White girls must not be portrayed as taller than black girls



Social media users are accusing Gap of passive racism because of an image where a tall white girl rests her arm on the head of a shorter black girl. Video provided by Newsy Newslook

Retailer Gap apologized on Tuesday after receiving criticism that an ad for the company’s children’s clothing line was racially insensitive.

The ad featured four members of the Le Petit Cirque group, an "all-kid humanitarian cirque company," comprised of performers ages 5 to 14. In the ad, an older white girl rests her elbow on top of a young black girl’s head, while two other white girls hold poses.

While the ad was supposed to be empowering, many noted on social media that the black girl was being used as a "prop" or a piece of furniture.

Kristen West Savali of The Root noted that the “ad is what happens when black faces appear, but no black voices are at the table.”

Following the backlash on social media, Gap replaced the image and apologized to those who were offended.

But while many condemned the ad, others on social media questioned whether people were reading too far into the ad.

Filmmaker Mathew A. Cherry pointed out that Gap used a similar pose in 2015, but with a black girl resting her arm on a younger white girl's head.

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Following complaint, Instagram restores Israeli flag photo that "violated community standards"



When Susanne Katz received a message by Instagram a little over a week ago notifying her that one of her photographs was taken down because it "violated community standards," she never suspected it was over a seemingly innocent picture of her against the backdrop of an Israeli flag posted about 10 days prior.

The next morning, Katz reposted the photo, a selfie she took at work depicting a casual look with a messy ponytail in front of an Israeli flag, and again, it was taken down seven hours later.

She then contacted Instagram to ask why the photograph was taken down but did not receive a response, Katz said.

"Initially I was extremely upset because I consider the Israeli flag very much a part of my identity as a Jewish Zionist woman. Also, I have reported actual terrorist activity on  Instagram ...Actual graphic violence and nudity and I get a message back saying my post was reviewed and it doesn't violate the community standards. So I was in disbelief that my photo violated anything," Katz said in an exclusive interview with The Foreign Desk.

The caption reads "Antisemitism infects society with beliefs that define Jews as demonic, powerful, and a threat to the world. The currently accepted and false belief is that the "Palestinians" are the native people of "Palestine" and that the Jewish State is an occupying colonial state. This single fabrication is the main driving force behind the current wave of global antisemitism.

The remarkable success that antisemitism has now attained has been made possible by the new tactic of erasing 3,500 years of Israel's history in the land prior to the establishment of the modern state in 1948. The history of the Children of Israel in the Land of Israel, which was once common knowledge, has been deleted from our collective memories the way that the giant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan were obliterated."

Several prominent Jewish and rights groups voiced concern on social media over the incident, and many wrote to Instagram to complain about the photograph being removed.

Instagram page ‘Humans of Judaism' reposted the photo April 12 with the caption, "Last night Instagram deleted this photo saying it violated their standards. I'm #sorrynotsorry if the Israeli flag offends them."

But it wasn't until the Anti-Defamation League got involved, that the situation was resolved, according to Katz. The photo was reposted on Instagram Tuesday.

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Must not mention normal families

Beatrice Hurtig was heating baby food at Ikea’s restaurant in Örebro in central Sweden when she saw a sign that agitated her, Expressen reports. 

“More room between tables for you and your mum and dad in the family corner,” the sign promised.

Hurtig said she got a knot in her stomach and immediately took a snap of the sign. She sent the photo to Ikea via Facebook and asked them to take the sign down.

“Children are the ones supposed to read this notice. Imagine a child who lives with their grandmother, or has a parent who’s out of the picture, or has parents who simply don’t think they belong in traditional gender categories,” Hurtig told Expressen.

“It’s wrong on so many levels. Ikea is a good place for an excursion and it should be good for everybody.”

Ikea duly took the sign down. A spokesman said the company agreed it had not been well worded.

“We at Ikea respect all people and want everybody to feel welcome,” Per Henning told Expressen.

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Is "Becky" a bad word?

Is good hair blonde hair?

Iggy Azalea wants nothing to do with the drama surrounding the 'Becky' line from Beyonce's newly released album Lemonade.

In a series of tweets on Monday, the 25-year-old criticised the word for being a negative stereotype of white women.

In Beyonce's track Sorry, she sings about a cheating lover - prompting many people to assume she was talking about Jay Z having an affair - and tells him to 'call Becky with the good hair'.

'Becky' is a phrase that has been known to refer to a generic white woman with straight hair, and Iggy implied that the term is racially insensitive.

