Thieves Like Us

What would papers do without Twitter?  Lots of Twitter stories around today.  It's like the papers are intent on rendering themselves irrelevant - why do we need them when we can actually be on Twitter.  Oh yeah, for crappy "scandals"...

I've avoided the whole new Ryan Giggs revelations thing for the simple reason that it's absolutely irrelevant.  And I'm consistent with this.  It's nothing to do with the fact that he's a Man Utd player, I take the same approach to any player caught with his trousers down (the one use of "scandal" I've made use of on this blog is a piece which compared Rooney's attitude to leaving the club early last season to the attitude of the prostitute he slept with), no cheap point scoring because they play for another club.  So it's the same with Giggs, the superinjunction I referred to a few time here because of the media implications.  Anyway, with that disclaimer I'm going to link to this one story from The Mail which goes over the whole thing.  Their justification?  Sponsors fleeing... It's typical Daily Mail - the chance to print salacious detail but with the veneer that you're only talking about that because of something else.  The one paragraph I'll quote is this:

Marketing experts said firms would now be loth to associate themselves with him. Along with Reebok, Giggs signed deals to publicise the Swiss watch firms Patek Philippe and Cyma, car manufacturer Citroen and phone company Saudi Telecom.

They were attracted by a combination of his former teen heart-throb image and his more mature self-styled persona as happily-married family man, linked with good causes such as Unicef and his being named BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Nigel Currie, of the consultancy Brand Rapport, said the latest developments were ‘extremely damaging from Giggs’s point of view’. He added: ‘What he had going for him from a marketing perspective was his seemingly clean-cut personal image. ‘A little like Tiger Woods, he had this untouchable air about him, almost Mr Perfect – he was seen as a model professional and a really good guy. 

Of course, in a way, I couldn't give a toss about Ryan Giggs' sponsors, whether he has any or not.  It's just the absolute hypocrisy that I find annoying.  It's the continued attempts to justify going after the essentially private Ryan Giggs by making it seem as though he's been trading on some family guy image the whole time.  He really hasn't.  I'd have been hard pressed to pick his wife out of a line up, even now, but especially before, kids?  has he?  I'm still not altogether sure - this article says he has at least one, who knows though, and frankly, who cares.  "Self-styled persona?"  Have we reached such a stage of post-modern reflexivity that actually being ones' self is considered a pose, a "self-styled persona?"  And I agree, his image was of "a model profesional." A professional.  Sportsman.  Not a priest, or any other profession where who he shags comes into play.  It's how he's handled himself on the pitch, the things he's won, the years he's kept at the top of his game, that's why he's Ryan Giggs, that's what his image is.  Not a family guy.  And in all this (how long's it been going on now - a month?) the only thing I've seen anyone dredge up (and I bet they've been trying and trying) where Giggs says anything about family is him answering a question on MUTV - so much for the family guy image they keep telling us he's trading on.

That off my chest, let's look at the news... Rooney tweets picture of his hair and The Guardian speculates on the new relationship Twitter affords sports stars with the public:

unveiling of his newly-replenished head of hair on Twitter is being heralded by experts as the latest example of football players, in particular, using the service to burnish their image by communicating directly with their fans and bypassing the media.

While Rooney and his fellow Manchester United players Rio Ferdinand (1.15 million followers) and Michael Owen (434,530) have become avid users of Twitter, the same site was largely responsible for the situation where a privacy injunction taken out by teammate Ryan Giggs became untenable.

That does not seem to have put off Rooney, who has had a rollercoaster relationship with the tabloid press, and is increasingly using Twitter to feed his 784,000-plus followers the sort of asides that would normally fill the next day's gossip columns.

And it's all there.  Imagine why celebrities might want to bypass the media? And "burnish their image" (to burnish - To make smooth or glossy...).  Again with the reflexivity, does every tweet have to have an agenda?  Aren't newspapers the one's who attempt to set an agenda for stars, making Rooney into the "bad boy," any communication outside the media agenda doesn't have to be "burnishing," it's just showing how the media agenda is wrong.

Taking a "humorous" look is this piece in The Guardian:

Let's be clear: allowing your hair to thin gradually and naturally is a social taboo. These days, you're expected to either shave it off or cover it up, whether it be with hair plugs, a good old fashioned showbiz toupee or one of those daft caps that Jason Gardiner from Dancing On Ice was fond of before he, too, took the coward's way out. But Rooney – a man who works in an industry rife with preening narcissists – had the guts to say "No". He reminded society that there was a third way, whereby you rode out the storm, taking the long, lonely and arduous journey towards baldness the way nature intended. But now he's bottled it, seeking assistance from the hair replacement clinic – that last refuge of the thin-on- top coward.

The Mirror sink further into irrelevancy with a story on how footballers on Twitter don't have the best vocabulary - This is news?!

Onto the transfer gossip.  The deal for Ashley Young will be completed soon (next 48 hours they claim) according to The Mail.  Same paper links Blackburn's Phil Jones to pretty much every top club including us.

On the way out, The Sun claim West Brom want Tomasz Kuszczak.  While The Mail say Hernandez isn't going anywhere, after alleged interest from Real Madrid.