Jason Alexander Issues Serviceable Apology for Calling Cricket a ‘Gay Sport’

Just in case anyone was really starting to pine for some vintage George Costanza foot-swallowing, actor and recently re-sodded cranium Jason Alexander called cricket a "gay sport" last week on Craig Ferguson's Are You Still Fucking Awake? talk program. Alexander expatiated on cricket's supposed homosexuality:

You know how I know it's really kind of a gay game? It's the pitch. It's the weirdest… It's not like a manly baseball pitch; it's a queer British gay pitch.

Uh huh. So, yeah, anyway, people were understandably irked by Alexander's pejorative use of "gay" to describe a sport that the greatest sports movie of all time is based on (that movie would be Lagaan). On Saturday, Alexander issued a lengthy apology, in which he offers a long, meticulous rationalization of his reasons for using "gay" pejoratively, followed by a poor man's Platonic dialogue, in which Alexander ruminates with his "gay friends" on why anyone would be offended by the way he made fun of cricket. This is the insight he (eventually) came up with:

However, troubled by the reaction of some, I asked a few of my gay friends about it. And at first, even they couldn't quite find the offense in the bit. But as we explored it, we began to realize what was implied under the humor. I was basing my use of the word "gay" on the silly generalization that real men don't do gentile [sic], refined things and that my portrayal of the cricket pitch was pointedly effeminate , thereby suggesting that effeminate and gay were synonymous.

He continued,

The problem is that today, as I write this, young men and women whose behaviors, choices or attitudes are not deemed 'man enough' or 'normal' are being subjected to all kinds of abuse from verbal to physical to societal. They are being demeaned and threatened because they don't fit the group's idea of what a 'real man' or a 'real woman' are supposed to look like, act like and feel like.

Did you get all that? Though Alexander's gaffe and initial ignorance is a troubling indication that half of Seinfeld's four main characters were bigots, his subsequent explanation and apology stand as a pretty honest reevaluation of his presentiments. So if Jason Alexander can change, then everybody capable of following his logic can change too.

Actor Jason Alexander Apologizes For Jokes Made On CBS' ‘The Late Late Show' [GLAAD]

Jason Alexander Apologizes For ‘Cricket Is Gay' Remark [HuffPo]