'Don't ever call me a Becky,' she tweeted to a fan, before stating that she was criticising the phrase and not Beyonce.

She then tweeted to another user: 'girl BYE. do you know how many time ppl have called me BECKY? it didnt have any kind of positive intention behind it. dont start.

'Generalizing ANY race by calling them one sterotypical [sic] name for said race. i personally dont think is very cool, the end.'

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I guess nappy hair is more bother if you want to do anything with it

No free speech in Turkey

It is a Muslim country after all

A prominent Dutch journalist has been detained by Turkish police while on holiday, Dutch officials say, a week after she criticised President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in print for clamping down on dissent.

Columnist Ebru Umar, who is of Turkish descent and an outspoken critic of Erdogan, was detained by police overnight in Turkey where she was on holiday.

She tweeted on Sunday that she had been released but was not allowed to leave the country.

In the free newspaper Metro last week, Umar called Erdogan a "dictator" and criticised a Turkish consular official in the Netherlands for asking all Turks there to report incidents of insults against Erdogan in the country.

Erdogan is known for his readiness to take legal action over perceived slurs.

Insulting the president is a crime in Turkey punishable by up to four years in jail, but the law had previously been invoked only rarely.

Since Erdogan became president in 2014, prosecutors have opened more than 1800 cases against people for insulting him, the justice minister said last month.

Those who have faced such suits include journalists, cartoonists, academics and even school children.

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Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell is accused of racism after 'crass and clumsy' tweet

Rather good to see Leftist racism condemned for once

Tony Blair's former spin doctor Alastair Campbell has been accused of racism today after making a 'clumsy' comment about 'non white faces' at a Premier League football match.

Mr Campbell, 58, is best known for masterminding Labour's public relations during Mr Blair's time in power, but is also a fanatical football fan.

After Leicester's 4-0 win over Swansea City yesterday he decided to pay tribute to the ethnic mix of fans at the King Power Stadium.

He tweeted: 'Fantastic to see fairly high proportion of non white faces in the crowd at Leicester City. All too rare at most clubs.'

But the comment has been branded 'crass', 'clumsy' and even 'racist' by critics, who he called idiots and plonkers.

Ian Frankum told him: 'What a ridiculous Tweet, are you in a time machine? It's a reflection of the local community. Simple.'

Mr Campbell told him: 'And most clubs aren't, idiot'.

Mr Frankum replied again: 'Thanks for the insult. Look at the rest of comments and come to West Ham or Arsenal you will see things have changed.'

Mr Campbell replied once more: 'As it happens I am aware of that. But most clubs' crowds do not reflect their communities.'

Mr Frankum signed off with a closing remark: 'Put down the shovel Ally.'

James Sharp told Campbell that his comment was 'a bit crass maybe' and another told him it was a 'clumsy political comment'.

Mark Thomas piled in, adding: 'What does it matter? Stop highlighting race'.

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Free Speech 1, Kamala Harris 0

Judge throws out California attempt to intimidate conservative donors

Kamala Harris has been a hero of the left’s campaign to use donor disclosure as a tool of political intimidation. Since 2013 the California Attorney General has been demanding that nonprofits provide unredacted donor names if they want to solicit donations in the state. On Thursday a federal court declared her disclosure requirement an unconstitutional burden on First Amendment rights.

Federal Judge Manuel Real granted a permanent injunction against Ms. Harris in a lawsuit brought by the Americans For Prosperity Foundation. The group, which is affiliated with free-market supporters Charles and David Koch, has argued that as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, it should not be forced to supply the Attorney General with the organization’s IRS Form 990 Schedule B, which contains its donor names.

In his 12-page decision, Judge Real notes that while Attorney General Harris argued that she needed donor disclosure to identify lawbreaking like “self-dealing” or “improper loans,” that was a stretch. “[O]ver the course of trial, the Attorney General was hard pressed to find a single witness who could corroborate the necessity of Schedule B forms in conjunction with their office’s investigations,” the judge wrote.

Ms. Harris claimed the donor disclosure was only for internal purposes and not for public use or to precipitate any targeting of the donors, but the judge didn’t buy that either.

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Words, words

There is far too much weight given these days to using exactly the "right" form of words.  I suppose it is a hopeless case but I think we should instead just look at the basic meaning and think about that

Let me give an example of the difference that the "right" word can make these days.  I once said: "All Jews should get back to Israel.  They don't belong here".  Did I get condemned for that? Was I immediately fingered as an antisemite? Not at all.  How come?  Because I didn't actually say that.  I said it in Hebrew instead. What I said was: "I think all Jews should make Aliyah".  Both of those forms of words mean the same thing but one was phrased in a way that bore on a great Jewish controversy.

