When video of an announcer casting racial slur on a streaming platform broadcast of a Oklahoma school women’s basketball game that first appeared, Matt Rowan initially stated that it was not him. Rowan, the owner of the OSPN streaming platform that broadcast the game on Thursday (in conjunction with the NFHS Network) and one of the announcers in the stream, initially told the Oklahoma publication The border in a telephone interview on Friday that he was not the one to make the comment after seeing the Norman High School women’s team kneel during the national anthem. But a few hours later, on Friday, Rowan issued a statement through his lawyer saying that he made the comments, not his co-worker Scott Sapulpa. In that statement, Rowan blamed his blood sugar levels:
The announcer who made the racist statements is partially blaming the low blood sugar. pic.twitter.com/6cTwIZdJZI
– Dylan Goforth (@ DGoforth918) March 12, 2021
There are a lot of bad excuse bingo here (it’s not relevant to your decision to say racial slur if you have kids, were a youth pastor or are a member of a church; if anything, you make these people and groups look worse , emphasizing their association with them), but the comment about diabetes and high blood sugar seems particularly ridiculous, especially when it comes to “I don’t think I would have made such horrible statements without my sugar increase.” There are countless people who deal with diabetes without ever uttering racial slurs, and “I don’t believe I would have made such horrible statements without my sugar spike” really seems like Rowan trying to shirk responsibility for his actions here. He said a terrible thing thinking that listeners couldn’t hear him (this has happened before), he was caught and tried to blame his blood sugar. This is not a good look.
[ReadFrontier.org]