Greek athlete expelled for racist tweet

I'm sorry but if a nation's leader takes one very stupid comment as an attack on his country he probably shouldn't be in charge. People say stupid things all the time, if you can honestly say you have never said anything politically incorrect without thinking then I'm amazed. She probably didn't even make up the joke, she probably saw it somewhere and repeated it without thinking.

This girl shouldn't have said it so publicly but it's just the type of thing you would overhear men saying on a Friday night in the pub.

"with so many Africans in Greece, at least the West Nile mosquitos will be eating food from their own home."

How is that racist? I know its a bit rude and bigotted. Obviously offensive.. but not racist.

It does seem really blown out of proportion.

The comment is aimed at a particular race and it's quite offensive to that particular race (I am not going to say why, it's pretty obvious.)

The mental image the joke generates is of poor, starving and homeless Africans because those are the ones you see with mosquitoes and flies atround them. Those are the people she was referring to. Not the freaking middle class and business men.

Nothing ''racist'' [sic] about her tweet. African is not a race, its a geographical term (same as European or Asian). There are many different races that have inhabited Africa for thousands of years. Her tweet mentioned nothing about any specific race.

It was a stupid thing to say but banning her from competing is completely out of order and i'm not seeing how this is a "racist" comment, there are a lot of Africans in Greece, the West Nile virus is transmitted by mosquitoes of African origin. If anything she should be penalized (giggity) for making fun of a serious disease.

It was incredibly stupid of her to tweet it on the bring of being in the Olympics, but I think it was a huge over reaction.

It seems nowadays you get punished more for a simple little tweet or facebook status than actually physically doing something. But then it was a Greek decision so I can´t really comment on their policies, even though our ones are very similar.

No Facebook/Twitter account, no problem.

I don't understand how it's callous. It's a bit rude but hmm.

Thats not the point though. If you can´t openly say something even on the internet without persecution then I have little hope for the future.

Are you kidding me? She's an athlete, not an ambassador or politician. The only people she's going to offend are those who profit off being offended or, perhaps more accurately, make a profit off writing about offended people (leftist publications and so on). It's a manufactured controversy. What kind of world do we live in that people can get banned from international athletic competitions for writing online about a political party that we belong to or making a joke about some people in your country?

What if she wrote a joke about sunburned British tourists on Greek islands? "D'ohoho it's the first time in my life I've ever seen a Englishman that's not burned" or something to that effect? I'll tell you what would happen: nothing.