Peter FitzSimons is being a sook over his ‘gorilla’ comment and should say sorry

WHAT’S worse? A 13-year-old girl who called a black footballer an “ape” or a 55-year-old commentator who called a black sports official a “gorilla”, asks Andrew Bolt.

Peter FitzSimons should say sorry to the girl for crucifying her three years ago.

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WHAT’S worse? A 13-year-old girl who calls a black footballer an “ape” in earshot of maybe 10 people?

Or a 55-year-old Fairfax commentator, Peter FitzSimons, who last week called a black sports official a “gorilla” in earshot of tens of thousands?

Well, I sure know which of those two is the biggest hypocrite and biggest sook. And it sure isn’t the girl.

I also know which one was big enough to say sorry.

And — no surprise — it wasn’t FitzSimons, the former rugby union star who heads the Australian Republican Movement.

FitzSimons, exposed now as a hypocrite, should say sorry to that girl for crucifying her three years ago for doing just what he’s done now.

Instead, he’s just sorry for himself, complaining that I’ve now “had a go” at him.

This farce started when the girl — a Collingwood fan at the footy with her nan — called Swans AFL star Adam Goodes an “ape”.

I doubt even a dozen people heard what she yelled out, but one was the bearded Goodes, who has Aboriginal ancestry.

He took offence and pointed her out to security staff, who ordered the girl out of her seat — without her nan — and took her to a room where she was detained and quizzed by police.

Meanwhile, her face was beamed on television to the nation, and Goodes the next day gave a press conference putting a name to it.

“Racism has a face,” he declared. “It’s a 13-year-old girl.”

Former Swans star Adam Goodes was called an “ape”.

Sanctimonious journalists then competed to be the most outraged by the “racism” of this mere child, in one of those incredibly vicious pile-ons that makes our Left so contemptible.

But few could outdo the huffing of FitzSimons.

He not only insisted that “Goodes quite rightly informed security” to punish the girl.

He was especially furious at anyone — like me and broadcaster Alan Jones — who pleaded for mercy for someone so young. Who begged for pity for a girl from a broken home who’d already said sorry for saying “ape”, despite insisting: “I didn’t mean it in a racist way”.

“Shame!’ cried FitzSimons at what he sneered were the “usual acolytes” defending her.

Note carefully what he said next: “If calling a black man a ‘gorilla’ and an ‘ape’ is not racial abuse, what the hell does it take?”

By your own words then, Peter, be damned.

Because — what karma — FitzSimons last week on Sky Sports was again venting, this time at a security official in the South African cricket team who’d manhandled a journalist at Adelaide airport.

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That official, Zunaid Wadee, is of dark complexion, and FitzSimons went for him: “That was disgraceful. If you are touring in a foreign country, you are visitors to their shores, to have your gorilla throw that guy — and I say gorilla in the sense of security, you know.”

Ah, yes. Mid-rant FitzSimons realised to his horror he’d done just what he’d savaged a mere girl for doing.

So in a panic he mid-sentence invented a new Australian vocabulary to excuse himself: “Just to avoid an international incident, I want to make clear, that ‘gorilla’ is Australian terminology for security.”

Bull. It’s not.

Now, let me be clear. I don’t believe FitzSimons is a racist or meant his insult in a racist way.

But I also don’t believe the 13-year-old was a racist and meant her insult in a racist way.

Can FitzSimons finally see now how unfair he was? Can’t he now forgive the girl like he forgives himself, and apologise for smearing her? After all, who should we hold to a higher standard: a 13-year-old girl or a 55-year-old journalist?

I’d also like FitzSimons to admit the girl at least had the courage that this former Test player has so far lacked: she at least apologised to Goodes, albeit after facing threats of prosecution. But it is not just FitzSimons who has been exposed as a hypocrite.

FitzSimons accused me of “a beat-up to beat all beat-ups” in blogging about this last week, and as proof noted that few people on the Left-leaning Twitter had criticised him.

But doesn’t that say it all about the Left — that it’s not the principle that counts, but the side?

The Left three years ago in one of its orgiastic pack-attacks tried to destroy a powerless, scared and sorry girl who shouted “ape” but now ignores or defends a mature man of the Left who shouted “gorilla”.

No wonder so many Australians are now so sick of the shouty sanctimony of our race-baiting Left.

The hypocrites.