Carson Daly took to his radio show to talk about the JetBlue pilot who had a mid-air breakdown. Referring to how the man was restrained by passengers, he said:
“Most of the people were on their way to some sort of security conference in Las Vegas. It was like a bunch of dudes and well-trained dudes . . . Thank God. With my luck, it would be like, ‘This is the flight going to [the gay pride parade] in San Francisco. I mean, that would be my colleagues.” He then did a stereotypically “gay” voice and said, “Uh, we’re headed down to Vegas for the floral convention.”
He later tweeted an apology: “This morning on my radio show I attempted to make fun of myself & offended others by mistake. I sincerely apologize.”
Let’s all send thank-you cards to The Voice for dragging this simpleton out of 2002. I’m sick of celebrities being blatantly homophobic and then issuing apologies, as if that makes it all better. Carson’s a bigot who reinforces antiquated stereotypes. Tweeting “sowy” doesn’t change that. If you weren’t a homophobe, that wouldn’t have come to your mind in the first place.
A mother of a 9/11 victim feels the same. Alice Hoagland had this to say about Carson’s “joke”:
“Yes, my gay son [Mark Bingham, right] was known in our family for bringing me flowers on my birthday and Mother’s Day. He also was known for careening down the rugby pitch, and, on the morning of September 11, 2001, for charging unarmed down the aisle of a doomed Boeing 757 to face knife-wielding Islamist thugs in a hijacked cockpit. No one among his pick-up team of fellow passengers was asking ‘Are you straight? Are you gay?’ No one doubted that a guy who weighed 220 and stood 6’4” tall—who could run over a charging opponent on the field, and ran with the bulls in Pamplona earlier that summer—would be an asset to a desperate group trying to overcome a threat onboard an airliner.”
Why you can trust Xtra
