Flag on the play!
As some of you may know, if you’re avid ‘here! with Josh and Sara’ listeners, I am a pretty big football fan (most specifically the Philadelphia Eagles, tragic though their season is turning out to be). Yesterday, I was watching the Eagles game in my neighborhood sports bar. Though home to your typical sporty straight men, I know there are a few gay regulars who sit on the edge of their seat each week in support of their favorite team. Also, the bartender, who is awesome, is a lesbian. I’ve always thought this made a nice little place to have a few drinks and watch some football on a Sunday afternoon.
There was a Dallas Cowboys game on at the same time. I was keeping an eye on this game since, as division rivals, I always want them to lose bitterly. Apparently, so did some other patrons as about three quarters of the way through the game, when the Cowboys took the lead, a couple of guys starting yelling out “Romo is a homo.” (Tony Romo is the quarterback for the Cowboys.) They must have yelled this statement a good 4-5 times to ensure the entire bar heard them, as drunken football watchers are known to do.
There are so many things wrong with this, that I don’t know where to begin. But what I think is most interesting, is that no one reacted. I’m sure plenty of the people in the bar were offended to varying degrees, and yet no one said a word. Sadly, not even me. (Although, I must admit, I’m not entirely sure who it was that actually said it. It came from somewhere on the other side of the bar. But that’s no excuse.) It was also interesting to note that the bartender didn’t skip a beat. Do you think, after working in a sports bar for so long, such things don’t really faze her? I asked my roommate if she thought the bartender was offended and she responded with “I’m offended! Who still uses ‘homo’ as an insult?”
I guess the answer is guys in sports bars in Queens, NY who think they’ve hit the insult jackpot with a quarterback whose name rhymes with a gay slur. It’s ridiculous. I’m pissed that they said it, pissed that no one reacted, and even more pissed at myself for not speaking up about it. Perhaps this should be a lesson to me that I don’t actually exist in a gay bubble here in NYC. That outside of this office, the world is full of stupid people, and I need to be poised to react to such blatant displays of ignorance when they’re slung through my neighborhood bar…even if it is against the Cowboys.
Sara
