans, and ruin the careers of more than a few players -- despite the fact that some of these players have already been involved in scandals involving far worse actions or allegations.

Rugby player and code-hopper Karmichael Hunt, at the centre of the coke scandal, faced sexual assault allegations in 2008. No dent in his career. Greg Bird, suspended by the Titans over cocaine charges, was found guilty of violently assaulting his girlfriend. His career continued.

You can rape and bash women seemingly without a worry in rugby league, but don't enjoy a recreational drug in your own spare time or you are done.

The irony is it is this kinda pathetic hypocrisy that makes drugs and alcohol so essential to fucking survive this goddamn world in the first place.

Alcohol and drugs can worsen existing problems, but I see no reason why those of us who manage to drink and not punch must be punished. We all relate to alcohol differently... the song below, by that glorious Texas country singer Hayes Carll, sums up my relationship with booze perfectly.... less violence, more pathetic failure at life.

I keep knockin over whiskeys
no ones laughin at my jokes
they got me spinnin round in circles
like a tin can in the spoke

When i left town this mornin
with a smile upon my face
ahh babe i swear i never knew
I'd end up in this place...

So. My fourth Daily Carlo. Don't thank me, just buy me a beer. Via the Pay Pal button on the right of the blog. I promise that after drinking the beer, I won't hit anyone, unless you specifically request it.

The Todd Carney Show Trial and the NRL's piss-soaked hypocrisy

For controversial sporting bans for violating “common decency”, forget Luis Suarez and his four-month ban from all football-related activities after the Uruguayan striker decided to taste a little Italian. If you want a truly outrageous, even disgraceful, penalty for a sporting star, it is hard to overlook the sacking of rugby league player Todd Carney.

Carney was given his marching orders by the NRL's Cronulla Sharks after a photo emerged on social media of Carney in nightclub toilets engaged in an activity that had nothing to do with the sport, any crime, or even any harm being committed against anyone at all, except, perhaps, for Carney's own sense of dignity, which by all available evidence, was pretty thin on the ground anyway.

True, the supposed activity was especially attention-grabbing -- the photo purportedly showed the 28-year-old halfback urinating directly into his own mouth in the dunnies of some club called Northies after Cronulla got slaughtered by Manly.  

(And, surely, losing to Manly is the real crime here... I mean rugby league is not my game, but I might not grasp the fucking point of a “scrum” beyond giving players a chance to shove their head up other men's arse without having their sexuality questioned, but even *I* understand the importance of beating those over-privileged North Shore Tony Abbott-backed Manly bastards.)

The result was Carney was tossed aside for that greatest of crimes for major sporting codes and clubs -- the crime of generating embarrassing headlines. 

No one has stopped to ask whether, if Carney's idea of a good time is pissing in his own mouth in some dodgy nightclub dunnies, that is really a matter for him. He wasn't asking for society to grant him permission, or even to pretend to understand what seems a pretty fucking weird fetish.

He was just a bloke standing at the urinal of some shit club getting snapped while trying to piss into his own gob. 

We all have our own way of unwinding.

Worse, the guy who took the photo, who said “I went into the toilet, found Todd there, he asked me whether I had heard of 'The Fountain’,” actually clarified that “the urine never went into his mouth”.

It seems it was “just a prank”, a “party trick” designed to make it look like he was pissing into his mouth. Much like, as his manager helpfully explained, “when people stand in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa”. You know, so it looks like the tower is their dick. 

Look... no one has ever accused Todd Carney of being in anyway classy or even vaguely highbrow, but if being a bit of a gross dickhead was grounds to sack professional sports players, well fuck, there'd be so few available for selection, I could probably get a run on the half forward flank for my AFL side, the goddamn Essendon Bombers (and actually, given the combination of a seriously shit forward line and the threat of ASADA suspensions over illegal supplement allegations, I am half expecting a desperate phone call from Bomber Thompson anyway).

True, Carney has some form. He has been repeatedly done for drink-driving and got done for driving dangerously without a licence (while allegedly drunk). He has even been accused of causing harm to others by setting fire to some poor bastard in a club in one case and even pissing on a bloke in a different club in another.

And yes, I know that last case seems to indicate something of a urine fetish, but at least in the recent case, he was only pissing on himself! Surely this is progress for which he should be congratulated!

