Paul Thomas: O'Driscoll furore gets even more grotesque

I didn't intend to revisit the Brian O'Driscoll affair - or Speargate, as the British media has, with thudding predictability, labelled it.

There's the New Zealand view (one of those unfortunate things) and the British and Irish view (malice aforethought) and never the twain shall meet.

After that, all that remains is hysterical self-pity and the huff and puff of misdirected moral outrage.

However, last Saturday John Roughan wrote a thought-provoking piece on the subject under the heading "O'Driscoll incident a slur on our national character".

He argued that the affair has cast New Zealanders in a poor light and was particularly disappointed at the attitudes expressed by his companions in print.

I assumed he included me in that sorry company, as I had put in my tuppence worth the previous week.

I'm afraid to say this isn't the first time a column of mine has been a source of disappointment. Last December I affectionately referred to our Queen-in-waiting, Camilla Mountbatten-Windsor, as a "leathery old boot", which earned me a withering blast from E.R.Y. Monckton of Tauranga.

In a communique hand-gouged in agitated capital letters but containing no clue as to E.R.Y. Monckton's gender, I was also scolded over a column in which I quoted my father as admitting that if he had his time over again, he probably wouldn't join the church.

He, she or it considered this "absolutely despicable; I wouldn't blame your Dad if he never confided in you again".

The possibility that I'd squared it away with my father beforehand had presumably been buried under the avalanche of E.R.Y. Monckton's self-righteous indignation.

Then there was the time I suggested that, despite the widespread belief in his imbecility, George W. Bush mightn't be as dumb as he looks. An enraged gentleman emailed from America to tell me that I'm not as smart as I think.

He might have a point: it increasingly appears as if Bush is every bit as dumb as he looks. However, I suspect this mea culpa won't appease my correspondent, who was too busy taking offence to notice that I was actually questioning the conventional wisdom that his hero is a simpleton.

Roughan revealed that he'd been hit hard by a column by the Observer's Kevin Mitchell, who found it dispiriting that New Zealanders aren't up in arms over what he called the All Blacks' "moral cowardice".

Mitchell's piece, which was reprinted in this newspaper, began thus: "Only the Japanese take longer to apologise than the All Blacks."

The Japanese have dragged their feet over saying sorry for various atrocities committed before and during World War II: the Rape of Nanking (300,000 massacred), the Burma Railway (115,000 dead), biological experiments on live Chinese POWs and forcing thousands of women in occupied territories into sex slavery.

Notwithstanding that he "could have died", O'Driscoll suffered a dislocated shoulder.

To give this a sports medicine context, one of my brothers-in-law had dislocated his shoulder playing rugby five times by the time he was 21.

The juxtaposition, however flippant and however much a product of a desire for a snappy, attention-grabbing intro, is grotesque and suggests the author should take a cold shower next time he feels the urge to sit in moral judgment on anyone, let alone an entire nation.

But wait, there's more. The Irish journalist Fergal Keane made his name covering the genocide in Rwanda and has been awarded an OBE for services to journalism.

In the Irish news magazine Village, Keane describes the All Blacks as "the most cynical group of athletes assembled outside of an Olympic sprint final. Anything it takes to win, they will stoop to it. Violence, assaults, cheating".

Like Mitchell, Keane isn't satisfied with vilifying our sporting representatives. "It speaks of something deeply flawed in the psyche of the New Zealander that cheating to win is widely accepted. But then this is a country whose only contribution to the culture of the world in recent years has been the film Once Were Warriors, a devastating critique of their own society. They are a dour and unimaginative lot who are despised and derided by their nearest neighbours, the Australians."

This is such a toxic piece of writing that one hardly knows where to begin. Perhaps with the observation that, throughout Australian history, many of our nearest neighbours have despised and derided Aborigines, but only the foulest racists have wanted to pat them on the back for it.

The irony is that while we stand accused of taking the game so seriously that it sends our moral compass haywire, it's our Anglo-Irish critics who have lost all sense of proportion.

They are inflating a dislocated shoulder into a crime against humanity and are using an incident in a rugby match and a team's support for its beleaguered captain as a launch-pad from which to shower abuse on all New Zealanders.

There is indeed a slur on our national character but in the sense of an aspersion rather than a stain.