An Australian television sports show yesterday apologized over a joke in which a presenter asked an Asian woman whether she was planning on eating one of her dogs.
The quip was part of a segment on The Footy Show in which host and former rugby league player Beau Ryan chats with people in the street.
Walking up to an Asian woman taking a photograph of three small dogs behind a glass door, Ryan asks: “Picking out which one for dinner?”
Channel Nine then tweeted the brief exchange, prompting viewers to criticize it as racist, disgraceful and offensive.
“Appalling racism” wrote one Twitter user, while another questioned not just the comment itself, but that the show left it “edited in, broadcast & then tweeted” the remark.
The reaction prompted the show’s executive producer to apologize.
“We apologize for any offense caused, the segment is a comedy one where we have fun with people, but not intentionally at their expense,” producer Glenn Pallister said in a statement.
“We clearly went too far on this occasion,” he said.
It is the second time in a week in which Channel Nine has sparked controversy with its rugby league coverage.
Veteran Queensland player Sam Thaiday said that winning a match was like “losing your virginity.”
After Queensland won the first State of Origin match against New South Wales on Wednesday night, Thaiday was asked about the victory.
“It was a bit like losing your virginity,” he said. “It wasn’t very nice, but we got the job done.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier