New Zealand now has a pretty well-oiled rite and litany for when
some major, usually sporting, icon dies.
Our secular culture is confused and frightened about death, so we dive
rapidly, by reflex, into memory and sentimentalism and hagiography. The death of heroes is easily marked because
we simply relive past glories.
And so it was that over this holiday weekend we have had multiple
references to the suddenly late Sir Wilson Whineray, former captain of the All
Blacks and more recent captain of commerce.
I have yet to hear any serious critical assessment of his character, but
we have been incessantly reminded of his leadership qualities, business
successes, rugby abilities and things he said:
“I always told the team, you will do exactly what I say on the field, no
matter what you think. I am the captain,
and if it’s wrong I will take the rap.
If you don’t do what I say, you will take the rap.” Great.
That’s the way to talk to the blokes.
The other quotations I have so far heard have been unmemorable and unoriginal.
He went to Auckland Grammar.
He was roughly contemporary there with me – and on reflection I do remember
hearing the name Whineray, whenever Littlejohn the headmaster was moved to
identify anyone he thought had brought credit on the school lately. Whineray must, back then, have been already rugby
proficient and therefore very much visible.
I doubt that he ever heard or noted the name Miller.
It really matters in these things that we do get some perceptive and
sensitive journalism, to stand against all the blandishment and idolatry. Perhaps that comes later. John Kirwan eventually went public about his
times of serious clinical depression. Barry
Crump beat his wife, or wives. Our
square-jawed, thick-necked icons, in sport and in business, need honest and
perceptive journalism. Lance Armstrong,
for years at the top of world professional cycling, is now seen as a druggie, a
cheat and a humbug. But for most of
those years we were hearing mainly about successive Tour de Frances and his
fight back from testicular cancer.
Now we have the cartoon in Granny Herald. It epitomises for me all the inconsequence and
utter shallowness of the sporting icon culture – and the way it suits so many
now to mindlessly caricature religion and faith, about which never have so many
known so little. Deceased All Blacks
seem to be all in heaven somehow – where else would they be? -- sitting around
looking like tired and wounded heroes.
Well, actually they look like simpletons, village idiots. They have wings, so I assume they have become
angels, which must be bizarre and boring for them. Their celestial captain informs them that
Whineray is about to pass by, and they should rise and salute. “Your captain and our colonel...” I don’t get
that.
It’s hideous. Shallow
sentimental claptrap. Plain embarrassing
is what it is. The Herald once had a
cartoonist called Minhinnick, as many of my generation will remember. Gordon Minhinnick was genuinely
talented. He could draw. He knew about subtle allusion. He also knew what was important, and what was
not, in human affairs. That depth and
quality of journalism is rare now, at least around New Zealand.
Whineray was clearly an exceptional person, sportsman and
leader. I have lived long enough to know
that he was also broken and fallible in places, and that he sometimes lay awake
at nights.
