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Loose Women host Ruth Langsford has brought criticism upon herself after comparing cricketer Ollie Robinson's historic comments online to “teenage banter”.
When Ollie was 18 years old he wrote a string of "unacceptable" tweets on his account and has since apologised for them.
The Loose Women decided to discuss the topic, with Janet Street-Porter saying that the apology was long overdue and he should have apologised prior to his England position.
She said: “I think apologising after, no matter how heartfelt, won’t placate a lot of people, a lot of other players,”
Langsford was quick to enter the conversation, asking: ‘”are you saying at 18, he’s an adult?”
Janet Street-Porter confirmed: “He was an adult, you’re an adult at 18.”
Ruth finished her question with: “Could an argument be made that he was a hot-headed teenager, a stupid teenager, he said some stupid things? It might have been the kind of bants he was having with his mates?”
The defense for Ollie’s comments angered a lot of online fans who were quick to question Ruth’s opinion on what constitutes as banter among friends.
One wrote: “Did Ruth just refer to racist and sexist comments as banter?”
While another commenter pointed out the apparent hypocrisy as they said: “Last week they were saying how bad it was that Marcus Rashford has to put up with racism on Social Media. This week because it’s a nice, cricket playing white boy doing it, it’s just banter and he shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions. #LooseWomen”
As the twitter comments went on to speak out against Ruth’s idea of banter, some spoke about the more serious impact racist and sexist remarks can have when normalised, even in the context of a joke.
One person said: “Here we go defending the racist words of people when they were young. #LooseWomen And not it’s not just bants. People have died from just bants. It’s racist abuse.”
Ollie Robinson issued an apology for the tweets where he said that he will “continue to educate myself” about the topic.
- Loose Women
- Ruth Langsford
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