And quite right too. I don't like Terry anymore than the next decent Daily Mail reader but this shouldn't have gone to trial. In "the heat of battle" to use football parlance this was just "handbags" and "six of one, half a dozen of the other". It's "racism" gone mad!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/13_07_12_r_v_john_terry.pdf It's interesting. Until this trial I didn't realize saying something offensive was a crime... The actual charge was that he "used threatening, abusive or insulting words...within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress and the offense was racially aggravated..." in accordance with the statute defining "racially aggravated."
Also, as an American, "knob head" would leave me confused rather than offended... The diversity of insults English folks use... It's overwhelming.
As the black comedian Chris Rock has argued in his act, in a stand up row ANYTHING goes. There are NO niceties.
As I typically insightfully commented on the Michael Buerk article in the Mail about all this, Terry will have warmly embraced more black men in his time than Nelson Mandela and The Spice Girls put together. Michael says he knows what racism is - sadly these days few people seem to.Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2173656/John-Terry-foul-mouthed-philandering-bully-So-did-champion-free-speech.html#ixzz20mN1py5j
