U.S. figure skating Olympian Johnny Weir was mocked by some French-Canadian announcers during his short routine in Vancouver, saying that he might have "lost points due to his costume and body language," suggesting he should take a gender test, and also suggesting he should compete in the women's competition. They go so far to suggest that his demeanor sets a bad example to other male skaters and that they'll "end up like him." They later issued an apology.
These comments are bad enough from a pair of national announcers broadcasting to the entire world, but what enraged me were the quotes from Johnny's response that CNN and People.com decided to publish.
I first read about the controversy at Celebitchy, which is one of my favorite gossip blogs - they write smart, they're witty, and they're not nasty and defacing pictures with grade-school MSPaint like Perez Hilton does. The comments that Celebitchy published were taken from Entertainment Weekly, and Johnny was quite gracious in his response to the "jokes." He didn't even ask for an apology or for their firings and says he believes in free speech. The quotes used on the gossip blog showed him to be a well-spoken man.
However. I opened CNN.com today and saw the headline: "Skater responds to mockery." Hey, CNN picked it up a day later! I opened it up and started reading, and was sorely disappointed in the quotes that CNN chose to take from People.com's article. In addition, the hyperlink provided to the original article was broken, and that just ticks me off - a lack of attention to detail on a national news outlet. It's just as bad as misspelling something on the front page, which CNN does quite often, I might add. But here's the quote that finishes off the article:
"It wasn't these two men criticizing my skating, it was them criticizing me as a person, and that was something that really, frankly, pissed me off," Weir told reporters. "Nobody knows me. ... I think masculinity is what you believe it to be."Doesn't he sound like a whiny kid now? What gives? Sure, we've all heard the nickname "Johnny Weird" for his flamboyant style and Lady Gaga gestures, but he's also a fine skater and a decent human being, and what was quoted might lead you to believe that he's calling for those broadcasters' careers on a shiny, fabulous silver platter. All I know is, the man handled himself just fine, and taking two quotes from the press conference shed two very different lights on him.
In my job as a medical transcription, one of the best pieces of advice was to question. Question what you are hearing. Listen to it again and again and be sure you are typing what the doctor is saying. If he's saying something that doesn't make sense, research the heck out of it and alert medical records if there is an inconsistency. If a doctor puts in an order for a surgical note but starts dictating a consultation, I don't format it as a surgical note - I would format it as a consultation.
This is probably the best advice I could give the general public about approaching what they read and see in the media. Question. Question it from all angles before passing judgment - or even if you pass judgment at all. Don't assume you know something just because they wore a pink tassel on a skating costume and assume they're hermaphrodites (which, incidentally, Lady Gaga was also accused of "tucking," to which she wouldn't even deign a response to that rumor. Good for her.) It's these little jokes that start as a drop in the pond, but grow to bigger waves as they pass through the general population in so many ways... what if a kid listened to those announcers and thought it was funny to question someone's gender every time they didn't fit society's definition of a male or female? Even though they thought it was funny, they should have saved it for the comedy club open-mic night, if at all.
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