Hypocrisy as Rangers’ bigotry scandal deepens

The deafening silence from the MSM, politicians and pundits over the Daily Record scandal has been inescapable in recent days.

After the red top chose to attack Heart and Hand Podcast over historical tweets, every pundit and outlet joined in the crusade to slaughter the same source and the club as a whole. Every. Single. One.

And let’s be clear – there’s a touch of legitimacy in those calls for action, and indeed some contributors to said cast have quit their position and held their hands up in accountability. In short, Rangers fans took responsibility for their past errors.

But equally, the fightback has gained more traction than the media and politicians would have liked, whereby what’s good for the goose is apparently NOT good for the gander, and H&H’s expose of journalists who themselves are equally as guilty of historical sexism, homophobia, racism and bigotry has been completely overlooked by those groups and individuals keen to slate Rangers.

We are introspective enough to know in recent times that some Rangers fans’ behaviour wasn’t good enough, and enough of the majority has called that out and accepted the issue is valid.

While there is work to do at our end, Rangers’ own equality campaigns show signs of trying to achieve that.

But the Record’s response to the evidence back at them? Where they wanted H&H banned, all the response of pointing out issues in their own ranks merits seems to be an ‘internal investigation’.

Michael Stewart, so keen to have Rangers make aggressive statements condemning this conduct and have various groups banned from Ibrox has absolutely nothing to say about the issues anywhere else.

A huge mouthpiece but with no clout behind it. And certainly no consistency, just hypocrisy.

And that seems to sum up the general response to H&H’s retort – to ignore it.

The DR’s article was consumed by all those anti-Rangers folks in the media, and lauded up, but the response barely merited a raised eyebrow from most quarters.

We are not for one minute saying ‘because they did it too, it’s ok we did it’. We are saying many groups are clearly guilty of this but the media and the pundits only seem to target Rangers’ side.

It needs to be rooted out of society from an early point, from an educational point, which covers every child in the country, regardless of who they are or where they come from.

But with systemic targeting in the media and politics of only one apparent group, that impartiality is a long way off.