Bats, like oils, ain't always what they seem. One young reporter was disabused about this many years ago when he discovered that some cricketers used one brand of bat with the sticker of another maker on them, to meet contractual obligations. Fake news has been with us longer than you might imagine.
For one batsman, the gig was up when the bat he was using – made by an enterprising teammate in his backyard – kept breaking on national television, embarrassing the multi-national batmaker whose sticker his bat bore, and who was paying him handsomely to pretend to use its bats.
![Brownlow medallist Patrick Dangerfield.](/web/20170112082825im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/7/m/2/i/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtpj40.png/1484113792245.jpg)
Which brings us in a roundabout and admittedly elliptical way to a couple of developments this week. First, Nick Kyrgios appeared at a press conference wearing a T-shirt displaying a grotesque caricature of the American president-elect and beneath it the legend: "F--- Donald Trump". On Wednesday, Brownlow medallist Patrick Dangerfield tweeted thus: "I knew our tax dollars were going to something more meaningful than just incarcerating refugees on #manusisland #confused"
Predictably, there was a highly polarised reaction to both, either "right on", or "f--- off". Contemporary media in its many forms tends to do this to the marketplace of ideas. Why discuss when you can easily find a nice big warm pool of like-minded people to sink into?
The other reflex was for people to say that sportspeople should stay out of politics, even that sports and politics don't mix. This is as old and lame as oiling cricket bats. It is one thing for sportspeople to be drawn into politics, or indeed any sphere in which they have no proclivity or interest. There was a time when no public discourse was complete until Shane Warne's opinion had been ventilated. This was our doing, not his.
It is another thing to gag a sportsman or woman who feels they have something to offer. It might be from outside their field, and so much the better; that field generally is lamentably narrow and insular anyway. Ventures beyond it, however half-formed, ought to be welcomed as evidence of something other than a one-track mind. Even sports journos have an occasional crack.
I didn't care much for Kyrgios' form of expression, because it would tend to drive people further into their opposing silos, but it was preferable to another Noike logo.
Thursday, world No.1 Andy Murray is doing a media conference; you'll be watching, hearing and reading it soon. What you won't be told is that it is at a shopping centre, under the auspices of an apparel maker, and that all questions were required to be submitted in advance for vetting. It's called "exclusive", which is laughably true in the sense that no roll-up questions will be admitted.
![Nick Kyrgios' shirt took aim at Donald Trump.](/web/20170112082825im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/o/t/r/q/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtpj40.png/1484130116284.jpg)
Now, Murray's answers to media are not quite as dull as his voice makes them seem, but they hardly ever constitute the communist manifesto or even a Pauline Hanson hissy fit. They're safe, and safer still when linked to a sponsor. Can't have news breaking with the backer's logo on it, can we?
This is commonplace. A couple of years ago, the great Roger Federer was available to media for interview, during which it became awkwardly apparent that he was obliged to invoke the name of the champagne maker sponsor at every possible moment. Without bubbly, there could be no froth.
Like those bat manufacturers of yore, the message is the medium, the medium the message, and who cares what lies beneath? You might want to ask if an athlete actually likes/uses/believes in whatever he or she is being lavishly paid to endorse, but your question would be struck out in vetting.
This is why we ought to welcome the interventions this week of Kyrgios and Dangerfield, because for once we can be reasonably certain that a) they were not paid for it, b) they believe it, and c) it is a more honest and faithful insight into each than banalities that tumble from the lips of others, sometimes under pain of contract annulment, sometimes because it is all they have to offer.
It might even be that they are blazing the beginnings of a trail. Kyrgios does as he pleases, Dangerfield says what he thinks, but they are alike in that both are so good at their games and so important to their paymasters that they can do and say freely, and so the paradigm of sportspeople as well-paid and highly co-ordinated puppets might start to break down. If you like what they say, well and good. If not, be consoled by the US experience that celebrity ratifications harden more hearts than they change minds, anyway.
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