Sunday, October 15, 2006

More Steve Lyons Stuff

posted by BH

Breaking News!!! Steve Lyons has issued an apology!!!

"If I offended anybody, I'm truly sorry," Lyons said in a phone interview. "But my comment about Lou taking my wallet was a joke and in no way racially motivated."

Oh. Wait. No, he didn't issue an apology. This thing he said, which started with an "if," then continued with a "but," is pretty ridiculous. Let's rewrite this, saying what Lyons really means with this statement:

Hey. I said this thing the other day about Lou stealing my wallet and maybe you got mad because you thought I was saying Mexicans are thieves. You know what though? It's really your problem. I'm truly sorry that it's your problem. The thing is, issuing this meaningless apology riddled with qualifications will work for some people.

Lyons doesn't get that he was fired for that whole "Hablaing Espanol" thing? He doesn't get that it demonstrated a clear lack of appreciation/sensitivity for another culture's language, and showed his hang-ups about any culture in which Spanish is the primary language by saying, "I don't understand him, and I don't want to sit to close to him now?"

While I'm not too worried about the racial motivation of what he said, I'm pretty sure he should have been fired for thinking what he said in any way qualified as a joke. Now, had he said something like, "I can't understand what he's saying, so I'm going to pretend I'm standing next to Steven Hawking," well, then...um...it still wouldn't have been funny, but at least I could have given him a C for the effort.

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