By Alex Netherton & Andi Thomas
Protagonists aside, nobody really knows precisely what happened at this meeting between Liverpool’s director of communications Jen Chang and the no-longer-anonymous Liverpool fan responsible for largely-unfunny parody blogger Duncan Jenkins. The allegations are there, have been sort-of-not-really denied by Chang, and it appears that Ian Ayre is ready to get off his Harley Davidson and do some investigating. Alternatively, perhaps they could ask Luis Suarez to revisit his bellyflop, that normally gets people nice and distracted.
Let’s not get this twisted, let’s run through the idiocy. It seems like because Jen Chang hasn’t resigned, most of the newspapers seem largely unwilling to make this story get the attention it deserves, which is a lot. Granted, there’s been some riotously exciting stories going on with the England football team, but it’s thoroughly perplexing that, until today at least, the non-denial denial seemed to have quietened down the whole business.
And what a denial it was! ‘I won’t comment on nonsense,’ he says, commenting on it. He says there was no investigation by Liverpool, which is nice, but since the allegation was of an investigation by Chang, irrelevant. He stated that his Tweets were misquoted; the problem’s with the emails, and with the CCTV footage showing the two of them at the meeting. He says he won’t talk about accusations by a parody writer, but the accusations were by his creator, not the character. It’s almost as if he’s Guilty as Hell.
There’s a darker edge to this, though. First up, let’s consider Jen Chang’s assertion that football fans in general, and Liverpool fans in particular and even more so, are a certain type of person. He is alleged to believe that, if there’s not enough time to melt down three hundred Fruit ‘n’ Nut bars, his club’s committed followers are industrious and intelligent enough to gather together handfuls of dog muck, and introduce it to The Real Duncan Jenkins’ letterbox.
Then let’s consider the allegation that this was all funded with money diverted from potential charity. Add into that the weird web of message-passing intermediaries, including prominent journalists with sensuously coiffed ‘dos, and this Lisbeth Salander fantasy becomes clear: hunting down a man on the internet who has done great wrong/tweeted some guff is basically the same. Look, if you disagree with me, I will ram dog muck into your letterbox so fast!
This is the first of the two lessons from all this: despite his apparently denigrating them as mindless automatons who would simply march out to bat for the club at the click of a finger, plenty of Liverpool fans have reacted like mindless automatons, and marched out to bat for Chang at the click of a finger. Jenkins had cost them money. Chang was just defending the club. Anything that Liverpool does is correct.
It’s not that far-fetched, in fairness: the greatest trick the people that run football clubs ever pulled was convincing fans that true fandom consists not in holding the club and the club’s people to the highest and most rigorous standards for the sake of the badge you profess to love, but in blind, facile, unthinking loyalty. Getting them to wear shit on their shirts with pride is not much but a footnote, and anybody not displaying this loyalty gets their season ticket taken away.
The second lesson’s more fun though. Whatever actually happened—details are for squares and for lawyers—what matters is this: the man went to a meeting with a fictional character. When it comes to comedy, while superfunny malapropisms and uberloltastic spelling errors will get you plenty of Twitter followers, to really amuse the entire nation’s footballing fraternity, there’s no easier way than simply Being: Liverpool.
Yes, it’s ridiculous that Chang went to a meeting with the creator of a lame parody twitter account. What is also ridiculous is that this article takes everything said by “Duncan Jenkins” in his blog post as fact. Apparently, allegedly, etc. You don’t know. Neither do I, and we probably never will. This article criticises Liverpool fans for mindlessly taking Chang’s and side and mocks Chang for taking seriously the posts of a parody twitter account. Then mindlessly repeats the assertions of a blog by said parody twitter account holder – like an automaton, you might say.
Maybe it’s a case of boy who cries wolf, but it’s pretty hard to take everything “Jenkins” says on face value. Jen Chang deserves to be mocked for taking a twitter parody seriously enough to arrange a meeting(despite Ian Herbert’s repeated claims, it’s hard to see much funny in Jenkins’ tweets), and IF he did and said all the things “Jenkins” claims, then he is a downright fool. The important point is we don’t know and until such time we do, this doesn’t deserve any more attention than rumours about Falcao going to Chelsea in January. There might be something in it, and it might be complete bollocks.
Hmm yeah, but probably not.
Do you know what allegedly means?
“It might be complete bollocks.”
