Finally, justice for Eni Aluko, the England footballer smeared by the FA. (If you want my detailed account of the Eni Aluko affair, the poem Sweet FA is in Poems from the News, another part of this website). Aluko herself has been astonishing throughout, composed, objective and consistent, despite being put under all kinds of pressure.
The FA, predictably, don't come out of it that well. Clarke, their chairman, was particularly inept at the MP sub-committee showdown, by which time it was clear that his organisation had made huge errors. A sensitive man, a canny operator even, would have recognised that this was a good moment for caution and humility. But no, he's used to being in charge, so he thinks that a show of casual dominance will go down well. He dismisses accusations as "racism fluff", before it occurs to him that maybe that's not the route to take. Somebody raises a previous case of ill-treatment, which received wide press coverage, but he hasn't a clue what they're talking about. And then, when he's accused by the PFA, rightly concerned for his failure to investigate the ill-treatment of one of their members, he insists on launching a tirade about the failure of the PFA to act on abuse. As it happens, he gets his facts wrong, but it's the tactic that's childish - "it wasn't me, sir, and even if it was look at him - he's far worse."
This is exactly the route Trump took, when it was pointed out that "He knew what he signed up for" might not be the ideal way to console a young widow grieving for the loss of her husband. Trump doesn't consider that he might have got it wrong. "what about Obama?" he says. I'll bet his treatment of grieving widows wasn't any better." As it happens, predictably, it was miles better, and there are grieving widows aplenty to prove it. But these fantastists aren't talking about the truth; they just want an alternative world, in which they didn't cock it up.