Now, OK, I will grant you, on a scale of injustice between 1-100, Todd Carney not being allowed to run around a pitch in tight shorts wrestling other thick-necked boofheads struggles to even reach a single digit when, at the same time, our own fucking government jails more than 1000 children indefinitely in isolated hell holes for no crime asides from belonging to families forced to flee repression. 

But on the scale of hypocrisy, it is through the fucking roof. Because what is so outrageous, so unutterably disgraceful, is that the NRL does have a real and widely documented behavioural problem... and it has nothing to do with urine at all. It is found in the repeated allegations against NRL players of serious acts of violence against women -- including many accusations of rape. 

And I know of no case in which allegations of rape or bashing a woman has led to the immediate and direct sacking of a player. If there is such a case, it is a clear exception. The rule is the club, and the NRL, forms ranks around the players and tries its hardest to make the issue disappear.

Carney commits no crime and hurts no one -- but gets sacked. But, as a Mamamia article entitled “Hey NRL when will you ban players who bash women?” points out, a petition campaign was started in 2012 to try to convince the NRL it should actually terminate the contracts of players found guilty of domestic violence – of which there were two at the time.

And as to rape, the allegations, frequently of a gang rape variety, have really piled up over the past 15 years or so.  In each case, the cry from the club and code is the players deserve to be considered “innocent until proven guilty”.

But really, even without looking at the documented difficulty women have in getting rape allegations proven through the courts, we don’t not need to dwell on any particular allegation to get a clear, unambiguous sense that their sheer number, featuring many players from several clubs, indicates a serious fucking cultural problem among professional rugby league players.

The July 2009 issue of Cleo.

And this is what is so outrageous about the Todd Carney case. It is that the code and club lost their shit over one stupid photo in which no one was hurt and it seems to have been staged anyway, while doing worse than nothing over what is clearly a deeply engrained and widespread culture of violent misogyny.

The NRL and individual clubs happily ride roughshod over gang rape scandals involving their players. NRL clubs have even selected players to play the very week they were publicly named as alleged rapists.

If you are alleged to be involved in a gang rape, not only is your career far from finished, as Carneys seems to be. You can even look forward to a successful high-profile media career. Can’t you, Matty Johns?

And that fact is 1 million times more sickening, more stomach turning and more utterly, unspeakably foul than anything Todd Carney could ever do to himself with his own bodily fluids. 

Arrested for walking while looking like Ben Cousins

Ben Cousins has refused to comment on fresh charges laid against him after he was caught being Ben Cousins outside his North Beach home in Perth on April 17.


The news that Ben Cousins was stopped by police outside his Western Australian home yesterday, and charged with possessing less than a gram of marijuana has finally forced me to break my silence on this blog.

I have had one or two things to say about the former West Coast star and famous drug abuser in the past. So I felt what the world needs now, at this difficult time, is my clearly stated views on the matter.

This is especially crucial seeing as "Ben Cousins" is no longer trending on Twitter, and therefore at high risk of disappearing from the front of everyone's minds.

So, allow me to state as clearly and forcibly as I can that, without any doubt, the Perth cops were more than justified waiting outside the home of the fallen star until he dared showed his face outside. The threat of Ben Cousins walking the streets with a tiny amount of pot is a threat to our society so great that no amount of tax-payer funded resources is too high to stop the menace.

And it is not just in Perth that our men and women in blue are taking action. Just today, while walking walking down harsh streets of Sydney's inner-west, I saw a bloke walking past me and thought: "Hey, he looks a little bit like Ben Cousins."

Barely had the thought entered my head when a cop car came screaming 'round the corner, pulled up and two burly uniformed blokes lept out and tackled the poor bastard to the ground.

"We are from the Ben Cousins Action Squad," barked the first cop to the man being shoved onto the ground by the second cop. "And you are under arrest for walking the streets while looking Ben Cousins!"

"But I'm not Ben Cous...," the man tried to splutter before a boot in the face silenced him.

"Shut up, you sick bastard! Walking around looking like Ben Cousins! There are children nearby too! Read him his rights Serge."

The second cop, knee in back of the man who looked a bit like Ben Cousins, began: "You are under arrest for looking like Ben Cousins on a public street. You have the right to conduct an exclusive interview for an undisclosed sum with a media institution of your choosing. Anything you say may be taken down and used against you in future media reports in a bid to wring the last possible ratings out of your sordid, fucked up story."

