Two New Zealand radio hosts are in a bit of hot water after one of them unleashed comments against the sports of netball and Aussie Rules Football that where racially based and sexist and homophobic in nature.
Two guys named Mark Watson and Kieran Smyth apparently are radio hosts in New Zealand and, a couple weeks ago, ventured into territory best left untouched. The Spinoff has the full report, which you must read, but essentially Smyth decided to take aim at just about everyone who didn't look, act or think like him.
When talk turned to rugby and Aussie Rules Football, Smyth launched into one of his anti-gay, anti-AFL tirades, which you can hear here:
Hayden Donnell wrote on The Spinoff:
At the end of this segment, Watson does something revealing. He asks Smyth to stop using "homo" as an insult, but only to "appease the 1% of people who control society". It's a telling behind-the-scenes glance at the grimy basement of New Zealand's sports media, where it's fine to make gay jokes so long as they're off-the-record; alright to mock or objectify women so long as there's no-one taking notes. Though things are changing, and we no longer have people like Doug Golightly writing his detractors off as "lesbian tree-huggers" in primetime, that ancient river of dung is still bubbling away somewhere in the background of the culture.
The entire segment by Watson and Smyth is quite the display, and the recap by The Spinoff is quite the takedown.
