Identity politics and Adam Goodes

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The Piping Shrike, who posts about as infrequently as I do these days (must be a father also), has pronounced on the Adam Goodes situation. It's a long, meandering essay, as all of his are, with a number of juicy nuggets of wisdom, but is typically hard to sum up. I would take issue with a couple of his points, nonetheless.

Primary among these is the repeated phrase of "the anti-racism campaign against the public", his criticism of which forms the main part of his screed. I suspect the Shrike does not live among or talk to a lot of football-immersed people, thus he would not understand how much racism there was around this issue among the public, and how lonely it was fighting the good fight against people convinced that their racist attitudes weren't racist. The Shrike calls the loose collection of individuals battling white privilege in bars, backyards, dining rooms and social media across the nation a "campaign", as if it was conducted against a united public solely by an elite. No, there are people out here in the public who argued at the grass roots along with the anti-racists in the media.

Anti-racism campaigns are not meaningless, as the Shrike asserts. You only have to look at the wins that anti-racism campaigners are having in the US over removing state support for the Confederate flag and are now starting to have over state-authorised statues of Confederate heroes. In itself, those things won't change living standards for African-Americans but it is an early and vital manifestation of anti-racist strength that will eventually get other things achieved, most notably through the #BlackLivesMatter movement which will shift the Democratic policy platform and thus affect policy of the forthcoming Clinton administration. Symbols matter, culture matters, otherwise we wouldn't be having culture wars over it.

The Shrike asks why the inevitably non-zero cadre of racist Swan fans didn't boo Goodes. In this, he shows he doesn't understand sporting tribalism. If you're among a bunch of supporters of your own team and you start booing one of your own because he's black, you will swiftly discover the rest of the supporter base will turn on you and eject you from the tribe. Fans who go to the game are primarily there as part of their sporting team tribe, not their racial tribe, and the former trumps the latter when there is a clash at a home game filled with team members. Racist Swan fans simply shut up while opposition fans booed Goodes, in solidarity with their dominant tribe.

Much is made by the Shrike of the lack of convictions under anti-racism legislation, but again, that ignores the very real effects that such legislation has in discouraging anyone from engaging in conduct that would come close to meriting a conviction. The threat of incarceration can change attitudes almost as much as incarceration itself. Of course, this effect is hard to quantify, but I don't think anyone who denies it exists has much of a leg to stand on.

Finally, the Shrike asks why the media has moved on, asking if the crowd has stopped booing, why there hasn't been an outpouring of joy at Australia suddenly finding a solution to a seemingly intractable problem. The crowd has stopped booing, but unfortunately there were no miracles to be verified by the Vatican. AFL industry elites effectively made a bargain with the public: let's agree not to keep calling you racists if you agree to stop booing. It was a ceasefire, not a victory. Goodes' withdrawal for a week took the heat out of it, with the home Sydney crowd's voluble support for him in absentia that weekend further turning the tide.

Overall, I was disappointed with the tone of the Shrike's piece, but then that's nothing new on this issue because it seems to cut across political boundaries and many of those on the left or centre have been on what I consider the wrong side of this one. It's the sort of identity politics that we could do without in this country. I'd like it if we didn't turn into America, thanks.

#Gamergate, #cuckservative and racism against Adam Goodes

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There is a line that can be drawn, a lineage that can be traced, between a number of recent primal screams emanating originally from shadowy ranks of white male recidivism.

• The #gamergate movement, which is a reaction by openly misogynist males against what they see as attacks against the identity of white male gamers, started by a cadre of hardcore drongos on sites like Reddit, gaining momentum as it gathers up tenuously related non-sexist criticisms of game industry and media elites, gradually building into a mob where the majority are not sexist, but the masses give credence to the movement started by a vocal and unrepresentative minority.
• The #cuckservative movement, which is a reaction by openly white supremacist males against what they see as attacks against the identity of white male American conservatives, started by a cadre of hardcore drongos on sites like 8chan, gaining momentum as it gathers up tenuously related non-racist criticisms of conservative political and media elites, gradually building into a mob where the majority are not racist, but the masses give credence to the movement started by a vocal and unrepresentative minority.
• The mass booing of Adam Goodes, which is a reaction by openly racist males against what they see as attacks against the identity of white male Australians, started by a cadre of hardcore drongos at AFL games, gaining momentum as it gathers up tenuously related non-racist criticisms of sporting and media elites, gradually building into a mob where the majority are not racist, but the masses give credence to the movement started by a vocal and unrepresentative minority.