"But I'm not Ben Cous....,"the man tried again, before a fresh boot in the face silenced him.

"Oh yeah?" taunted the first cop, waving around a tiny amount of pot in a small plastic bag. "If you are not Ben Cousins, then how do you explain the fact we just found this illicit substance in your pocket?"

"That proves it!" spat the second cop. "Only Ben Cousins would be so evil as to the walk the streets with pot in his pocket!

"What? You bastards planted that!"

"Sure, as if anyone is going to believe someone who looks like Ben Cousins," said the first cop. "Cuff him serge."

And as the poor bastard who looked a bit like Ben Cousins was cuffed and thrown into the back of the cop car, I made my way down the street, trying my hardest to look as non-sportsmanlike as possible. Luckily, in that field I'm a natural.

Ben Cousins is a god damn, no good drug addict

It has taken me a full week to be able to write this post. Seven days of hurt and pain too intense to express.

I feel sadness and a sense of deep betrayal.

Finally, I feel capable of putting my feelings into words: Ben Cousins is a god damn, no good drug addict.

Now, many readers will no doubt chastise me, with a sense of bemusement, that I am a little behind the times.

Other, more dedicated readers of this blog, may, with equal bemusement, accuse me of hypocrisy — or at least a short and somewhat fickle memory.

And, yes, it is true. Back in 2007, when the entire world seemed to be leaping on top of and ripping at the flesh of the Aussie Rules super star for his confessed drug problem, Carlo Sands stood up and courageously defended him.

And I stood almost entirely alone, asides from some mealy-mouthed clown called Stuart Munckton who said it was all disgustingly hypocritical, but refused to unconditionally defend Ben Cousins’ right to wreck himself whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted and with whatever substances he exercised his free will to destroy himself with.

Only Carlo Sands had the principles and courage to take such a clear-cut stand.

All this is true.

And it is true I argued that Cousins’ “only crime is generating bad publicity for the AFL via the vulture-media — threatening the AFL's ‘brand’ (read: corporate sponsorship)”.

It is true I wrote on the media’s cynical exploitation of Cousins’ troubles: “Let's be clear — this means profits for them as they voyeristically pick over every aspect of Cousins' personal life that can be sold as seedy, troubled and down right fascinating ... A lot of headlines, a lot of readers and a lot of advertising cash.”

And, yes, it is also completely true that I publicly urged him not to cave into pressure, but to front the show trial at which the AFL predictably banned him from playing for a year and proudly paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s famous trial speech with a passionate defence of “The love of the drug that dare not speak its name”.

True.

But that was before last Sunday.

Everything I have done for Ben Cousins — and much of it remains unreported — only makes his betrayal worse.

What happened was this: The Mighty Essendon Bombers, on the very edge of the final eight in the last gasp of the AFL season, rock up to play the Richmond Football Club. The Tigers having languishing on the ladder somewhere between the bottom and very close to the bottom all season.

Essendon needed to win this game to ensure we stayed in the eight. Not only that, but more or less the entire world fully expected them to. Those four points belonged to the Essendon Football Club.

And yet they lost. By less than a goal. Five points.

And who should star in this upset, with a arguably best on ground performance collecting 31 possessions in the midfield?

One Benjamin Cousins.

It is clear he is back on the crystal meth. It is a fucking disgrace.

The fucking drug cheat. After all I did for him.

And, while we are on the topic of Richmond beating Essendon last week, what the fuck ever happened to “tanking?”

“Tanking” is the highly controversial, alleged practice by teams late in an AFL season that are near the bottom of the ladder of deliberately seeking to lose in order to receive a higher draft pick on the following season. Under AFL rules, the 16th team gets first pick, the 15th second etc.

No one has ever been able to exactly prove the practice exists.

Critics of the “tanking” theory raise how difficult it would be to ask your 22 players to go out on the field and deliberately play badly, much less for the coaching staff to coordinate such a thing.

They raise the pride players have in their game, the competitive instinct, the desire to do their best and so on and so forth.

I have a simpler explanation.

Maybe those teams at the bottom of the ladder accused in the latter part of an AFL season of tanking actually keep losing, not through any conscious design, but simply because they are really shit.

