SOUR AND SWEET

This will be a “sweet and sour” editorial. Actually, to be more accurate, a “sour and sweet” editorial.

It is prompted by The Footy Show on Channel Nine last night and comments by Sam Newman and then an interview by Eddie McGuire with disgraced football star Jimmy Krakouer.

Earlier this week I was critical, savagely critical, about reports that Eddie McGuire was interviewing drug trafficker Krakouer on The Footy Show and later on Sixty Minutes and there were strong rumours that the Nine Network was paying the recently released jailbird.

We ran a poll on whether or not Krakouer should benefit financially from any television appearances on Channel Nine after his release from jail after serving nine years.

The poll showed that 25 per cent of you said YES and 75 per cent said NO.

I said I would go into this issue in more detail on Friday AFTER the Footy Show went to air but I did mention two words: TAC and tacky.

Tacky because in all the papers there was Eddie McGuire, Eddie Everywhere, looking like a chubby fan shaking Krakouer’s hand after his release from jail in Perth.

And I pointed out that Krakouer was not only a drug dealer but also a rapist. He served jail for that crime. And only weeks after Krakouer got his driver’s licence he was hooning about, speeding, and chasing his mate’s car, when he lost control, left the road, hit a road crew and killed a man.

Eddie McGuire is the president of the Collingwood Football Club. The TAC is one of the Magpies sponsors.

So back to “sour and sweet”. On The Footy Show last night Sam Newman, a sometime friend and obvious pillar of society, personally attacked me and Neil Mitchell for our comments about Krakouer and called us “stupid, boring, dumb people”.

He also predictably made much of the fact that I had been to jail. I shouldn’t have to defend myself. Shouldn’t have to explain that I went to jail because I was trying to stop rapists and child molesters.

But Sam, as always, scored his reckless, often factless, cheap shots.

And then, after interminable, teasing delays, we got the McGuire interview with Jimmy Krakouer.

I may surprise you with this comment: I thought McGuire’s interview was thorough, at times blunt, uncompromising and fair.

He made no excuse and no apology for Krakouer’s criminal past.

And Krakouer himself looked and sounded like a man who HAS paid the price of nearly a decade in jail as his kids grew up away from him and who wants to salvage something from a personally destroyed life in the years ahead.

Speaking of salvaging things: I think Eddie McGuire salvaged something from something that could have been an image shipwreck last night.

Friday, August 27, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004