Except we know it isn’t: we know they met, we know that threats were made about his season ticket, and quite a lot of people who know more about this kind of thing than I do are happy that the emails are genuine. So your last line really should read:
“There’s definitely something in it, though it’s always possible that a little bit of it might be bollocks.”
Andi, I accept that they met, and that the e-mails and tweets back and forth between Chang/Jenkins are real, but do we *know* that the threat about the season tickets are real? There’s talk of reneging on agreements from Chang and amicable resolutions, but no specific threats as far as I can see. Now maybe you know people or have heard through intermediaries that have vouched for Jenkins’ credibility on this point but do we know this is fact. It’s clear that Chang took this whole thing way too seriously from the start, and it’s plausible that he made a threat to Jenkins if he genuinely thought there was a mole in the club, but as far as I know it’s just Jenkins word.
There are definitely elements of truth in Jenkins’ blog post, possibly all of it, but as they say the best lies have an element of truth…and given that Jenkins’ modus operandi on twitter was exactly that, a little bit of truth and a lot of imagination, forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical
This is so obviously a fan apologetic it’s seriously hard to take seriously. You cast doubt on Jenkins post but then feel you have the authority to say, “there are definitely elements of truth in Jenkins’ blog post.” And his Twitter handle was clearly a fraud; to jump from that platform to claims he just made the whole thing up, complete with back-and-forth emails, just for shits and giggles, well, come on. Try really, REALLY hard to take the Liverbird goggles off for a few minutes.
Richard, maybe you’ve interpreted it that way but I’m not apologising for anyone. I’m a Liverpool fan and I don’t back away from that, but as I said I don’t think we can definitively comment either way. I don’t understand what point you are trying to make.
If you read my comments, I have never suggested the whole thing was made up…the elements of truth in Jenkins’ blog post that I refer to are simply the few things that are almost unanimously agreed upon. I don’t have any “authority” on this matter, but it seems like fact that Jenkins and Chang met at a restaurant in Deansgate, and the e-mails and tweets between the two seem genuine.
The rest we don’t know. You can choose to believe what you want. “Jenkins” has written a lot of rubbish in the past just for shits and giggles – that doesn’t mean this is not true, but it does make it harder to take what he said on face value. If Chang did and said all the things Jenkins alleges, he’s a complete fool, and has let down the club enormously, but without proof, without evidence should I, should we unquestioningly believe the word of one man over another and condemn the guilty?
Hi Jeremy, yes, we do know that the season ticket threats are real. One of the Anfield Wrap lot confirmed them on the podcast yesterday.
I see no problem with anything here – being a director of communications has always involved knee-busting and arm-twisting, at least in New Jersey in the trash collectors union.
If you’re talking to me, Alex, then the answer is yes. It’s a word that many social commentators hide behind to avoid litigation to make a case they cannot prove.
Maybe you chose not write a balanced article because it won’t be considered entertaining enough, but any way you look at it this is not a balanced article. Caveats there may be, but you effectively call Chang guilty, suggest he should have resigned and then unquestioningly repeat Jenkins’assertions as fact. Then you go on to say “plenty” of Liverpool fans reacted like the automatons that Chang, according to Jenkins, would suggest we are. Actually, most of the immediate response that I saw from Reds fans, was that if it were true, then Chang was bang out of order for allegedly (there’s that word again) making threats. Perhaps “some” Liverpool fans have mindlessly backed Chang, but I suppose “some” does not suit the narrative of the article so well. “Plenty” are annoyed that Jenkins’ blog post took away attention from much, much more important issues on the day the IPCC announced their investigation into police corruption at Hillsborough.
The first and last paragraphs hit the nail on the heads, Alex. Unfortunately, they are the only reasoned ones. What goes between is very poor indeed. You say it yourself, other than the two protagonists involved, we don’t really know what happened. So rather than be mindless automatons and pick either side, we should treat both sides with a healthy degree of skepticism.
Journalistic integrity, where have you gone? Journalists reporting on bloggers reporting on tweeters reporting on journalists. They are coming to take me away haha!
I’d like to suggest that this is a case of “he-said, she-said” with no real facts or evidence, but alas I fear I may not be able to build a case for this without sounding like a pedantic apologist or a (insert word from Whittall’s lexicon here).
True or not, one thing is (allegedly) clear. Jen Chang: He comes not to play. And I dig it.
It took TWO people to write this? presumably two adult men? wow.
I am taking a wild guess at the authors being Manchester United fans and leaving it at that.