In all three cases, there is a core of horrible people who perform anti-social acts with stated justifications that any reasonable person would find abhorrent, but the majority of participants in this anti-social behaviour use the argument that they don't share the horrible beliefs of the fringe members of the group, thus they shouldn't be tarred with the same brush.

In any large political grouping, there are going to be fringe elements inside the "big tent". Nationalist skinheads vote Liberal, feral communists vote Labor, and these actions are perfectly acceptable and do not invalidate the party's platform as long as the minority doesn't dictate policy. In the case of these extra-institutional movements, however, the actions that the majority take are the same as the hardcore. How are we to tell the difference between those with criminally anti-social motivations and those who have "normal" reasons for acting like morons?

Unfortunately, this dilemma doesn't seem to worry many of those in the majority who are acting as useful idiots providing cover for the extremists. I have been involved in some very heated discussions trying to argue such people around in the case of the Goodes crisis, and I am sure the same kinds of conversations have been happening all over, both on and off the Internet, in the past week. It's a smorgasbord of bad arguments defending the indefensible, as Russell Jackson only skimmed the surface of the other day.

One of the many ways we are lucky to have been born in the Lucky Country is that despite all the talk of multiculturalism, we are largely still a very monoculturally Anglo-Celtic society, and aren't forced very often to confront our own prejudices like this. You only have to look at America where hatred towards Hispanic immigrants and black urban youth is dominating mainstream political discussion, or in England where UKIP only grows in popularity, or Europe where a member country like Hungary can fall under the grip of an openly fascist regime and barely an eyelid is blinked. In comparison, we lost our minds for weeks on end when a man asked a question on a TV program. Our privilege as Australians, let alone white Australians, is almost too massive to comprehend.

The glue binding all these movements together is identity politics. The extremists are white, male and western, and the people they are trying to recruit to their thinly veiled anti-social reactionary causes share much of their identity - this demographic has been labelled in various countries as "frat", "bro", "lad", "chav" and "bogan". While the majority may not profess to share the extremists' politics, the functional differences between them and the fringe are blurred if they take part of the same activities.

In this context, it is supremely difficult to educate a certain type of young white man about the nature of his privilege, because so much of his self image is bound up in believing he is right about everything, even those things he actually knows very little about. Hopefully it's not going to take a tragedy for these otherwise intelligent, empathetic and compassionate citizens to see the light.

Short Kicks: The People's Hamstring

- ASADA have convinced Cronulla Sharks players to take a plea deal to admit guilt over the Stephen Dank drug saga, which means they only miss the remaining few weeks of the current NRL season. The amount of games they will miss is equivalent to that if they all injured a hamstring. On one hand, ASADA gets to claim a victory and focus on the club giving them most resistance, in Essendon. On the other hand, the "win" is about as hollow as the head of an average Sharks player. Unfortunately for Essendon fans, the EFC hierarchy are unlikely to be offered such a deal because of their intransigence. Even if such a deal was put forward, they most likely wouldn't accept it because it would mean the sainted James Hird would have to be rubbed out for life, and captain Jobe Watson would have to lose his Brownlow Medal. The sideshow of the current Essendon court battle is only a distraction before we get to the third act in that tragedy.

- Bill Shorten has addressed all the rumours about being the Senior Labour Figure at the centre of rape allegations, which have now been confirmed as never going to go anywhere. While the media are asking questions of every Labor politician who bobs his or her head up today, the only real remaining question is whether the media is going to pursue the story well beyond its nominal shelf life, in particular by airing the allegations directly from the woman herself. Who am I kidding? After the Gillard era, nothing is too grubby for the "mainstream" media to run with.

- Liberal Party failure John Hewson is now advocating for a Tax Commission, to remove powers to set fiscal policy just as the RBA was created to stop the National Party dictating monetary policy from Cabinet. This would be a complete abrogation of responsibility by the Australian political class, an admission of incompetence on a grand scale. Just because Hewson can't explain GST on a birthday cake doesn't mean we should abandon the ongoing search for a politician who can build consensus for reform. It is all too easy to look at the gradual degradation of the skill level of our politicians at a federal level and conclude that economics should be left to the wonks. Even if the Tax Commission was a paragon of Keynesian orthodoxy, that ideology must be leavened with healthy doses of democracy lest it become just another tool of unaccountable elites.