This seems the most likely explanation to me. They are just crap teams. They can’t play the fucking game. Their players suck.

They couldn’t win a wrestling match/spelling bee combo with a dyslexic dwarf.

After all, that is why they are at the bottom of the ladder in the first place. They lost most times they took to the field in the first half of the season, why should anyone expect things to be different in the second?

This strikes me as the most likely way to explain the apparently stunning phenomenon of teams at the bottom of the ladder continuing their losing streaks.

And speaking of teams at the bottom of the ladder, Essendon’s game against the West Coast Eagles in now underway. What is more, The Eagles are somehow in front.

If Essendon somehow lose this match, drugs will most certainly be involved — whether performance enhancing on the Eagles side, or a massive binge the night before by Essendon players complacent about what should be a walk over.

Hell, even the Fremantle Dockers beat the Eagles last week.

But back to Ben Cousins. The only thing I have to add is to say that I loved that man like a brother.




"Love is like a cloud, it holds a lot of rain." AFL super star and renowned drug abuser Ben Cousins has broken this bloggers heart

The Ben Cousins Show Trial — Guilty of causing bad headlines

I am going to get serious for a moment here. I apologise, but this is something that is very close to my heart: drug abuse. Anyone who knows me, knows how strongly I feel about drug abuse.

I fucking love it.

So when I find out someone's career is going to be ended by it, I get a little upset.

Tomorrow is a sad day in the history of the Australian Football League.

Aussie Rules superstar Ben Cousins faces a Show Trial, where he will be found guilty of generating bad headlines (the official title is “bringing the game into disrepute”), banned from playing for at least a year and quite possibly for ever.

In true Show Trial-style, if he ever wants to play again he will almost certainly have to publicly “recant”, confess to his degeneracy and apologise to the entire fucking country for having sinned.

Now don’t get me wrong. Ben Cousins may well be one of the greatest Aussie Rules footballers ever, but he is far from innocent.

Until his recent sacking, he played for the West Coast Eagles — a close contender the most arrogant and obnoxious club to ever bring the game into disrepute.

However there are a good three dozen or so other young men currently on the Eagles playing list, and none of them are being hauled before the AFL’s Star Chamber.

And as Cousins has never played for Carlton, some leniency is surely due.

So what has he done?

Well anyone who has glanced at the papers will know this is all about drugs.

Illicit drugs.

Not “performance enhancing” drugs. Recreational drugs.

Seems young Ben has a liking for for substances that, for reasons of historical quirk, are currently prohibited.

This state of affairs is not even 100 years old and, like the ill-fated (and utterly evil) alcohol prohibition in the US in the '20s, has proven a complete and utter failure.

Prohibition merely makes prohibited drugs more dangerous and under the control of violent gangsters.


I'll have my coke with ice, thanks

So what are these drugs Cousins is perhaps a little too fond of? Well, that has not been confirmed.

Let’s just say that the popular joke goes: “Have you heard about the new Ben Cousins meal deal at [Eagles sponsors] Hungry Jacks? No burger and fries, just coke and ice.”

So young Ben Cousins, who has won pretty much every award it is possible for an AFL player to win at the age of just 29, likes to put a lot of white shit up his nose.

There is an obvious question no one asks: so what? What business is it to anyone else where one of the games highest-paid players pocket money goes?

Personally, I prefer to soak my liver. I will admit that certain stimulants can assist in this task, allowing you to drink for entire weekends at a time.

But I have principles and don’t believe in performance enhancing drugs.

I take my booze straight.

Apparently, our fine and principled media and politicians have a different take. I don’t want to call the media vultures, as that would be an insult to what is, in comparison, a mighty fine bird.

Let’s be clear — this means profits for them as they voyeristically pick over every aspect of Cousins’ personal life that can be sold as seedy, troubled and down right fascinating.

And as Cousins is, on available evidence, a drug addict, there is a lot out there. A lot of headlines, a lot of readers and a lot of advertising cash.

For politicians, who I am sure we would all love to drug test, it is simple moral hysteria to turn working people who like to drink against working people who like other drugs — and give the cops more power to attack us all.

The facts are these: Cousins has never tested positive to drugs. He has never been found guilty of any crime. His only crime is generating bad publicity for the AFL via the vulture-media — threatening the AFL's “brand” (read: corporate sponsorship).

