Steve Simmons Unmasked

In 1983, legendary Italian team AC Milan signed Watford striker Luther Blissett. Blissett failed to settle at the club, scoring just five times in 30 appearances. After the season, Milan sold Blissett back to Watford for around half of what they had originally paid. This was not the first time Blissett had flattered to deceive; after opening his England career with a hat-trick against hapless Luxembourg, he failed to score in any of his subsequent appearances for the national team. The tabloids thus gave him the nickname of -wait for it- "Luther Missit."

After his season with Milan, Blissett never played in Italy again. However, he was not forgotten. In the mid-1990s, a group of Italian anarchists and radicals pulled off several jaw-dropping media hoaxes, and published subversive art and literature under the name Luther Blissett, until the end of their "Five Year Plan" in 1999, when the group committed a symbolic suicide. While actions are carried out independently under the Blissett name, it has been officially retired.  The real Blissett has maintained a sense of humour about the matter, once appearing on British TV and reading from the group's work, mostly importantly the maxim: "Anyone can be Luther Blissett simply by adopting the name Luther Blissett." At show's end, the panel exclaimed as one, "I am Luther Blissett!"

The upshot of this (cause I don't think there are many Italian anarchists or Watford supporters among the Blocheads) is that I finally think I have solved the maddening riddle that is Steve Simmons. How else to explain his offerings over the past two days? Sunday's brainsqueeze featured this defence of Dick Peddie:

Nothing gets more tiring than those who continually blame Richard Peddie and Larry Tanenbaum for all that's wrong with the Leafs. Yes, you can blame Peddie for the hiring of Ferguson. But after that, as Ferguson is apt to say, "I'm responsible for everything that goes on here." Neither Peddie nor Tanenbaum have signed free agents, drafted or made trades. This is Ferguson's team. He is a lame duck because of the crappy team he has built, not because he doesn't have a contract beyond this season. Had he done his job well, you would never hear Peddie or Tanenbaum's name. For public purposes, they wouldn't exist...

OK, it's all Brylcreem's fault, he was never forced to make the playoffs while rebuilding on the fly, he's the decider though he's not allowed to fire his coach. Then today, Simmons gives us this:

Richard Peddie must remove himself -- or be removed -- from the process of determining the immediate futures of Maple Leafs general manager John Ferguson and coach Paul Maurice.

That much is evident as Leafs fans await a sign that team ownership and management will in some way respond to the ongoing crisis that now envelops the 28th-place NHL club.

The headline? "Strip Peddie's Power Now"

I spent hours today agonizing how a man, 24 hours after absolving Peddie and Tanenbaum from blame in the Leafs debacle, could write a column blaming Peddie and Tanebaum for the Leafs debacle. How could a man have so little internal logic that he could directly contradict himself in print in the space of one day? Is he stupid? Confused? Does he have that thing Guy Pearce had in Memento? I pictured Simmons feverishly trying to tap out a column in fifteen minutes before he forgets where he is, covered in tattoos that read "JACK MORRIS IS A HOFer," "WRITE "THE BETTING HERE" and "DAVE HODGE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND."

But then I thought of Luther Blissett.

I propose there is no "Steve Simmons," not in the sense of one idiotic Toronto Sun columnist, anyway. Rather, there are many, participating in an ingenious long-running act of cultural sabotage. Their goal is not just to mock our fascination with the meaningless world of professional sports, thereby exposing it as the opiate of the 21st-century masses, but to actually fully destroy the bourgeois concepts of logic and reason themselves, paving the way for society as an endless carnival where the jester is king and the hyenas of the state are left to feast joylessly on their own entrails. Or something like that. The "Steve Simmons" who appears on the Reporters is either one of the most brilliant cultural terrorists of our time, or a well-meaning carpet salesman from Ajax who is under the mistaken impression that he is a widely loved sportswriter.

Once you free yourself from the myth of Steve Simmons, you can submit to the true genius of the plan. Write whatever you want! Write whoever you want! Throw off the shackles of meaning and intelligence!

I am Steve Simmons. You are Steve Simmons. We all are Steve Simmons!

And hey, whatever happened to Steve Simmons?

-Damien Cox