"Aliyah" literally mean "rising up"  -- rising up to Eretz Israel.  And many Jews acknowledge that as a holy duty and feel guilty and apologetic that they have chosen to live in the fleshpots of NYC instead.  So what I said was actually holy from a Jewish viewpoint. And some of my Jewish readers wrote to agree with me.

But isn't that crazy?  Why do we pay so much attention to superficialities? I may be wrong but I do genuinely believe that Israel, despite the attacks on it, is ultimately the safest place for Jewry -- but I was fortunate that I could put that thought in the "right" way.  If I had not been so able, I might have attracted much opprobrium for saying exactly the same thing.

So I hope that conservatives at least will sometimes look at and think about the underlying intention of an utterance and overlook or forgive less felicitous forms of expression.

FOOTNOTE:  My reason for thinking that all Jews should make Aliyah

The Ayatollahs have made clear that America is the great Satan.  Israel is only the little Satan.  And the 9/11 attacks were on NYC, not Israel.  So, if the Obama-enabled Ayatollahs are suicidal enough to unleash a nuclear strike, it will most likely be on NYC, not Jerusalem.  Jerusalem is, after all, holy to them too

Australia: Now normality is wrong

Skyler Kennedy, from REACH kids, took to her company’s Facebook page and posted two text messages she received this week from a potential client. The mother was requesting someone to babysit her three children, aged three to 11.

“The babysitter will need to be from a Christian background as we are a faith-driven household. We also request that the babysitter supports our teaching of anti-gay marriage and lack of support for the gay/rainbow flag community,” the first text read.

“I’m sorry,” began the second text. “We are just asking for a normal person, not one with coloured hair or supporting radical gender theories. We want to raise our kids to be normal, so if there is anyone else we can get for the night that would be great.”

Ms Kennedy says she initially agreed to help find the woman a Christian babysitter, but later refused her request after receiving the second text message.

“I can understand someone wanting a Christian babysitter, or someone whose religious beliefs align with your own, if you have a very faith-driven household,” she told news.com.au

“But when they went on to say they wanted someone who was ‘anti gay and rainbow flag’ [the colours representing the LGBT community], I thought ‘This is really strange’.

“After they sent that text, I said ‘OK, this is ridiculous. I am going to publicise this, because it seems not right’. I want to make it clear that my organisation supports diversity and people’s freedom who be who they are,” she said.

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Must not mention that Obama is 'part Kenyan'

Boris Johnson was accused of 'dog whistle racism' and likened to right-wing 'Tea Party' politicians in the US this morning after his attack on the 'part-Kenyan' Barack Obama.

The Mayor of London spoke out against the US President after he urged British voters to stay in the EU and mentioned his African ancestry as he criticised the decision to remove a bust of Sir Winston Churchill from the Oval Office shortly after Mr Obama entered the White House.

Mr Johnson - who is favourite to succeed David Cameron as Prime Minister - suggested the President got rid of the statue as a 'snub' to Britain's wartime prime minister and a 'symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire'.

But Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell hit out at Mr Johnson and demanded he withdraw the controversial remarks.

He wrote on Twitter: 'Mask slips again. Boris part-Kenyan Obama comment is yet another example of dog whistle racism from senior Tories. He should withdraw it.'

This afternoon Mr Johnson defended his remarks and said he did not imply the US leader was anti-British.

Diane Abbott, Shadow International Development Secretary, hit out at Mr Johnson, describing his remarks as 'offensive' and said they echoed those of the Tea Party's right-wing, anti-immigration tendency in the US.

Referring to the removal of Sir Winston's bust, Mr Johnson wrote in The Sun today : 'No one was sure whether the President had himself been involved in the decision,' he said.

'Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire - of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender.'

'I think the issue really is about democracy - America guards its democracy very jealously and I think we should be entitled to do so as well.'

Ukip leader Nigel Farage backed up Mr Johnson's claims. He told The Guardian: 'Look, I know his family's background. Kenya. Colonialism. There is clearly something going on there.

'It's just that you know people emerge from colonialism with different views of the British. Some thought that they were really rather benign and rather good, and others saw them as foreign invaders.  'Obama's family come from that second school of thought and it hasn't quite left him yet.'

