After Scotty Stevenson referred to Christ’s College students as ‘syrup suckers,’ Greg Bruce asks how the sports commentator’s brain could have detonated such a bomb live on air. 

Everyone in New Zealand who’s read about the Scotty Stevenson scandal now knows “syrup suckers” to be a sexualised slur because the Christ’s College principal said so and because his claim is verified by Urban Dictionary entries from KiwiChickee on 4 January 2008 and Kiwi9 on 21 November 2013.

The reason the comments caused a scandal isn’t because Stevenson was deliberately casting sexualised slurs on the boys of Christ’s College, because he wasn’t: “I didn’t have the most up-to-date knowledge of where that term had come from and its origin story,” he has said in his apology over the incident, and we have no reason to disbelieve him.

The problem is that damaging terms like the one he used have become so deeply embedded in the cultural lexicon that it was able to infect someone like Stevenson without his even realising it was a slur.

The first thing I thought about when I read about the furore was something Jack Tame once said: “I feel like broadcasting is – this is going to sound ridiculous – but I feel it’s kind of like being an athlete, in that you’re there one day and it’s great, and it seems really glamorous to people on the outside, but honestly, you are an F-bomb away from completely destroying your entire career.”

How does a brain work? Specifically: how does a piece of information get absorbed into a brain, processed, considered and filed? More specifically still, how does a brain determine when and how to make use of it? More specifically still, how does a brain react when it realises it’s made a colossal mistake on national television?

What Tame understood is that the broadcaster’s brain contains two distinct types of information: the things they want to convey to their audience and the things that will get them fired. It’s easy to think broadcasters keep these things perfectly separated, like “smart” and “dumb” kids in the Auckland Grammar School streaming system, but the truth is that they’re all mooshed in there together like MPs in the debating chamber. And in the heat of the moment, it’s not always easy to tell your David Seymours from your Winston Peterses.

Stevenson is in his late 40s. He attended Auckland Grammar School in the mid 1990s. Being a boy at high school in the 90s was like floating in an amniotic sac filled with homophobic slurs. Whether or not Stevenson used such language, he could not help but take it in.

High school is a time in your life when your brain is highly plastic and you just want to be liked and so you do what everyone else is doing and you use that sort of language casually for a while before you learn it’s harmful and, at that point – if you’re a decent person – you stop using it.

But that’s only true for the headline words and phrases that everyone talks about. A whole arsenal of offensive stuff you’ve never thought about or examined – or learned the origin story of – is still there, like unexploded ordnance from some 20th century war, buried just below the surface. And then one day there you are on live television, trying to think of something interesting to say, and… KABOOM. And over the ringing in your ears from the indignant voices of the nation you can just make out the voice of Mark Richardson – of all people – asking you to explain.

The irony of the syrup suckers scandal is that Richardson has often railed against the “woke media”, while Stevenson has for years taken heavy online fire for being the woke media, in part because he has championed women’s sport, railed against sport’s many prejudices, and was the first Pākehā commentator to consistently correctly pronounce words in te reo Māori.

Stevenson has now apologised to Christ’s College for his comments and it was a good apology:

“To them, I apologise unequivocally. I know that the headmaster has sent a letter to the parents and wants to take up an official process with TVNZ, a process we will, of course, cooperate with.

“I take it on myself. It’s mine and mine alone as a mistake. I know the headmaster outlined that that school really does try to instil values in its students. I can’t disagree with that.

“As a father of two teenage boys, I like to instil values in them as well. One of those values is when you make a mistake, stand up and own it. And that’s what I do today.” 

The excellence of the apology and explanation, which was Richardson-like in its defensive solidity, does not mean we should forget about what’s happened and move on, but it does mean we should look at it differently.

I interviewed Stevenson once. I asked him about his desire to make positive change in the world. He said “…you can make the changes you hope to make in life in a million small ways. You don’t need a big platform to do it”.

“Like how?” I asked.

“Just giving a shit. Letting people who are affected by things know that you’re thinking of them or offering to help in any small way. The grand gesture is wonderful but the tiny acts of kindness sometimes have more impact.”

The syrup suckers scandal is a reminder about how even those people who believe in the importance of doing good in the world carry within them the power to do damage. Maybe more importantly, it’s a reminder of how, once the damage is done, they carry within them the power to put it right.

Greg Bruce is a freelance journalist and this piece is his opinion, but, for full transparency, Scotty Stevenson has affiliations with The Spinoff, including having previously written for the site and edited the sports section.