Over the summer, it was revealed that former Cardiff City manager Malky McKay had made an unflattering reference to then-boss Vincent Tan in a text message to a colleague (“not taking no for an answer from the chink until the 20th time or unless somebody big blows us out of the water. Can you tell him that”) along with an equally unsavory characterization of soccer agent Phil Smith (“go on, fat Phil. Nothing like a Jew that sees money slipping through his fingers”). Upon McKay’s appointment as Wigan’s manager last week, club chairman Dave Whelan found himself under the Football Association’s crosshairs after well, pretty much stating he shares McKays’ sophisticated world-view. From The Guadian’s David Conn :
When appointing Mackay, Whelan said he did not think the manager did “a lot wrong” in the texts. He said it was “nothing” to call a Chinese person a “chink,” as Mackay did of Vincent Tan, the Cardiff owner.
That was strongly rejected by the British Chinese Project and seven Chinese cross-party political and community organisations, who called for “a fitting punishment” by the FA, saying in a statement: “We, the UK Chinese community, refute the claim that there is nothing bad about calling a person of Chinese ethnicity a “chink” – this is at best nonsense, and at worst racist.”
Whelan also said it was not antisemitic or offensive of Mackay to have said of the football agent Phil Smith: “Nothing like a Jew that sees money slipping through his fingers.”
Whelan told the Guardian this only meant Jewish people did not like losing money, like anybody. Asked if he did not think it was offensive, because the claim that Jews love money has been used as a negative stereotype, Whelan said: “Do you think Jewish people chase money a little bit more than we do?”
Asked to clarify if that was his belief, Whelan said “Jewish people do chase money more than everybody else”. He added that he did not think that was offensive at all, because Jewish people are “very shrewd people”.