the brilliantly leaping gazelle

If they weren’t as depressingly predictable as they were tragically avoidable, the contrasting reactions to the differing fates of John Davidson and Valdo Calocane might be ironic. But instead, they prove only that the modern obsession to view everything through the reductive lens of race leads not only to hypocrisy, but also to murder.

We all know who John Davidson is and why he’s been in the news of late. But in case you’ve been living in a box of late and have no idea who he is, he’s is the man who shouted the ’N’ word at the BAFTA’ awards ceremony the other night. All things being equal, the pretty instant condemnation and vilification of him would be fully justified. But he has Tourette’s Syndrome, and a particularly challenging and rare variant of it at that. The involuntary tics most commonly associated with Tourette’s normally involve facial movements, clicking, or blurting out inoffensive words. His doesn’t. He has coprolalia. Which means he swears, but not merely normal swearing. Coprolalia has the also has the added effect of the brain sometimes selecting the most inappropriate thing to say at the most inappropriate of times

In 2019, he was given an MBE in recognition of his campaigning work to raise awareness of Tourettes. When the Queen – the proper one, not the ex-mistress – gave it to him, he said ‘Fuck the Queen.’ But she knew who he was, why he was being honoured and knew he wasn’t always in control of what he said so she simply said “Congratulations, Mr Davidson, ’I believe you’ve done lots of television appearances trying to improve people’s knowledge of Tourette’s.”

Clearly, that work has a long way to go, if the reaction to his outburst was anything to go by. The fact that a bunch of actors who immediately rushed to condemn him was instructive, For these are the one group of people who, above all other groups in society, one would expect to have unlimited sympathy for a man who is neurodivergent.  A disabled man, a man who because society was unable to recognise his disability, had been bullied, stigmatised marginalised by it for most of his life. This group who collectively have no problem whatsoever putting their names to condemnatory letters denouncing someone for doing something or else to urge a government to do more of something else or to demand that something they don’t like ceases immediately.  

They feel perfectly entitled to berate lesser mortals – everyone else – who are not imbued with the same moral probity that they are, to check their privilege, be mindful of others and to not reinforce intoloerance. To never punch downwards, to never victim-shame or to never…well act as they did on Sunday night. Davidson was clearly guilty. He knew what he was doing and was using his Tourettes as a convenient get out. That basically was the reaction in the morally duplicitous and opportunistically hypocritical world of show-business. His use of the ’N’ word effectively reduced everything else to an inconsequential detail. 

Jamie Foxx best exemplifies this selective offence taking. He quickly took to Instagram. “Out of all the words you could’ve said Tourette’s makes you say that. Nah he meant that shit. Unacceptable.’ This would be the same Jamie Foxx who was quite happy to appear in Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 film ‘Django Unchained’. I saw it once, years ago now, so can’t swear to it(!), but I’m confident that it, like all of the other Tarantino films I’ve seen, was liberally peppered with the ’N’ word. Quite possibly Foxx himself even said it.

Or maybe there’s another Jamie Foxx? This one who appeared on Kayne Wests ‘Gold Digger’ track in 2005. That featured multiple uses of the ’N’ word. So does a word become more or less offensive depending on who it is thats using it, to whom and in what context? Because if that is so, then a man with a neurological condition over which he has no control, deserves no criticism from someone who uses the very same word for money.    

Now consider Valdo Calacone. An inquiry this week into the circumstances that led to him murdering three people and attempting to murder a further three, was told that a decision not to section him following a violent psychotic episode was racially motivated. Inasmuch as someone had seen research suggesting that there was an ‘over-representation of young black males in detention’. Instead he was given an ‘at-home’ treatment plan in May 2020 and which was such a tremendous success that he was subsequently sectioned four times. 

Despite him having being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, despite him repeatedly failing to take his proscribed psychosis medication and despite repeated concerns about him being raised by his family with the various agencies responsible for his care, nothing of any meaningful import was done. 

One doesn’t have to be an expert to in the treatment of paranoid schizophrenia to consider that a paranoid schizophrenic with a history of violence and who has previously been sectioned four times, possibly, just possibly, might be a danger to the public. Especially one who, prior to the murders in June 2023, watched videos of mass shootings in America and also researched the 2019 Christchurch mosque attack in New Zealand, where 51 people died, and the 1996 Dunblane primary school massacre, in which 16 pupils and one teacher were killed.

So yes, the signs were there, and whilst some of them – his internet history – were only discovered after the murders, enough of them were present to enable a rational person to assess the risk to the public as high.

But not if that leaves you open of charges of racism. In the Britain of 2026 that is one of the worst thing to be called. This is the topsy-turvy world of moral absolutism, a Britain in which one instance of actual racism, and one instance of imagined racism are inverted, the better to allow people to feel morally superior, ethically blameless or virtuously enlightened. In much the same way that the Mirror Of Erased in ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, showed the viewer what they most desired, if one views everything through race coloured spectacles, that is precisely what you’ll see. You won’t see someone with a disability, uncontrollably shouting an obscenity. You’ll just hear the obscenity. And you also won’t see violent paranoid schizophrenic. You’ll see some research. 

Now I’m no expert in paranoid schizophrenia just as much as Jamie Foxx isn’t an expert in Tourettes but I know which of the two men I’d rather be trapped in a lift with.