Climate change deniers, from the backline

In honour of Christine Milne's listing of climate change deniers prominent in Australia, I have taken the liberty of adding a few more to bring it up to 22 and arranging them into an Australian football team, named from the backline in traditional style a la the Coodabeens:

B: Brian Fisher, Dick Warburton, Shirley In't Veld
HB: Sam Walsh, Hugh Morgan, Mitch Hook
C: Martin Ferguson, Chris Mitchell, Cory Bernardi
HF: John Roskam, Ian Plimer, Jo Nova
F: Andrew Bolt, Gina Rinehart, Rupert Murdoch
Foll: Bob Carter, Danny Price, Ian McNamara
Int: Innes Willox, Maurice Newman, David Murray
Sub: George Pell

The backline is taken from the panel of the renewable energy target review, which is currently the last line of defence against science and facts. The halfback line is the mining lobby, for which any number of half back flankers could have been chosen since they have all been talking their own book on this issue from the start to deny extra taxes. Morgan is probably due for retirement, but he's going around one last time for another flag.

The centre line includes a left winger at left wing, albeit in name only, as I reckon Martin Ferguson is one of those Labor politicians who is going to end up being more beloved of the right as times goes on (see: Gary Johns). Cory Bernardi wins the right wing spot ahead of a gaggle of aspirants from the Senate clown show. Chris Mitchell sits in the center - not politically, of course, but in the centre of the climate denial team.

The half forward line contains a few IPA hired guns on the flanks, and I could have chucked half a dozen more from the ranks of the wingnut think tanks, but centre half forward could only be occupied by one man: pebble specialist Ian Plimer. There is no rock that Plimer couldn't pick up in Australia and wax lyrical about its geological history with great precision and knowledge... and then proceed to piff in the general direction of intelligent people, to no effect.

In one forward pocket you have Andrew Bolt who is usually fully forward in his attacks, who is in the pocket of the other forward pocket in Rupert Murdoch who is never shy of coming forward and reaching into his pocket, but arguably Bolt's also in the pocket of Gina Rinehart who is your classic roadblock full forward, and has a lot of other teammates in her pocket such as the aforementioned Plimer. Ms Rinehart has a lot of pockets in her overalls.

There are two more jacked-up credibility-free scientists at ruck and ruck rover in palaeontologist Bob Carter and economist Danny Price, but for rover it's a media personality, the host of Australia All Over on ABC Radio, the infamous "Macca". He would also make my team of Australians Furthest Up Themselves, but he makes this list due to his denialism.

The interchange bench is staffed by yet more business rentseekers, of which there are a cast of thousands. In the green substitutes vest is Cardinal George Pell, who doesn't quite fit in with the rest of this list but I suppose will be subbed in once the game is won to rack up some garbage time stats telling us all how right all his teammates were.

Ashes and #auspol, outliers and damned statistics

Over the past week, we have seen two different examples of statistical anomalies in Australia. The first was the First Ashes Test in Brisbane, which the only people who thought Australia was going to win were the bookies. Did they win? They shat it in, by a massive 381 runs, on the back of a first innings collapse of 6 for 9 that came out of nowhere and from which the English never recovered. After the Aussies had lost the three previous series including a 3-0 drubbing in England only two months ago - which, admittedly, was closer than the scoreline suggested - the Poms are now reeling to the extent that they are whinging that Mitchell "Studsy" Johnson is the new Harold Larwood, raising the spectre of Bodyline without apparent irony.

Those bookies must have known something. The fact that Australia hadn't lost in Brisbane for decades would have been one clue. With rain forecast - though it played little to no role - and Shield pitches this year being far more batsman-friendly, the smart money was on the draw, in my opinion. Nevertheless, the Gabba pitch turned from day two and Nathan "Timmay" Lyon used the extra bounce to good effect to snare two of those six wickets in the collapse.

