Sex, football and 140 characters

“Trillions of species
An Ark as big as the earth...”
From Biblebaazi
by Bachchoo

The world breeds triviality and triviality then breeds its own worlds. Thus it is with Twitter. There is nothing wrong with an invention that limits communication to 140 words. Most communications turn sweet nuggets into cloying nougats. A full-blown aphorism should limit itself to the fewest possible words. Have I said the same thing twice?
Twitter was made for wits such as Johnson, Churchill, Shaw or Wilde. Examples? One each, chosen from a plethora:
“Grief is a form of idleness” — Johnson
Churchill about Clement Attlee, his opponent in the House of Commons: “He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing.”
Shaw, one of the first modern feminists(?): “Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.”
And the incomparable put-down merchant Oscar Wilde on Bernard Shaw: “He hasn’t an enemy in the world and none of his friends like him.”
I have quoted two philosophical musings and two witty insults from an encyclopaedia of bon mots on life, letters, manners, civilisation etc. and I want to place these against a current controversial tweet-exchange originating in England and, no doubt, floating around the global ether.
“Looks like Ashley Cole’s going to be their choc ice. Then again he’s always been a sell-out. Shame on him.” This from a fan of English footballer Rio Ferdinand who replies saying: “I hear you fella. Choc ice is classic. Hahahahahaha!”
This, one of the great character-denigrations of our time, is now being treated as possible provocation for a case of defamation in the courts and is, whether it turns into a legal farce or not, being treated as a comment on our times and culture by the British media.
Why? Because it’s a tweet by one footballer about another. Both of them are well-known, European or even world-class footballers and both of them are of Afro-Caribbean British descent.
The story should be told from the beginning. John Terry, a very eminent (white, British) captain of Chelsea and of England was at the centre of a kiss-and-tell scandal last year. Apparently he had an affair with the girlfriend of Wayne Bridge, an England teammate and close friend, when he and his wife and this teammate and his girlfriend went on holiday to some sunny European spot.
The fact and details of the infidelity were all over the media. The teammate’s girlfriend who had blown the story was interviewed. She must have said several profound things which have eluded me. Footballer’s wives and girlfriends, their shopping habits, tastes and pronouncements now constitute a sub-culture of these proud islands. Getting them to fight and claw each other publicly is part of the drama of this sub-culture. It was Rabelais who said that “nature abhors a vacuum.” The British TV-viewing and newspaper-reading public are not like “nature”. British TV has made a best-selling series called Footballer’s Wives which is more vacuous than anything Rabelais had in mind. The TV viewing public love it.
After the denunciation of the affair, Terry was characterised as a cheat and a betrayer of his wife and best friend. People fought each other to cast the first stone. The teammate then refused to play in the same team or at least to shake the hand of the man who had cuckolded him. Terry suffered public notoriety and was deemed unfit to lead the England team as the authorities who determine these things contended that he was a bad character-model for the youth who are, in their millions, fans of British football.
On the pitch Terry became the butt of adultery jokes. He was characterised as a fellow who, while scoring a goal, would enquire from the Opposition’s goal-keeper what his wife was doing that evening.
The sad story of triviality now moves to the football match last October between Chelsea and Queens Park Rangers (QPR), two West London teams. Terry led the Chelsea team and his friend Ashley Cole, a black footballer, played in defence. On the opposing side was one Anton Ferdinand, brother of Rio Ferdinand. QPR won the game on a disputed penalty.
It was later alleged that words had been exchanged on the pitch with Anton ribbing Terry about his “adultery” and Terry replying, it was alleged, in racially abusive terms, calling Anton a “F***ing black c**t”.
The exchange, though inaudible, was recorded by cameras and exposed on the Internet.
Anton Ferdinand himself did nothing about it and said he didn’t hear anything at the time. A complaint of racially aggravated abuse prohibited by a public order act was launched against Terry by an off-duty policeman who said he heard the exchange.
The case went to a magistrate’s court. Terry pleaded that he had repeated, sarcastically, what he believed Anton mistakenly thought he had called him. Lip-readers were summoned to court to give evidence about the substance of the exchange caught on video.
The nation and the football authority, held their breaths.
Ashley Cole, part of Terry’s team was summoned as a witness to say that Terry did not call Anton Ferdinand an effing black yoni.
John Terry was acquitted by the magistrate. This gave rise to a flurry of tweets and Rio Ferdinand seeming to agree that Cole was a “choc ice”. For those unfamiliar with British ice-creams or the petty and overblown history of British racial abuse, I ought to explain. A choc ice is a white vanilla ice-cream (sometimes available on a stick) coated as a slab in chocolate. So it’s cocoa-coloured on the outside and white on the inside. As an insult it’s used as an analogy for someone with a black skin whose values, life-style and allegiances are of and towards the white race.
The analogous insult for Indians in the UK was “coconut” — not the green-exteriored nariyal-paani variety but the dried one. I can think of several people whom I would call coconuts but if I did I wouldn’t mean it as an insult. Go figure!