Naughty Rice

Many of you would have heard of the recent Stephanie Rice scandal. The good-girl gone bad Aussie swimmer tweeted ""Suck on that f--gots" after the Wallabies defeated the Springbok's on the weekend. The derogatory language she used in her quickly deleted tweet has sparked outrage against the Australian public and the gay community.

Heres the link to a news.com.au article...http://www.news.com.au/business/stephanie-rice-loses-sponsor-jaguar-after-anti-gay-tweet/story-e6frfm1i-1225915098261

Aussie golden girl (Source: http://www.topnews.in/sports/excouple-stephanie-rice-and-eamon-sullivan-strip-undie-ad-27199)

My biggest concern after this story broke is that most celebrities, especially sporting superstars, develop a following of young poeple who want to act and succeed as their idols have done. The worst case scenario is that young people who had not previously heard or used the word 'f--gots' will now begin to use it as they think its 'cool' or funny.

The author of the article, Josh Robertson, claims that it was ex-afl player and outspoken gay rights activist Ian Roberts, who caused Rice to loose her sponsorship deal with car company, Jaguar. Ian Roberts made a commented that anyone who would continue sponsorship with Rice is a "complete idiot". However, it seems the claim the author has made that this was the sole reason for dropping rice is complete unsubstanitated dribble. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that this story is front page news. I'm pretty sure Jaguar would have dropped Stephanie Rice even if Ian Roberts didn't have anything to say about it, maybe backlash from the whole country perhaps????

Even the comments in the article made by a Jaguar spokesperson make no reference to any of Ian Roberts' suggestions. Although I seem to be slamming the author of this article I actually thought the piece was well-written, made use of relevant sources and informed the reader much more so than other articles on this issue have done.  

Stephanie Rice in a Jaguar campaign (Source: http://www.news.com.au/business/stephanie-rice-loses-sponsor-jaguar-after-anti-gay-tweet/story-e6frfm1i-1225915098261)

Although Rice has had other indiscretions in the past it is clear that some people cannot just not learn a lesson. I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that once information is online it is very difficult to remove completely and often stays there forever. So when using social networking sites, such as Twitter, you should be especially careful if you are a celebrity and have a following of thousands of people....duh!

Till next time...