England/Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney was kept out of the latter’s lineup for an early Saturday draw at Everton, amidst concernsthat recent revelations of Rooney cheating on his pregnant wife with prostitutes (not the first time he’s made such headlines) would make the prolific scorer an easy target for abuse. It’s all a bit puritanical in the view of the Telegraph’s libertine Harry Mount, who penned the following underneath the fantastic headline, “It makes sense for fantastically rich, young sportsmen to visit prostitutes.”
It makes sense that, for Rooney, prostitution is the most convenient form of adultery, for all its sordidness and risk of media discovery. It is almost impossible for him to form a proper, grown-up relationship with any woman other than his wife, Coleen.
In a very old-fashioned, rather touching way, they have been seeing each other for 12 years, since Rooney was 12. He is then pretty inexperienced at the basic art of talking to members of the opposite sex, other than Coleen. His lack of education “ he left school at 16 “ won™t help his communication skills either. The infantilising nature of fame “ he was playing for Everton™s first team by 16, too “ will have further limited his abilities to form proper relationships, romantic or otherwise. With support from agents and the Manchester United PR team, and cushioned from reality by a thick security blanket of cash, he has never had to engage with the world in a grown-up way.
Of course, there™s no reason why Rooney should be adulterous in the first place. But, if he is given to being an adulterer, the use of a prostitute “ though not defensible “ remains far more logical than an affair, or marriage to another woman, with all the grown-up commitment and need for conversation that even an affair requires.
I’m trying to follow Mount’s logic here — at least Rooney isn’t a bigamist? —- oodles of cash + global fame at a young age = a less than fully formed human being. As opposed to, y’know, someone who’s a) horny and b) possibly a jerk. But I can totally buy into the notion that Rooney can’t keep up his end of a conversation, though he’s supposedly a karaoke master.