Mr Johnson's attack on the President came after Mr Obama's controversial decision to make a major intervention in the EU referendum campaign.

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UK: Independence supporting taxi driver is quizzed by police after he covered his house with a giant banner containing a SWASTIKA calling for British exit from the EU

It is quite common for British conservatives to compare the EU with a Communist or Nazi government.  The EU certainly pours out an unending stream of new regulations.  By some estimations, two thirds of the law current in Britain emanates from the EU

A UKIP supporter was quizzed by police today after he hung a giant banner containing a swastika on the front of his house.

Taxi driver Timothy 'Dusty' Miller covered the top floor of his three-bedroom detached home with the banner in a bid to attract Brexit voters over this summer's EU referendum.

The banner contains a written slogan exclaiming: 'Have we British forgotten the last attempt to remove our freedom and democracy?'

Separated by the huge swastika, a second line then reads: 'We did not fight two world wars to surrender and be ruled by a corrupt EU!'

Mr Miller, 66, said he was contacted by police officers this morning after putting up the 22ft by 8ft banner last night, who told him the Jewish community were 'incensed'.

Explaining his decision to tie it to his house, he said: 'There is nothing wrong with the sign, it's perfectly legal. 'The sign is shown in a historical context referring to nothing other than freedom of democracy.

'I can very well understand their views if I was, in any way, promoting the far right but it's not that at all. 'People want to read that I'm anti-semitic but that is not the truth. I'm referencing what will happen if our freedom of democracy was threatened.

'The Nazis and Hitler came for our freedom and democracy and we repelled them.

'Now the EU have come for our freedom and democracy, they have stolen our freedom and democracy and they have used techniques and mechanisms to do so.

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Must not satirize sexually confused people

Curt Schilling, a former All-Star pitcher and one of the highest-profile baseball analysts on ESPN, was fired from the network Wednesday, a day after he drew intense criticism for promoting offensive commentary on social media.

Schilling, who had worked for the network since 2010 and most recently offered analysis on “Monday Night Baseball,” was dismissed after sharing a Facebook post this week that appeared to respond to the North Carolina law that bars transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms that do not correspond with their birth genders.

The post showed an overweight man wearing a wig and women’s clothing with parts of the T-shirt cut out to expose his breasts. It says: “LET HIM IN! to the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving racist bigot who needs to die.”

To that, Schilling added: “A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”

“ESPN is an inclusive company,” ESPN said in a statement. “Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.”

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In Apparent Hoax, Man Accuses Whole Foods of Discrimination

Yet another hate speech hoax.  Where there is no hate, the Queer/Left have to invent it

In the ongoing showdown between cake bakers and the Rainbow Mafia, a homosexual pastor in Austin, Texas, accused Whole Foods of decorating a cake with a slur degrading the “LGBT community.” Jordan Brown asked for the store’s cake decorator to write “Love Wins,” the prevailing slogan of the same-sex marriage crowd, across the top of the cake. According to a video Brown created, the decorator decided to add the word “Fag” to the confectionery. Brown claimed he didn’t see the offending message when he bought the cake, only discovering it when he arrived at his car.

Instead of taking the cake back, however, Brown brought it home. After receiving an unsatisfactory reply from the store, the man decided to sue the store for discrimination. As The Washington Post notes, Brown belongs to the Austin Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, an organization whose mission is “keeping gay money within the gay-supportive community.”

Quickly, people started calling Brown’s accusation a hoax. The color of the frosting and handwriting between the phrases “Love Wins” and “Fag” were different, for one. Then Whole Foods responded. “After a deeper investigation of Mr. Brown’s claim, we believe his accusations are fraudulent and we intend to take legal action against both Mr. Brown and his attorney,” the company said in a statement. It even released surveillance video of Brown’s purchase, and noted that the person who decorated Brown’s cake “is a part of the LGBTQ community.”

If Brown pranked himself, it only highlights attention-seeking narcissism, which is pervasive in the community of people with the gender disorientation pathology.

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An old insanity continues

But it's no joke, as the past has shown.  Blaming the Jews for everything just rose to a new height of absurdity.  Now some Russians are blaming Jews for the collapse of the Soviet Union!


The Rabbi and the President.  They get on well

Following the dissemination of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory by a politician from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party, a chief rabbi of Russia called on the government to stamp out hate speech against Jews.

