At least they never referred to that little incident at Gethsemane as ‘Kissgate’. This jarring portmanteau neologism is reserved for the crime committed by Luis Rubiales, former head of the Spanish FA.
When the ref blew the final whistle at the women’s world cup last August, Spain stood the proud winner. Rubiales was ecstatic: his girls were at the apex of women’s footie, such as it is.
Allow me to remind you that Señor Rubiales is neither Finnish nor Norwegian nor even Japanese. The blood bubbling through his veins is Spanish and therefore red-hot. Since such temperature isn’t conducive to icy self-restraint when expressing joy or sadness, Rubiales couldn’t contain the emotions bursting out of every fibre in his body.
He rushed to the victorious team and planted a kiss on the lips of ball-kicker Jenni Hermoso who didn’t seem to be resisting that manifestation of triumphant delight. However, a few days later she realised in hindsight that she should have been resisting.
In fact, she had been resisting, if only inwardly. Hence she self-diagnosed an acute trauma that could only be assuaged by a sizeable compensation for her and a prison term for the exuberant official.
Hermoso complained, and Rubiales was arrested and handcuffed as he stepped off his flight from the Dominican Republic to Madrid. According to the prosecutors, that kiss was ‘unwanted’ and hence constituted sexual assault, one notch down from rape.
A warrant had been issued for his arrest, and he left Barajas Airport in a van driven by those Civil Guard chaps in funny hats. That was a double whammy because Rubiales is also facing corruption charges.
Public prosecutors involved in the case are seeking a two-and-a-half year prison sentence. That could potentially make this incident the second most momentous ‘Kissgate’ in history.
Since the corrupt peccadillos only came to light after the kissy-kissy, one has to assume the police started digging on the assumption that a man capable of such a heinous crime also had to be guilty of other transgressions. In any case, the two crimes are lumped together, with the prosecutors seeking a year for kissing and 18 months for money laundering.
Actually, since it was England, which as we know is God’s own country, that Spain defeated in the final, God must have punished the libidinous official for gloating over England’s misfortune. This is the first thing that springs to my mind.
Then there is some gloating of my own: obviously it’s not only Britain that’s off her rocker. Spain is just as insane, as much in the grip of woke madness. Yes, Scotland threatens to prosecute anyone for using wrong pronouns or, even worse, insisting that only men have penises.
Yet it’s just as crazy to treat a kiss, even if ‘unwanted’, as a criminal offence. It’s crazy to believe that a heavily tattooed lass hard as nails who grew up prancing about naked in locker rooms full of lesbians could actually have been scarred for life by a kiss.
(I’m not libelling women’s football, only imparting information. I once had a semi-professional woman player working for me years ago, and her inside knowledge was that 50 per cent lesbian in any team was an accurate assessment. Only last week a scandal broke out in Australia when it turned out that five out of the 11 starting players in a professional team were born male.)
It’s crazier still that a man who perpetrated that offence should be charged with a criminal offence even though everyone knows Hermoso wasn’t at all traumatised. No harm, no foul, would be a sensible reaction.
Yet Rubiales is prosecuted not for any damage he might have caused poor Jenni, but for his implicit challenge to the ideology of wokery. Any encroachment on the inviolable sovereignty of a woman’s body is an implicit attack on one branch of that ideology, feminism.
Unwanted touching, kissing, even a look wandering down from the eyes are all treated as sexual assault, just as rape is. They must all be punished, if so far still with varying severity. Hence, though Rubiales didn’t actually rape anybody, it’s only a matter of degree. A rapist is a criminal, Rubiales is a criminal and, once we’ve established that, we only have to decide on the punishment to be meted out.
No idealist philosopher in history, from Plato onwards, could have fathomed such a total break with reality. It’s as if all modern countries have lodged themselves in a parallel universe, where it’s not perception but ideology that’s the only reality. (Marshall McLuhan, eat your heart out.)
Señor Rubiales, who had to resign his post, refuses to take it lying down. “I will defend my honour,” he tweeted. “I will defend my innocence. I have faith in the future. I have faith in the truth.” So do his accusers and prosecutors. They just define truth differently.
Rubiales finished his tweet by posting a photo of the Spanish flag. He should have posted a picture of the rainbow one. He’d stand a better chance of acquittal.
We’ve all seen what he did. Whether we think what he did is criminal or not depends on whether we’re totally insane or not. Whether he’s convicted of a crime or not depends on whether the judge and jury are totally insane or not. But we live in a world that is as totally insane as Stalin’s Russia or Orwell’s Airstrip One, so Mr Rubiales may well be going to prison for the all-too-familiar crime of not being quite left-wing enough.
Meanwhile, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson is likely to be tried in a UK court on the very serious charge of rape. If Sir Jeffrey is guilty of rape, he ought to be punished. But what are the chances of his receiving a fair trial in a court where the judge and jury are likely to think that he’s already guilty of not being quite left-wing enough?
Goodbye, Christian civilisation! It was nice knowing you.
And where is Franco. He would get a handle on things.
What more can be said? Insanity prevails. I have read enough about the Catholic Church in Spain to know what verdict a jury will return.
When this incident was first reported here I couldn’t resist a quick search for Miss Hermoso. No thank you. This morning I watched a video of the kiss. After kissing Hermoso, the video shows five more players – and a male coach! – all willingly hugging Mr. Rubiales and submitting to kisses on the cheek or neck. That one year sentence may stretch out to seven! Of course, not all may currently realize their trauma. It might be years (decades) before the other cases are brought to trial.
In a sane world the expected response to such charges would be, “Oh, shut up!”