The other big unexpected factor was that Darren "Boof" Lehmann and Craig "Billy" McDermott in the Australian coaching staff had somehow figured out a way to use Studsy's execrably poor action and lack of proper technique in his favour. For a good six or so years now, Studsy has refused to hold the ball in the correct position with seam upright, as his colleagues Ryan "Spearmint" Harris and Peter "Vicious" Siddle do in order to get the seam to hit the pitch and produce swing. Studsy's scrambled seam technique has meant he gets zero seam or swing movement, which had led to his figures collapsing and his exit from the Test team as his confidence crumbled. Notwithstanding that he had been taken under the wing of no less a man that D.K. Lillee in the offseason, he was only picked for this test because a host of more preferred options were injured.

Boof and Billy hatched a plan, which must have been borne out of desperation more than anything else. Studsy was going to bowl crap that didn't swing or seam, so what did he have left? Pace, that's all. Well, unless you count piss and wind. Studsy also doesn't have much control - the reason he holds the ball with a scrambled seam must be because he couldn't control it at all holding it properly, so he could only hope to keep it on the pitch by grasping the seam in the tips of all of his four fingers instead of the usual two-fingers-down-the-seam method.

The result of this set of weaknesses was that the only thing Boof and Billy could think of to ensure that Studsy wasn't carted about the park like Brett "Slotty" Lee was to tell him to attack the body. This tactic is usually referred to in knowledgeable cricket circles as "legside filth". Proper Test batsmen, wearing padding and helmets and with the safety of the Bodyline-induced restriction of only two fielders allowed behind square leg, should be able to spank that sort of rubbish for enough runs to convince the opposing captain that it's a bad idea best left in the 1930s.

Curiously, it worked. The Poms, most of whom earned OBEs in multiple previous series beating up on hapless Aussies, were duly intimidated. New chum Michael "Dingle" Carberry put up some resistance but eventually fell to Studsy falling for the three card trick flashing outside off. Kevin Pietersen thoughtlessly hooked a harmless Studsy sucker ball straight to fine leg. Jonathan "Joost" Trott looked like he didn't want to be out there, and Studsy claimed him twice. Of course it has come out later that Joost didn't actually want to be out there, but that is not Studsy's fault.

The other statistical outlier of the week was the Nielsen poll that had Labor ahead 52:48 in 2PP. No other poll has the opposition ahead, though the trend is definitely towards them: Newspoll went a point in their favour to 48:52, and ReachTEL also shifted a point to Labor to 49:51, while the normally glacially-moving Essential was static as usual.

Can Labor be praised for an excellent performance? Can Studsy be lauded for finally figuring out this bowling caper? No and no. These outliers may be signifiers of a more permanent shift in both cases, but the cause of any such movement would be the weakness of the incumbent, not the strength of the challenger. Australia is still a very flawed team, it's just that the English were never that good to begin with, age is catching up to them and we're only just realising now how very beatable they always have been. We have always had the "cattle" to beat England, even when we were getting thrashed. It was a matter of picking the right bulls and putting a stop to the childish antics that have been allowed in the dressing room by tantrum-prone New South Welshmen.

Similarly, Bill Shorten would be foolish to congratulate himself on a job well done, because the best thing he can do at the moment is let the internal inconsistencies of the Tony Abbott regime work against each other to their ultimate conclusion, whatever that might be. Abbott is methodically working through each major element of his election platform and reneging on every promise: his "stop the boats" solution is in ruins, his "budget emergency" never existed, his "Jakarta-focused foreign policy" is an international joke, his "unity ticket" on Gonski has now been ripped up.

There are definite signs in both cases of the outlier being a leading indicator, rather than an anomaly. It would not be surprising, though, to see England recover in their off-week Alice Springs jaunt and go on to retain the Ashes for a fourth time in succession. It would also be normal to see Abbott start to learn on the job and improve his poll numbers. More about that last one in future posts, no doubt!

UPDATE: as Homer (nottrampis) points out in the comments, there is conjecture about current polls being a bit misleading due to different treatments of preference flows. Homer blogged about this, as did William Bowe at Poll Bludger:

A more technical observation to be made about the [Nielsen] result is that the two-party preferred figures are based on respondent-allocated preferences, whereas Nielsen’s topline numbers are usually based on preference flows from the previous election. This no doubt is because the Australian Electoral Commission still hasn’t published Coalition-versus-Labor two-party results from the 11 seats where other candidates made the final count (I’m told they are likely to do so later this week). However, I have one model for allocating preferences based on the information available from the election, which gets Labor’s two-party vote to 51.7%, and Kevin Bonham has two, which get it to 51.2% and 51.4%.

