Welcome to the Virtue Olympics, where Israel Folau is the target

For their attacks on Israel Folau (top right) and wife Maria Folau (bottom right), The Mocker presents gold medals in the wokeathon to Nine commentators Liz Ellis and Peter FitzSimons.

Former Wallabies player Israel Folau may be a pariah at the major sporting arenas, but his name will forever be associated with one the greatest contests of the millennium, and that is the Virtue Olympics.

The defining event is the wokeathon, a superhuman event where athletes are tested in various disciplines, including self-righteousness, contrived anger, condescension, and ham acting. And what a stupendous performance it was from this week’s winner, former Australian netball captain Liz Ellis.

“This is the segment that I just want to sigh,” said the Sports Sunday host last weekend as she exhaled theatrically for the camera.

Let's talk about Folau's GoFundMe...

Watch: @Channel9#9WWOS #9SportsSunday pic.twitter.com/2zGvUFmgOe

— Wide World of Sports (@wwos) June 23, 2019

“Hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations has made its way into Israel Folau’s GoFundMe account. This morning it had tipped over to just over six hundred thousand dollars.”

“I’m the same as you,” said her co-panellist and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons. “I’m just exhausted by the whole thing.”

“Over it”, Ellis replied tersely, thus making it clear to the audience this distasteful subject was beneath her. She received a near perfect score from the wokeathon judges. A more worthy recipient of the gold medal I cannot think of offhand, although in hindsight she could have earned even higher points had she literally held her nose to symbolise Folau’s moral repugnance.

Perhaps giddy with progressive accolades and seemingly forgetting she was “over it”, Ellis later took to Twitter that same day to attack the Adelaide Thunderbirds. The club’s crime was its response regarding Maria Folau’s use of social media to promote her husband’s GoFundMe campaign.

The club had made clear in this media statement it did not endorse its star player’s reposting, stating it supported an “inclusive environment that allows anyone to participate in the great game of netball regardless of gender, religious belief, age, race or sexual orientation”. Nonetheless it specified that Maria’s actions had not contravened the club’s social media policy.

“Yeah nah not good enough,’’ Ellis tweeted. “How about this: There is no room for homophobia in our game. Anyone who is seen to support or endorse homophobia is not welcome. As much as I love watching @MariaFolau play netball I do not want my sport endorsing the views of her husband.’’

Yeah nah not good enough.
How about this:
There is no room for homophobia in our game. Anyone who is seen to support or endorse homophobia is not welcome. As much as I love watching ⁦@MariaFolau⁩ play netball I do not want my sport endorsing the views of her husband. pic.twitter.com/IR5jecVm6O

— Liz Ellis (@LizzyLegsEllis) June 23, 2019

This is the level which we have descended to — we now target the spouses of those who have committed so-called hate speech by demanding vicarious dismissal. What else, Liz Ellis — should we forcibly shave Maria’s head and make her do the Walk of Atonement a la Game of Thrones? What better way to establish our tolerance credentials than hurling insults and filth at her.

Writing in 2015 for the Sydney Morning Herald about the Netball World Cup, Ellis approvingly noted the absence of “public whingeing”, “sledging”, and “off-court controversy” in the sport. How ironic. Not half as ironic, however, as her Order of Australia in 2009, which she earned in part for “distinguished service to netball as an elite player and coach, through support and advocacy for young women. Any comment, Maria Folau?

It was a much-chagrined Ellis writing for the same paper yesterday. “I am devastated to think that the way I wrote it may have suggested the sort of bigotry that I passionately dislike,” she stated, adding that her tweet was “poorly worded”.

“I would like to think we are well past the time where a woman is held to account for things her husband says,” she added. Yeah nah not good enough.

When GoFundMe shut down Israel Folau’s appeal on the ostensible grounds it breached its “terms of service,” FitzSimons could not have been more exuberant. “In 2019, you better stand for diversity, or you will lose the support of enormously diverse and newly empowered swathes of the Australian population,” he chortled, thus securing the wokeathon’s silver medal. “The people have spoken,” he declared fulsomely.

