Chris Waters: Perception of Barton still same despite his incessant tweeting

ARISTOTLE, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus and Joey Barton – the list of the world’s philosophers is practically endless.

While many of those names are familiar to all, eyebrows might be raised at the final entry.

Yet Barton, the controversial Queens Park Rangers midfielder, is a self-styled scholar of the modern age.

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As his circa 1,000,000 followers on the social networking site Twitter could testify, Barton is never short of a word or several.

Indeed, of his circa 3,500 tweets, a good many focus on matters which represent something of a departure from normal dressing room discourse, which tend to focus on – but not necessarily in this order – football, sex and alcohol.

Throughout his Twitter career, Barton has been known to comment on figures ranging from Friedrich Nietzsche and George Orwell to Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Morrissey.

Last week he was going on about some philosophy graduate called Seth Godin, who, thanks to the all-seeing, all-knowing website Wikipedia, I can reliably inform you is an American entrepreneur, author and public speaker who popularised the topic of “permission marketing”.

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In a nutshell, Barton, or – to give him his Twitter title, @Joey7Barton – is not your run-of-the-mill footballer, never mind run-of-the-mill bloke. By his own admission he is “actually rather peculiar”, something in which he clearly revels.

The problem I have with Barton is that, through his self-important pronouncements of 140 characters or less, he has seemingly become too big for his boots.

In my experience, self-styled scholars are not really scholarly at all – just people who like to show off by quoting such people as Nietzsche on Twitter: an oxymoron if ever there was one.

Indeed, there is something paradoxically dime-a-dozen about anyone who makes a point of protesting they are different.

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But if “different” means being locked up for assault, stubbing out a cigar in a team-mate’s eye or finding oneself embroiled in sundry on-and-off-field shenanigans (no cheap shots here), then Barton most definitely fits the bill.

In a revealing interview last week with FHM magazine, the 29-year-old outlined his philosophy (no pun intended).

“You know what – people can call me a w*****, they can call me a thug, they can call me what they want,” he declared in language that would not have been used by Augustine of Hippo. “But the most insulting thing you can ever call me would be normal because I’m actually rather peculiar.

“I’ve only got on the way I have in life because I am different, and isn’t that brilliant?

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“The problem was I didn’t use to like myself much. I didn’t understand what was going on inside me. I didn’t understand why I was feeling the way I felt.

“I couldn’t make head nor tail of it because, to all intents and purposes, being successful at your chosen profession, having a lot of money, and all the other things that come with it should make you happy.”

Barton went on: “I’ve been tweeting six months and I’ve changed public perception.

“I’ve done more in six months than I probably could have done in 10-15 years before, and more than I ever could have done by doing television interviews and newspaper articles.”

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“I love Twitter,” he added. “I like the fact I’m forcing people to question whatever they have been told by newspapers and the media. And I like the fact that it’s irking people who thought I was a certain type of person.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure which public perception @Joey7Barton has changed.

Is it the one in which people had him down as a thug? Or is it the one in which folk assumed, by virtue of his string of misdemeanours, that he possessed only a modicum of grey matter?

A wider question, in fact, is whether public perception could ever be changed by larking about on Twitter – although such matters are perhaps best left to modern-day Nietzsches.

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Of course, when Barton is not musing on the sayings of Seth Godin et al, his tweets are typically more provocative than philosophical. Indeed, a cursory inspection of his Twitter page reveals that his BlackBerry has lately been going into overdrive with all manner of prickly pronouncements.

Following his recent sending-off against Norwich City, when he was dismissed for what turned out to be a non head-butt of Bradley Johnson, Barton took to cyberspace to criticise Johnson, referee Neil Swarbrick and his assistant David Richardson, whom he claimed had been “conned” by the midfielder.

“Linesman definitely never saw it,” tweeted Barton. “All he seen was Johnsons reaction. My head doesnt move forward at all.Ridiculous decision.”

Although video evidence vindicated the QPR captain, who clearly doesn’t attach the same importance to punctuation as he does to philosophy (more cheap shots, I’m afraid), his comments sparked a predictable furore.

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With magnificent moronity, Johnson retaliated by holding up a sign at Tuesday’s world darts final at Alexandra Palace that stated simply: “Barton your breath stinks.”

Barton hit back on Twitter with the words: “Don’t worry people I’ve seen Boris Johnson from Norwich with his sign at the darts.

“He’s irrelevant really, absolute no mark.”

Even former England cricketer Mark Butcher stuck his oar in, tweeting: “stop your whining, perhaps if you didn’t have a reputation as a thug you’d have got the benefit of the doubt”.

Barton replied with “Very strange retort from you of all people. How can you quantify your statement. Stop being influenced by media propaganda”.

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To which Butcher retaliated with: “nothing to do with media, just don’t agree with sportsmen continually attacking officials in public. have some class”

Following his red card, Barton even floated the idea that clubs could sue referees for poor decisions.

This, however, was beneath even Barton.

For if clubs can sue referees, what is to stop supporters suing clubs? Because, if that was permitted, and after all the years of false promises and unfulfilled expectations, Lincoln City must owe me in the region of £20m.

Of course, Barton is a character – and sport needs characters.

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He also happens to be a damn fine player – one who showed all his quality in the Norwich game with a well-taken goal from distance. But his attempts to come over all intellectual do not wash hereabouts.

Someone should really tell him to shut up on Twitter and focus on his football.