Oscar Pistorius balls: the most stupid things said about the suspected murderer
OSCAR Pistorus is at large. He’s out on bail. Reeva Steenkamp, the unarmed woman he shot dead, has been cremated. Can journalists go further than the Sun, which was both well pleased and saddened by the death of a photogenic blonde in a bikini.
In this painting – I mean photograph – Olympic and Paralympic star Oscar Pistorius is given tremendous dignity. The solitude of his situation is dramatically illuminated as he faces the most serious murder charge that can be brought in South Africa. It is hard to believe the picture was not set up for hours to get the composition right and the lighting suitably Rembrandtesque. It really does have the gravitas of an oil painting... The picture eerily captures his psychological isolation. The courtroom audience is physically and symbolically separated from him by a low wooden wall that might as well be a 100ft high barbed wire fence. It is the barrier between the accused and unaccused.
Some of the people look at him, some don’t, and the eyes of those who study Pistorius seem mystified and uncertain rather than emotionally committed for or against. Meanwhile, his own eyes are shadowed and enigmatic. His pain is not just in his face but his entire body language – his sportsman’s frame is taut and electrified, as if he were ready to sprint, but it is the ordeal of the bail hearing that fills him with angst and supercharged emotion…
What gives this photograph such intensity is the court lighting, which would not be out of place in a Caravaggio painting… And so he stands in shadows, picked out by a reddish glow, his eyes dark pools of horror.
Simon Barnes, Times
The tragedy of Oscar Pistorius — for once the word can be used accurately — is that we need him as a living symbol of freedom: his and our own… Society is changing and becoming more tolerant, and it’s a process in which Pistorius played his part. Strange that the world was taught a lesson in tolerance by a white South African: but then the world is changing before our eyes… By finding disabled people less frightening and by finding the subject of disability less hard to talk about and think about, we do ourselves the most massive favour. We free our minds for greater possibilities. Partly because of Pistorius we are larger people than we were before, with minds more capable of soaring.
All of which makes the events of yesterday peculiarly hard to deal with. Was Pistorius’s life in fact a living hell? Did his glorious appearance of perfect adjustment come at a hideous inner cost? Was he twisted up inside with misery and — dare I ask — envy?.. But whatever transpires in this terrible business, we must never let go of the things Pistorius helped us to gain. The world is genuinely a better place because of Pistorius…
Canberra Paralympic legend Michael Milton says Oscar Pistorius’ arrest on murder charges is a huge blow to disability sport …
“Those fighting qualities we’ve seen, the determination of him growing up as a double leg amputee, those have made him a mentally tough person,” Milton said. “Hopefully it will put him in good stead to face the challenges that are going to await him.”
Please send more Pistorius bollocks to the usual address…
Posted: 22nd, February 2013 | In: Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