Rabbi Berel Lazar’s appeal Friday to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was in reaction to the April 10 statement on Jews by Vladislav Vikhorev, a candidate for Putin’s United Russia who is running to be elected a state lawmaker in the Legislative Assembly of Chelyabinsk Oblast, a federal region located nearly 1,000 miles away from Moscow.

During a debate in the city of Chelyabinsk, Vikhorev said that Jews in the 1990s were behind a “Jewish revolution that put Russian sovereignty itself on the brink of extinction,” which he said was “a well-planned, well designed program of destruction of national culture, national education, national production and the national financial system,” according to the news website Apostroph.

Lazar enjoys good relations with Putin, whom he credits with curbing anti-Semitic speech in media and in government, that Lazar says was more common before Putin came into power.

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UCLA Muslims want truth-telling posters censored

Students for Justice in Palestine called for UCLA administrators to create a comprehensive plan that anticipates hate-speech posters, among other demands, in response to another wave of posters that link SJP to terrorist groups.

David Horowitz, a conservative writer based in Los Angeles, posted flyers Friday accusing SJP and the Muslim Student Association of supporting the murder of Israelis. Jerry Kang, vice chancellor of equity, diversity and inclusion, sent a campus-wide email in response, condemning Horowitz’s actions as psychological harassment and intimidation.

Rahim Kuwra, a member of SJP and doctoral candidate in sociology, said the Friday posters are the fourth iteration of Horowitz’s attack on SJP members. On Tuesday SJP released a list of five administrative demands that aim to mitigate similar attacks on students.

In the statement, SJP said it wants administrators to implement a more thorough plan of removing posters that contain hate speech. SJP members acknowledged UCPD and UCLA Facilities Management have established procedures to remove the posters, but maintain the procedures could be improved, according to the email.

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Christophobic Facebook

Respectful post on homosexual marriage by Australian clegyman immediately deleted.  Restored only after intervention by Australian politicians

Federal Liberal MP Andrew Hastie has called on Facebook to explain why it deleted a Sydney academic’s post about same-sex marriage and reinstated it only after being quizzed by free-speech advocate Tim Wilson.

The post by John Dickson, an ordained Anglican minister and founder of the Centre for Public Christianity, was removed on ­Saturday because it did not adhere to Facebook’s “community standards”.

The 500-word opinion piece, which called for a more respect­ful debate on the issue of gay marriage, had been reinstated on Sunday night, with Facebook telling Mr Dickson one of its employees had “accidentally” deleted it.

Mr Hastie said yesterday he had told Mr Wilson, the former human rights commissioner and a Liberal candidate at the next federal election, about Facebook’s censorship when he heard about it on Sunday. Mr Wilson later spoke to someone he knew in Face­book’s government affairs team and the post was reinstated.

Mr Hastie, the MP for the seat of Canning in Western Australia, said Facebook should explain its actions.  “If they have assumed a new morality, just be clear about it,” he said. “I find it troubling that Facebook would censor a respected public figure like John Dickson who was advocating in a very reasonable and winsome manner.  “If that sort of engagement is going to be censored, I would be worried about the future of debate in this country.”

A Facebook spokesman declined to say why the post was removed or whether it had been the subject of complaints.  “This comment was removed in error,” he said. “We promptly restored the comment once we realised this, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience caused.”

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The restored FB post is here

Head of German anti-Islam group in court for hate speech

No 1st Amendment in Germany

The founder of Germany's xenophobic and anti-Islamic Pegida movement faced court Tuesday on hate speech charges for branding refugees "cattle" and "scum" on social media.

Lutz Bachmann, founder of the far-right "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident" movement, was charged in October with inciting racial hatred through a series of widely-shared Facebook posts.

The trial was held under tight security in Dresden in the former communist east, the birthplace of Pegida, which bitterly opposes Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal migration policy that brought more than a million asylum seekers to Germany last year.

The court said the 43-year-old's comments, which date back to 2014, also "disrupted public order" and constituted an "attack on the dignity" of refugees.

If found guilty, Bachmann could face between three months and five years in jail.

The Pegida founder's offending comments were published in September 2014, as the movement started life as a xenophobic Facebook group.

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Judging by the behavior of the recent immigrant influx into Germany, I imagine that a lot of Germans would by now agree with Herr Bachmann, if they were allowed to

HATE SPEECH AT WHOLE FOODS?



