Cavani’s suspension is a sign of our exceptionally stupid times

My old friend Simon Gray, playwright and author of the incomparable Smoking Diaries, liked to say that we live in exceptionally stupid times, and every now and then would send me a postcard offering a choice example of some new idiocy.

I thought of Simon when I read that Edinson Cavani, the Manchester United footballer, has been suspended and quite heavily fined for posting on social media a note to a friend whom he addressed as “my little negrito”. Cavani is Uruguayan and in Latin American countries “negrito” is, it seems, often employed as an affectionate term as we might – till recently anyway – have addressed an Irish friend as “Paddy”, a Welsh one as “Taffy”, or someone like me or the editor of Reaction as “Jock or “Scotty”.

But – stupid times – so offensive is “negrito” thought to be, no matter how and in which circumstances Mr Cavani employed it – that the journalist reporting the story on the BBC website couldn’t bring himself to use it, instead describing it as “a Spanish phrase that is offensive in some contexts”. No doubt in some contexts “negrito” may be offensive, and, equally no doubt the journalist was wise to refrain from mentioning it. Who knows what trouble the poor chap might have found himself in?

Mr Cavani pled guilty to a Football Association charge of using insulting and/or improper words”. I like to think he did so with a raised eyebrow and shrug of the shoulders. He must also complete “a face-to-face education programme.” It’s unlikely however that this will deal with the idiocy of Britain today.

Awareness of the wrongness and cruelty of racism isn’t of course idiotic. Racism is cruel and disgusting. There is still racism in sport, though much less than there was twenty, even ten, years ago. It will be good when it is rooted out. But cases like this one do nothing to further the cause of anti-racism. They are more likely to damage it.

Of course Mr Cavani would have been more sensible to reply to his friend’s congratulations in a private e-mail rather than in a post on social media. We may all address family members and friends in terms that would quite rightly be thought offensive if directed to a stranger. Context matters in conversation. What is received as an insult in some circumstances may be accepted as a term of affection in others. Many a fond wife has addressed her husband as “you stupid old bastard” and worse than that without causing him pain or grief. A man may address a friend as “cocksucker” without implying that he practises fellatio.

It is scarcely surprising that, having only recently arrived in England, Mr Cavani didn’t yet understand how eager people in our stupid times are to see, and take, offence where no offence is intended. Perhaps the face-to-face education programme he must endure will teach him what sort of country he is now living in, teach him in more than one way indeed..

However there is now a new twist to the silly tale. The Uruguay Players Association has issued a statement in which it describes the FA’s punishment of their colleague as “a true discriminatory act, which is completely reprehensible and against Uruguayan culture”.

Well, it’s always agreeable to see the biter bit, and one can’t but be amused by hearing the FA accused of discrimination when the poor things thought they were pushing for honourable membership of the woke culture, but it seems to me that in their pompous rebuke the Uruguay Players Association are being a bit silly themselves.

Mr Cavani, however, has emerged from the nonsense with dignity, accepting the punishment inflicted, and I like to think doing so with perhaps a wry smile, and the silent reflection: “Lord, what fools these people are”.