My column.
The people have spoken, and now Folau should listen https://t.co/7fARQJS1Bi via @smh

— Peter FitzSimons (@Peter_Fitz) June 24, 2019

When the likes of FitzSimons purport to speak on behalf of “the people”, you can be certain their canvassing is based either on the cheers and jeers of a Q&A audience or the response to a Twitter straw poll. As of this morning, the Australian Christian Lobby’s appeal for Folau’s legal fund has exceeded $2.1 million. We can conclude from this quite a few people have spoken, although not in the manner FitzSimons gleefully concluded.

But it was something he tweeted only days before in response to Folau’s appeal which gives you an even better insight into FitzSimons’s objectivity. “We the people (there he goes again) need to harness our rage at #Folau and do something useful with it,” he said. Harnessing “our” rage? Congratulations, Fitz, you have officially become the Margo Kingston of sports journalists.

This is a good point. We the people need to harness our rage at #Folau and do something useful with it. Why don't we get behind something like this, so they can surge on our collective grunt? RT if you agree. And donate! https://t.co/JQqLlmjCGQ

— Peter FitzSimons (@Peter_Fitz) June 21, 2019

And not that we needed reminding how badly Rugby Australia has handled the Folau affair, but CEO Raelene Castle was there last week to do so. “From our perspective [GoFundMe] is a place where sick children get support, so certainly it is not a strategy we thought was appropriate,” she told Nine News.

As the former Wallabies Star Israel Folau's 'GoFund Me' page ticks over 330 thousand dollars, Rugby Boss Raelene Castle says the money should go to sick children instead. @DamoNews #9News pic.twitter.com/STSD4Z4aGM

— Nine News Sydney (@9NewsSyd) June 21, 2019

To reiterate: Folau is pursuing RA in the Fair Work Commission for $10m in lost earnings plus damages and civil penalties. If realised, this would cripple the organisation financially, to say nothing about what would be left of its credibility. As part of his legal claim, he alleges RA terminated his contract on the grounds of religion.

Now look at it from this perspective. Rightly or wrongly, Folau is no longer contracted to RA. Yet Castle gratuitously and publicly postulates as to the appropriateness of how he funds his legal case. Presumably it has not occurred to the CEO what inferences can be drawn from her remarks when the crux of this legal claim is whether RA exceeded its authority as employer.

Irrespective of how legal proceedings pan out — and it is clear Folau intends going all the way to the High Court if necessary — RA has been found wanting in the court of public opinion. Even Gillian Triggs, the former president of the Australian Human Rights Commission has spoken in support of Folau, stating he was entitled to the view that “we are all going to hell”.

“It’s foolish and disproportionate to prevent him from preaching something that he believes,” she told ABC presenter Patricia Karvelas. On a side note, did anyone else upon learning Triggs’s stance immediately think of the original Ghostbusters film and that line “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria”?

These once great institutions that administered football’s sporting codes have an inflated sense of their raison d’être. “If you go to a football club, in most towns (it) is a core community institution,” said AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan last week. “And so people look to the AFL, as their governing body, broadly for their position on social issues.” Much like spectators look to AFL behavioural awareness officers for guidance on crowd etiquette, you might say.

Or perhaps like the entire community looks to a sports show host for bigotry-awareness training. “Let’s not shy away from it,” wrote Ellis in her defensive apologia this week. “This whole thing is about homophobia.” Actually, let’s not shy away from the fact that those in the school of social justice jurisprudence frequently resort to aggression, bullying, and ostracising to further their cause.

And what of Ellis’s claim this is all about homophobia? Put simply, she suffers from elitist myopia. What we are witnessing is the mass disquiet that follows a confluence of incursions against free speech. Look at the students vilified and hounded for questioning why a university provides a racially segregated computer laboratory. Look at the taxpayer-subsidised academic activists and their hysterical denunciations of a philanthropic body that merely seeks to fund a degree in Western Civilisation.

Look at the pompous and overpaid human rights commissioners who foster identity politics and grossly exaggerate the extent of discrimination in Australia to safeguard their sinecures. Look at the corporate CEOs who see themselves as moral luminaries responsible for effecting social change. Look at the increasing number of workers who now pause before hitting a ‘like’ icon on social media, worried that doing so may cost them their livelihood. Remember not so long ago when we used to laugh at television footage of Japanese workers singing the company song?

Small wonder that Folau’s appeal has the money pouring in. The reason the donors are giving is simple and it has everything to do with control freaks dictating what they should say, believe and think.

They’re over it.