The upshot of this wonkishness is that while Nielsen might be a point too high for Labor due to this discrepancy, Newspoll might be a point too low, so it's pretty much a wash. This all leads to today's BludgerTrack figure of 50.8:49.2 to the Coalition, which is a poor result for a two-month-old government in anyone's language.

Statement of Charges against Essendon supporters

NOTICE OF CHARGE

To: Essendon Football Club supporters
Everywhere

1. You are charged with the following offence against Australian rules football:

Contrary to logic and common sense, in the period from about February 2013 to now, you engaged in conduct unbecoming or likely to prejudice the interests or reputation of the Australian Football League or to bring the game of football into disrepute.

2. A statement of the grounds for the laying of the charge is attached.

3. There will be no hearing. Penalties have already been determined, and will be applied without delay.

STATEMENT OF GROUNDS

1. The conduct described below constituted conduct unbecoming or likely to prejudice the interests or reputation of the AFL or to bring the game of football into disrepute on the part of Essendon Football Club ("the Club") because, having determined to support a club which evidence suggests has implemented a scientifically pioneering program relating to the administration of supplements to its players, it engaged in the following logical fallacies:

(a) Argument from ignorance: "You can't convict the players because we will never know if they really took the drugs." 

(b) Argument from incredulity: "I can't believe James would do this. It's just not possible." 

(c) Argument from repetition: "Aren't we all sick of this? Let's just let James get on with it." 

(d) Argument from silence: "The players will never admit to taking drugs, so you can't suspend them for taking drugs." 

(e) Begging the question: "The players have done nothing wrong, so they deserve no penalties." 

(f) Burden of proof shifting: "Demetriou has to answer for tipping off Evans in the first place."

(g) Circular reasoning: "James is a great man and top bloke, so he wouldn't do such a thing."

(h) Circular cause and consequence: "James won so many Anzac, Brownlow and Crichton medals that he couldn't have done such things."

(i) Continuum fallacy: "You can't say there was a pharmacologically experimental environment at Essendon unless you can quantify how many injections there were."

(j) Suppressed correlative: "AOD-9604 doesn't even enhance performance, none of these drugs do really. We don't know enough about them yet."

(k) Equivocation: "What's wrong with players taking drugs anyway? Headache drugs are fine. They take tablets all the time, not to mention cortisone and other injections."

(l) Ecological fallacy: "Jobe shouldn't have his Brownlow taken away, he was always big and strong so it wouldn't have affected him anyway even if it was performance enhancing."

(m) Etymological fallacy: "What does it mean anyway, performance enhancing drug? Sportspeople take drugs to enhance performance all the time. That's what food is. Sugar is a PED."

(n) Fallacy of composition: "Dr Bruce Reid is the most respected and moral doctor in the business. He wouldn't have let anything that bad happen."

(o) Fallacy of division: "Essendon is a strong club with strong people working for it, they wouldn't have let a bad egg in to screw things up."

(p) False dilemma: "Look, either Hird is innocent, or there has been a massive conspiracy by certain external elements of which he is only a mostly unknowing victim."

(q) If-by-whiskey: "Okay, if it comes out that James has signed a contract with the devil himself and sacrifices babies in the dungeons at Windy Hill, then of course I'll change my mind. Until then, he has done no wrong in my eyes and deserves my full support as an upstanding member of the football community."

(r) Fallacy of many questions: "Sure, Demetriou can put out this list of charges against James, but when is he going to stop putting the Bowie knife into him by leaking to Caro? When is Andy D going to stop the personal campaign against James? When will the AFL get off his back?"

(s) Ludic fallacy: "That story of the Mexican drugs is just too ludicrous. What are the odds of that happening?"

(t) Fallacy of the single cause: "The simplest explanation of this whole thing is that it's a witch hunt by Demetriou for a perfectly legitimate supplements regime. There are just too many elements in that charge sheet."

(u) False attribution: "Look at Andrew Garnham's testimony, he was an AFL employee! Well, he was working for Essendon at the time he was supposed to have got this info from ASADA, I know..."

(v) Fallacy of quoting out of context: "Dr Reid said, and I quote, 'I am sure Steve Danks believes that what we are doing is totally ethical and legal.' Come on, that's Bruce Reid talking!"