Cousins’ drug use does appear to have become something of a problem for him. But there is a reason such things are, usually, referred to as “personal issues”. It’s because they are no one else’s fucking business!

The importance of getting wasted

Now, I love booze, but I am not a fascist. I see no reason to force my personal preference on others.

The important thing is we all love to get wasted.

And we can all too easily cross that fine line between good, healthy drug abuse and serious addiction. Most of us do this with alcohol, a minority with prohibited drugs.

To give a sense of how ridiculous the system is, according to the media, Cousins, who had fled to the US, was admitted to hospital after overdosing on cocaine. Having survived, needing care and assistance, Cousins found himself pursued by the US police wanting to charge him for using a prohibited substance!

Of course, that was more front page headlines, notwithstanding Ben Cousin’s dad’s emotional appeal to the media to leave his son alone because he has little hope of recovering with the media pillaging his every movement.

But this is not all that the AFL are considering when they charge Ben Cousins with bringing the game into disrepute.

No, he has also brought the game into disrepute by associating with what are referred to as “underworld figures” in Perth.

Ben Cousins is a known “associate” (that is what you call someone's friend when you want to spit on the friendship) of John Kizon, well-known suspected gangster and drug dealer who, according to his lawyer, is a fine upstanding citizen.

What is Cousins’ problem? Why would he want to hang out with petty, small-time gangsters when he is more than welcome to associate with big-time corporate robber barons from the insurance industry like SGIO — high-profile sponsors of the Eagles?

First the man abuses the wrong drug (why can’t he abuse alcohol like most famous Aussie sporting icons for fuck's sake?)

Then he hangs out with the wrong sort of gangster!

He clearly has to go.

A new Oscar Wilde?

The actions of the media vultures, the moral hysteria, and the hypocritical clamouring for the blood of a high profile victim guilty of preferring the wrong sort of pleasure brings to mind another infamous case from over 100 years ago.

Now, I am not saying Ben Cousins is a modern day Oscar Wilde.

I am not trying to compare his problems with the white powder with the persecution of the genius playwright and Irishman for homosexuality.

There is obviously no comparison. By all accounts Wilde had none of the grace nor poise on a football field, and he never won a Brownlow.

In his defence, Wilde also never played for the Eagles.

What I will say is I hope Cousins gives a spirited defence of his right to put whatever shit up his nose that he wants. As footballers are not renown for a Wildean way with words, I have taken the liberty of writing Ben’s speech for him.

Head held high, inspired by Oscar Wilde’s famous trial speech, Cousins should declare to the whole world his love of the drug that dare not speak its name:

“‘The love that dares not speak its name’ in this century is such a great affection for stimulating narcotics that Sigmund Freud enjoyed for cocaine, such as Coca Cola made the basis of their corporate expansion ... It is that deep spiritual affection that, when pure, is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art.

“It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as ‘the love that dares not speak its name’, and on that account of it I am placed where I am now.

“It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of drug abuse. There is nothing unnatural about it, and it repeatedly exists with a younger man who has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him.

“That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.”

Well, Ben Cousins, you have the support of this fellow drug abuser.




Or an alternative speech Ben Cousins could give if Wilde’s not his bag.


POSTSCRIPT

Sure enough the inevitable happened. The AFL Show Trial found Ben Cousins guilty of bringing the game into disrepute and banned him for 12 months, after which it will consider whether to let him back in.

The AFL *refused* to even say what the evidence against Cousins that their Star Chamber considered actually was! And on this basis, Cousins is denied employment for at least one year in the only thing he is any fucking good at. Beyond running from cops, of course.

And as predicted, in true Stalinist style, Cousins was forced to hold a press conference at which, woodenly reading his prepared script, he publicly “confessed” to his crimes and admitted to being a degenerate human being.

He apologised to everyone for this state of affairs.

The only hint of defiance came with this reference to the seemingly endless stream of lurid stories about Cousins in recent weeks: “Contrary to media reports, I am a lot further down the track in my rehabilitation than has been reported.”

Of course, Ben Cousins had no choice but to capitulate. It was a kangaroo court, the verdict was prepared in advance and everything was stacked against him. He could play his assigned role or he could kiss his career (and livelihood) goodbye.

But that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to accept such hypocritical stupidity.