Stephanie Rice in a messy soup
Have you heard of Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice? I hadn’t till a few days ago. Apparently she was watching a rugby match between Australia & South Africa and after the Australian team beat the South African team, she tweeted, “Suck on that, f@gg*ts!” Because, you know, the South African team is clearly gay if they couldn’t beat the Australian team, because gays are such losers and not men enough.
As you can tell I’m pissed off with her comment. But there’s more to this story – Stephanie Rice apologised and deleted the guilty tweet and said she didn’t mean it and that she took full responsibility for her actions.
This is unlike a lot of non-apologies I’ve heard in recent times with people not apologising for what they said but for how it made someone feel, (ex. ‘I’m sorry that people were offended that I said something homophobic’ instead of saying ‘I’m sorry I said something homophobic.’).
Of course after this happened the world and it’s uncle was either outraged or saying that ‘the gays’ were making a big deal out of nothing.
Then one of Stephanie Rice’s gay friends spoke up in her defense and said that while it was a stupid thing to say, she wasn’t homophobic. Then Jaguar pulled out of an endorsement deal they had with her.
Now I don’t know what to think. On the one hand, she should NEVER have said that, considering how she’s a role model and a public person with influence. On the other hand, she took full responsibility for her actions and accepted that she would pay for her actions. But is it too steep a price to pay?
What do you think?