(w) False authority: "Gerard Whateley changed his mind the other day on AFL360, and that's good enough for me."

(x) Argument to moderation: "Demetriou should come at least half way between his sanctions and what Hird is prepared to accept. That's true compromise."

(y) Gambler's fallacy: "Every day it's another bad news story about Essendon. One of these days it has to turn around, so keep fighting."

(z) Hedging: "Dank was giving them Thymosin, and yes its injection schedule was consistent with the banned beta 4 type of Thymosin, but I think he actually was referring to the non-banned kind, and you can't prove otherwise."

(aa) Historian's fallacy: "James would not have gotten Essendon into this, knowing that this was the situation he would be putting himself and the club into, if he really did do all those things."

(bb) Homunculus fallacy: "There was an evil little man inside James' head telling him to do all those things, it wasn't really him in his right mind." 

(cc) Inflation Of Conflict: "Gerard and Robbo disagree with Caro and Patrick, who knows what to believe."

(dd) Incomplete comparison: "James is just a better coach with more morals and sounder judgement."

(ee) Inconsistent comparison: "James played in more finals than Bobby Skilton, won more grand finals than Kevin Murray and coached more finals than Andrew Demetriou. How can you not think he's worth fighting for?"

(ff) Ignoratio elenchi: "James was a great player and is a great coach, he deserves our moral support."

(gg) Kettle logic: "James is not the sort of person who would get mixed up with convicted criminals. And Shane Charters didn't supply him with PEDs in his playing days, anyway."

(hh) Mind projection fallacy: "Everyone's taking drugs anyway, what Essendon has done is no different to what Collingwood or Hawthorn are doing."

(ii) Moral high ground fallacy: "James will fight for the Club and its supporters until his dying breath, in the name of honesty and all that is good about the Club, against the unprincipled horde of haters."

(jj) Moralistic fallacy: "Drug taking is horribly dangerous and threatens the health of the players, so it is not in James' nature to do such a thing.

(kk) Moving the goalposts: "A more important issue is the AFL bringing the game into disrepute with its attack on the character of the game in the media."

(ll) Naturalistic fallacy: "Footballers and coaches have always sought an edge, it's part of the game, they shouldn't be punished hard if they stray over the edge a little bit."

(mm) Nirvana fallacy: "At this point we are going to lose people from the game no matter what happens, shouldn't we be figuring out how to win them back instead of bringing down the harshest of sanctions?"

(nn) Onus probandi: "Demetriou has to prove that he is fit to stand in judgement over a champion like James before anything else happens."

(oo) Post hoc ergo propter hoc: "I can't help but think that we didn't have much of a drug problem before Demetriou was made CEO."

(pp) Proof by verbosity: Gerard Whateley.

(qq) Prosecutor's fallacy: "You could go into any other big club and find a similar lack of governance, that doesn't mean James is guilty of all these things."

(rr) Psychologist's fallacy: "I watch the players all the time and I didn't see anything particularly different about the Bombers in 2011, they hadn't bulked up noticeably from what I saw."

(ss) Red herring: "What's this I see with Caro making these references to Essendon people being linked to the Liberal Party, is this a witch hunt or what?"

(tt) Regression fallacy: "The Bombers sucked in the second half of 2012, clearly the drugs didn't work anyway."

(uu) Reification: "The footy gods are on James' side on this one, he will pull through."

(vv) Retrospective determinism: "This was always going to bring the playing group together so we can win flags once again."

(ww) Shotgun argumentation: see above.

(xx) Special pleading: "James Hird is an ornament to the game and will become a Legend, he should be paid the respect that goes with his record."

(yy) Wrong direction: "James is right to be angry at Demetriou because the League has hounded him for months."

(zz) Personal Attacks: "Who cares about what the Fat Greek says anyway."

ANNEXURE A:
NOTICE OF PENALTIES

1. You are herewith sentenced to support the Essendon Football Club for the rest of your life.

2. You are concurrently sentenced to watch your club fall from its lofty height of constant premiership contender to the disgrace of deserved mediocrity, as happened to the Carlton Football Club a decade ago, through a series of savage sanctions that could have been largely avoided if the Club hadn't been so bloody minded about defending individuals.

3. Due to these Club sanctions, you are also sentenced to watch successive boards try and fail to subvert them to restore former glories, hiring has-been senior coaches and trading away draft picks for mercenaries and journeymen to top up an over-rated list.

