After a week’s hiatus, the Wombat is back and he…I…would like to be a bit serious with my rant for today. What (or who) has so drawn my ire that it has stifled my customary attempts at reaching some modicum of wit?
None other than Paul ‘Fatty’ Vautin; or, more specifically, the shellacking he has been copping in the media. For those who are unaware, Vautin is the host of Channel 9’s “The Footy Show”, a program which I acutely despise due to some terribly unfunny attempts at humour and a lack of any attempt to talk about Rugby League.
Despite all of that, however, Vautin himself is by all means a nice enough kind of bloke. You wouldn’t know it from reading the papers however; rather, you would think he was Beelzebub himself, existing only to take pleasure in ruining the lives of the less fortunate.
The incident in question that brought all of this about involved Vautin making a joke about a club bouncer appearing to be blind drunk, due to slurring his words fairly badly. Everyone had a bit of a laugh, and moved on; however, it turns out that the bouncer in question actually suffers from a case of benign epilepsy, which causes him to slur his words (among other things), leading to the misunderstanding.
Upon being informed of this, Channel 9 and the Footy Show crew immediately issued an apology, with it also being announced that the Footy Show would issue another apology live on the following Thursday’s broadcast. The whole thing was an unfortunate mistake, but no harm done.
Except that wasn’t it; with a resounding cry of anger by the bouncer’s family due to his being “raped by the media”, they announced their intention to sue Vautin; apologies were not good enough, nor was the fact that Vautin – with accusers suddenly coming out of the woodwork to say that he regularly abuses the disabled or disadvantaged – has a brother with Down Syndrome who passed away only a few days ago. Believe it or not, he was remorseful, and didn’t laugh evilly about his mentally ill brother’s demise once!
It is very sad to think that anyone with a disability would be the target of any sort of mocking, even if it was very brief, but is there honestly any reason to think that there was anything remotely malicious about what Vautin said? If anyone out there, the bouncer’s family included, heard someone slurring their speech in a place that served alcohol, wouldn’t your natural reaction be to think that the person may be intoxicated?
Why is it that every tragedy, great or small, seems to end in litigation? From school shootings in the States being blamed on Death Metal and Grand Theft Auto (not poor parenting and a rampant gun culture), to criminals suing their victims for defending themselves, to people going arse over tit in the supermarket because they can’t read a “slippery when wet” sign; the whole thing simply points to a lack of willingness by individuals to accept any sort of responsibility when things go wrong in their lives.
You are responsible for not noticing the puddle on the supermarket floor and slipping on your arse.
You are responsible for the fact you tried to rob that poor bloke and he fought back.
You are responsible for being too busy drinking yourself to death to notice your kid was collecting firearms in his room
And you are, at the end of the day, responsible for choosing whether to accept that someone already took responsibility for making innocent mistake. You are responsible for deciding whether to accept their apology, or continue along the course of action that may end in you receiving a paycheque to sooth the pain you undoubtedly felt, but will also almost certainly end in tears for everyone involved.
- The Evil Wombat
Your Say