It is hard to imagine a more cosmopolitan establishment these days than Whole Foods, where, David Brooks joked, the checkers all look like they’re on loan from Amnesty International. But a gay preacher is alleging that he is the victim of hate speech from the bakery department at the Whole Foods in Austin, Texas, where his special order cake reading “Love Wins” came with some extra frosting:

The lettering of the slur doesn’t match up very well with the lettering at the periphery. Is it plausible that a Whole Foods in Austin is a hotbed of anti-gay sentiment? Better send the whole cake to the FBI Frosting Handwriting Analysis Lab to get to the bottom of this.

Whole Foods is denying their baker did it

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Scottish cops, stop policing our tweets

Last Friday, using the hashtag #thinkbeforeyoupost, the Greater Glasgow division of Police Scotland tweeted an image of the acronym, THINK:

Leaving no doubt that these were commands, not suggestions, the police accompanied this image with the following text: ‘Think before you post or you may receive a visit from us this weekend. Use the internet safely.’

It seemed, initially, to be a bad April Fools’ joke. But the 12 o’clock deadline had long passed and, in any case, the Scottish police have form when it comes to pre-emptively threatening Scots for social-media speech-crime. These are no empty threats, either. Only last month, a man from Inverclyde was arrested for offensive social-media comments about Syrian refugees. In the words of one Dunoon inspector, this was calculated to send ‘a clear message’ that the Scottish bobby takes ‘offensive comments on social media’ very seriously indeed.

What’s striking about this latest example of Police Scotland authoritarianism is the astounding lack of self-awareness. Here we have a bunch of policemen threatening to ‘visit’ you over your tweets all in the name of kindness and keeping you and the internet ‘safe’. What could be more unnecessary, unkind and unsafe than having a police force so mind-bogglingly illiberal that it considers off-colour tweets worthy of a ‘visit’?

If this talk of safety and being kind to people sounds familiar, it’s because the same thinking underpins most modern-day censorship. Whether it’s politicians calling for Twitter to get rid of ‘trolls’, or authoritarian student leaders banishing from campus anyone they deem ‘unsafe’, the hypocrisy is the same. To rid ourselves of unkind people on Twitter, we must be unkind to them and lock them up; to turn campus into a Safe Space, we have to make it unsafe to think or speak in a certain way. To achieve this tolerant utopia in the future, runs the argument, we must be profoundly intolerant in the here and now.

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Punished for a bit of banter? It’s rugby gone mad

England’s first grand slam since 2003. That will be my abiding memory of this year’s Six Nations rugby tournament, a competition in which we saw England bounce back from their World Cup humiliation in rip-roaring fashion under the impeccable leadership of new boss Eddie Jones.

Typically, though, the perpetually offended want to spoil my and every other English rugby fan’s fun by dragging political correctness, complete with accusations of racism, on to the field of play. England prop Joe Marler has just been banned for two games and fined £20,000 by World Rugby for calling his Welsh opposite number Samson Lee a ‘gypsy boy’ during the first half of the England-Wales clash at Twickenham in March. Lee is of Traveller stock, so it was plainly not a very pleasant thing for Marler to say. But to brand him a racist for a remark made in the heat of the moment? Is that fair?

I know it might come as a shock to people who spend their entire lives in Safe Spaces, but when 30 blokes are knocking seven bells out of each other for 80 minutes in pursuit of sporting victory and national pride, things can get a bit heated. I played in Marler and Lee’s position myself as a schoolboy, and I can tell you that even 16-year-olds can come up with some pretty colourful language after they’ve been lying at the bottom of a ruck as studded boots rain down from all sides.

Marler apologised to Lee at half-time and Lee himself dismissed the comment as ‘banter’, as did Wales coach Warren Gatland. England coach Jones reprimanded Marler afterwards, and then, as is typical of rugby players, everyone shook hands and carried on. Officials for the Six Nations tournament itself also decided (quite rightly) that no further action need be taken, since no one directly affected by the incident cared about it.

But this is 21st-century Britain, when people can claim to be offended on others’ behalf. So Gatland has since been castigated for dismissing the exchange of unpleasantries as banter and has been forced to apologise to anyone who might have been offended. And the Welsh Rugby Football Union has now decided that Marler hasn’t been sufficiently punished

Marler himself has also been forced into an act of public contrition. ‘I’m not a racist’, he said. ‘What I said to Samson was out of order and wrong and I am sorry it was said. Whatever happens to me, I will accept. I’m sorry to anyone who was offended. Saying it was “in the heat of the moment” isn’t an excuse, but one comment, one mistake, does not make me a racist.’

Marler has now been banned and fined. All because he said something in a moment of anger to someone who, it turns out, wasn’t bothered by it.

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