4. You are additionally sentenced to witnessing years of endless speculation over the return of former stars to save the Club, destabilising the current hierarchy and undermining faith in incumbent personnel, not the least speculation about James Hird himself (that's if he hasn't been rubbed out for life).

5. There is no number five. Not any more.

AFL: league of extraordinary gentlemen no more?

As the Essendon doping saga drags on towards its inexorable conclusion, with many parties under pressure for all sort of reasons, the most pressure is not on any single person, but the sport itself.

The AFL is defined by a series of gentlemen's agreements, starting with but not limited to the Laws of the Game - which are capitalised in general usage in footy circles like an Act of Parliament, but not encoded in actual statute. This model of the league writing its own rules, which are knowingly orthogonal in many respects to the law of the land, continues from the basics of the game all the way up to the high level concepts of socialist equalisation on which the league is precariously balanced. It is not necessarily a crime to trip a man in the street, but it is a punishable offence under the rules of Australian football. The courts look with jaundiced eye upon restraint of trade in most situations, yet the AFL imposes its will on young men to send them across the country to play for much less money than they could command in a truly free market.

When sporting regulations are tested in the courts they can be found wanting, as in the Terry Hill case in 1991 which proved that the NRL draft was a restraint of trade and left that league looking like a laughing stock. Similarly, Essendon and Stephen Dank have strong defensive arguments on many fronts in the current drugs scandal, as I am sure their highly-paid lawyers are telling them. For one, the new powers ASADA has to compel Dank to testify at pains of a $5,100 daily fine can be seen as an abuse of several human rights, such as the right not to be compelled to incriminate oneself. Essendon and Hird have a point when they highlight the conflict of interest the AFL Commission has in determining sanctions against EFC officials for bringing the game into disrepute at the same time as they are leading the investigation with ASADA into the drug allegations.

The pressure is on Essendon to give in and Do The Right Thing by sacking Hird, agreeing to cop levels of sanctions even worse that the Carlton salary cap breaches a decade ago, and accepting that they will share Carlton's fate of turning into a mediocre also-ran. However, at the top of the Essendon hierarchy now is not the president Paul Little, but James Hird himself, since all those at Windy Hill who might have stood up to him in the past are now gone.

We used to call him Gentleman James. Is he still a gentleman, able to see the bigger picture of the sport and act on its behalf instead of his own interests? It must be so difficult for him, knowing how duplicitous the league has been in its dealings. The carpetstrollers at AFL House do not deserve the paternal post-siren handshake-and-bum-pat of a victor.

Stephen Dank is no gentleman. He is going to fight to the bitter end. He has nothing else to play for, no team around him or future to build. James Hird has a family, a club and his own conscience in his mind right now. He holds the integrity of the sport, the game he loves and that has given him so much to live for, in the palm of his hands. He is not bigger than the game. He is not even bigger than his club. The AFL officials are not bigger than the game either, just fallible humans like he is, but Hird is being asked to look beyond their petty concerns as well. To be the bigger man.

No one wins out of this process, it's a negative sum. Even if Essendon goes to court and wins, thus destroying ASADA and the drug testing process in Australia, the sport it is a part of would lose and the Bombers would become the pariah of the competition. At some point, someone inside Essendon has to say enough, this has gone on too long and it's not worth fighting any more. At this point, the only person capable of making that decision is James Hird.

UPDATE: Sinclair Davidson responds at Catallaxy Files, asking why this is so messy.

I don’t actually disagree with much of what m0nty says. But I do wonder: how dumb are the AFL? If you’re in change of an organisation that is legally fragile, why would you mess with people who have standing to sue in court? Why would you mess with people who have money to sue in court?

As Leigh Matthews suggested the other night – the AFL should have whacked the club with some or other nonsense charge and moved on – but when it decided to go after specific individuals it chose to have a fight.

The answer is that the AFL can't give in like that, because the integrity of the sport is at stake. If it allows Essendon to flaunt the gentlemen's agreement not to use drugs, then it opens the competition up to all manner of other abuses of the trust that holds the game together. The league may have annoyed Hird and some fans with the tactics they have used, but the principle is more important than the minutiae of who leaked to whom. After all, no one wants Australian football to become as disgraceful as rugby league!

