Paul Thomas: Outrage? That's an awesome exaggeration

Louisa Wall (inset) is upset at Israel Dagg, but NZ's attitudes have come a long way. Photos / NZ Herald

Over-the-top reactions to All Black's tweet blooper reveal a mix of blind zealotry and language abuse

Some of us are old enough to remember when awesome meant awesome - inspiring or displaying overwhelming wonder, admiration, respect or dread.

In the 1990s, as a by-product of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze, awesome became a slang expression meaning excellent or outstanding. Now it's a verbal tic, a filler word conveying vague positivity, prized by those who speak too much but say very little.

"I'll have the scrambled eggs on sourdough, thanks."

"Awesome."

Now the word outrage is undergoing a similar process, having the meaning leached out of it through misuse and over-use.

Last Sunday, All Black fullback Israel Dagg sent a tweet that supposedly caused outrage around the world because of his use of the homophobic term "fag". (It was widely referred to as a homophobic slur, but that seems tautologous.)

By the end of the week the ripples had spread to South Africa, where it was reported that the text had stirred up a "homophobic storm", whatever that is, and to Israel, a country where you wouldn't have thought there's such a thing as a slow news day.

Outrage is a strong word, denoting intense reactions to extreme behaviour. According to the Collins English Dictionary, it means to "offend grossly".

Outrage the noun is "profound indignation, anger or hurt" caused by "wanton viciousness or a gross violation of decency, morality or honour".

It's not okay for an All Black, or anyone else for that matter, to toss this ugly term around, but does a tweet quickly deleted by an author who acknowledged he'd got it wrong really rise to the level of outrage?

If the reports that Dagg's tweet triggered outbreaks of outrage are to be believed, then we've become a society that over-reacts when a simple reaction will suffice.

More often than not, however, what the media calls outrage is a small group of people who feel very strongly about an issue making shrill statements based on the transparently invalid assumption that all decent people share their point of view, or the questionable assumption that all decent people should share their point of view.

I agree with Labour MP and former Black Fern Louisa Wall that sports stars have a responsibility not to use language that marginalises groups. I also share her desire for the All Blacks to become champions of inclusiveness.

But I get uneasy when I read that she wants to work with the New Zealand Rugby Union to "help players understand the importance and influence of the way they behave".

It's couched in touchy-feely language, but there's a faint echo of the re-education programmes used by totalitarian regimes to stamp out attitudes that don't align with their ideology.

And do we really want politicians going into independent organisations to lecture their staff on how they should conduct themselves?

The Green Party wants the Rugby Union and All Blacks to front a campaign to wipe out homophobia in rugby. Why? Because one player used a term he immediately regretted using and three morons in a crowd of 46,000 at Eden Park did what the inevitable sprinkling of morons at big sporting events invariably do?

And why restrict it to rugby? Surely there should be no limit to the scope of this campaign and no let up as long as a single homophobic thought remains in a single homophobic head.

The zealotry that refuses to take yes for an answer was evident in this response to Dagg's tweet from a representative of the activist group Queer Avengers: "It's just indicative of the fact that although we now have marriage equality and things on the surface appear to be getting better, in actual fact they're not."

It takes a rather staggering lack of irony to be able to reference the Marriage Equality Act immediately before claiming that things are getting worse rather than better for the gay and lesbian community. And it takes a rather staggering lack of perspective to attach more significance to a rugby player's tweet than to legalisation of gay marriage.

Those of us who are old enough to remember when awesome meant awesome can also remember a New Zealand that was far less accepting of homosexuality and other forms of otherness, than it is now.

Mainstream New Zealand doesn't deserve pats on the back for making this shift, but it's nonetheless irritating to be told that the shift hasn't occurred.

We have come too far for the zealots to be able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but in their determination to inflate things at the lower end of the offensiveness scale into outrages, they run the risk of hardening the attitudes they are hell-bent on eliminating.