I have just discovered why I have had lack of success in my life; I have never had anyone on whom I could blame my lack of success. I have not had a scapegoat.
Consider Novak Djokovic. A great tennis player but also a great schmuck.* He has just been booted out of Australia, where he wished to pursue his tenth men’s singles title at the Australian Open, for not being vaccinated and for (let’s be nice and call them) “misstatements” on his visa application. And who was to blame for the errors on the application? Certainly not Djokovic. It was his “agent” and his “support team.”
Novak Djokovic has blamed his agent for an “administrative mistake” when declaring he had not travelled in the two weeks before his flight to Australia and acknowledged an “error of judgment” by not isolating after he tested positive for Covid.
The world No 1 released a statement on Wednesday in a bid to address what he called “continuing misinformation” about his activities in December before he came to Australia in a bid to retain his Australian Open crown. . . .
Djokovic said the incorrect pre-travel declaration of 1 January was “submitted by my support team on my behalf”.
“My agent sincerely apologises for the administrative mistake in ticking the incorrect box about my previous travel before coming to Australia. This was a human error and certainly not deliberate.”**
So, there’s the support team thrown under the bus.
*
Five years ago to the day, I wrote a blog post about plagiarism and the excuses that are forthcoming when the stealing is outed.*** I did not at that time directly cite instances when the convenient scapegoat was produced. He/she was usually a hired researcher, go-fer, or typist who allegedly practiced one-handed shuffling with the author’s file cards. And the anonymous scapegoat, bearing the sins, was released into the wilderness, while the author him/herself attempted to remain in the tabernacle.****
*
You remember the story (apocryphal, of course) about young George Washington and the cherry tree. If George were alive today, the dialogue about the tree would go like this:
Washington Senior: Who chopped down the cherry tree?
Georgie: I cannot tell a lie. It was the gardener.
***
* "There was his encounter with Dr. Igor Cetojevic, a Bosnian Serb, who, while watching Djokovic on TV during the 2010 Australian Open, became convinced that the player’s need for medical time-outs had nothing to do with asthma, as some thought, but with too much gluten in his diet. Not long after, Cetojevic met Djokovic in Croatia, during the Davis Cup, where he asked Djokovic to raise his right arm twice, once while holding, in his left hand, a slice of bread to his belly; the exercise convinced Djokovic that his muscles were weaker when proximate to wheat. There was also, in 2016, his hiring of Pepe Imaz, a Spanish coach who evangelized about the transformative power of long hugs. More recently, there was Djokovic’s friendship with the wellness entrepreneur Chervin Jafarieh, who talks of having lived in jungles and among shamans, sells supplements and elixirs, and, in May of 2020, listened approvingly during an Instagram Live conversation as Djokovic explained that polluted water can be purified by human consciousness, because water molecules 'react to our emotions, to what is being said.'”
https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/djokovics-strange-australian-odyssey
*** https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-dog-ate-my-file-cabinet.html
**** [H]e shall take the two goats, and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat.
And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering.
But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.
Leviticus 16
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