WADA and ASADA, harder and harder

We are currently in the late stages of private negotiation between the AFL, Essendon Football Club and related individuals from coach James Hird on down to determine the league's sanctions for governance issues relating to the ongoing drugs scandal, which are separate to any forthcoming sanctions from the drug authorities for actually taking the drugs. Andrew Bolt thinks the AFL should charge its own CEO rather than Hird, who created a "pharmacologically experimental" environment, with bringing the game of Australian rules football into disrepute.

If Essendon broke a rule, punish it.

But “bringing the game into disrepute” is just a “vibe” charge. Can’t prove anything, just don’t like the vibe.  This is saying something’s wrong just because the likes of Andrew Demetriou and The Age feel it is. This is a kind of witchhunt justice - a bone to thrown to the mob simply because it expects one. 

I don’t hold the game in any less regard because of what Essendon or coach James Hird did. The club was slack, yes, but has suffered for it and sacked people. But I still can’t see any real proof of a knowing infringement of any rules or a desire to cheat.

How would the AFL even prove the game was now held in lesser repute thanks to Hird and Essendon? 

This line was the same one used by Mark Robinson of the Herald Sun and Tim Watson of (let's face it) the Essendon Football Club yesterday on radio SEN: no performance enhancing drug (PED) use can be proven, so you can't punish anyone for taking them.

The Essendon case, and to a lesser extent the similar one at Cronulla, have sent the media in this country crazy, of which Bolt's reaction is only the most extreme allowed to be printed by a newspaper. The media has taken turns in joyfully printing leaks from inside the process, and hand wringing about how they wish it was all over and the destabilisation of sport would finish.

The position of requiring absolute proof to convict ignores the history of drug cases overseas, especially in America. No specific positive drug tests were used as evidence to convict Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, Marion Jones or Alex Rodriguez. (Some did test positive much earlier in their careers, but their suspensions were for later periods.) The careers of all of these elite sportspeople, who were even more legendary than the great Hird was in their fields, are forever tarnished without definitive non-circumstantial proof of their guilt ever having been presented to a court.

The crucial part about this is that this is the way that the drug agencies work. The supra-national World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), and its national arms like ASADA, are not given the same powers as police. Drug cheats in sport operate in a grey area where they are technically not committing crimes, but they are doing society a great disservice by hoodwinking the public into cheering on a lie. As a society, we have deemed it suitable that we do not elevate sports drug agencies to the enforcement level of federal police, for better or worse.

The way they were nailed, these drugs cheats, was accumulation of circumstantial evidence, and months and months of ongoing pressure on the support staff and hangers-on of the cheats until the weight was finally too much and the cases broke open. These things take months and years, something which we in Australia hadn't experienced before but have copped this year in spades. Rather than burly men with badges hauling ne'er-do-wells in by their collars like real police, the work of sports drug agencies is as much about using the media to shame the participants into co-operation via targeted leaks and backgroundings. This is the price we pay for not giving them too much physically coercive power.

One consequence of this situation is that facilitators like Stephen Dank can dance their merry jig around the unenforceable regulations of sporting bodies without having to face up to Plod, as long as they are smart about not breaking any statutes along the way. Dank is flourishing like Michael Flatley in this regard, and even had the temerity to tell the media yesterday he felt sorry for Hird and advised the AFL on their strategy.

Bolt and others on the Right have taken the easy opportunity to side with Dank, wedging the authorities between their lack of power to compel evidence of direct guilt and society's desire not to see sports drug agencies kitted out in riot gear doing armed raids on bikie hideouts. Lost in the middle of all of that is the truth, which usually comes out afterwards from the likes of Armstrong, Jones and Jose Canseco that they were juiced up. Drugs in sport are never a black and white issue... until the confession comes out.

UPDATE: 1996 co-winner of the Brownlow Medal sacked! But it's not Hird, it's Michael Voss from Brisbane.

UPDATE II:

The AFL has charged Bombers coach James Hird, doctor Bruce Reid, football boss Danny Corcoran, assistant coach Mark Thompson and the Essendon Football Club with bringing the game into disrepute over the club's supplements program.

Note: this in no way absolves any player of guilt. In short, ASADA wants to haul Dank in using its recently beefed up powers to nail the case on use of PEDs. Until then, the sword of Damocles is still swinging in the breeze.