The wife of Bills kicker Dan Carpenter insisted she’s not a racist, while offering the anticipated non-apology apology for saying Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman should be castrated for running into her husband during a sports game.
Kaela Carpenter has since deleted the original post, which showed a bander, the implement used to remove testicles from farm animals by putting a tight rubber band around them until they shrivel and fall off.
You know, the one when she referred to Sherman as an animal, and suggested the tool be used on him.
“I know what we do on the farm when a male can’t control his own rage. #LuckyImNotThere #Sherman #ActLikeAnAnimalGetTreatedLike1,” the original post read.
Today’s had a much different tone.
“My attempt at humor during a heated and highly controversial NFL game has not been received the way I intended,” she wrote. “When I saw the out of control nature of the events that happened on the field, I jokingly wanted to relate it to life on the farm, where I grew up, and how it would have been handled there. Unfortunately, I did not realize that a tone of racism would dominate the response to what I intended to be a lighthearted defense of my husband. Regardless of the narrative that has been attached to my post, it was never intended to be related to race, or the disgusting hatred that creates the basis for racism.”
It carries a tone of racism, because castrating black males as punishment was a common tactic of racial terrorists during the Jim Crow era, and someone with a passing knowledge of the history of our country might have realized it was a horribly inappropriate joke to make. But by putting the responsibility on people who didn’t receive it in the way she intended — ha, ha, mutilating people like farm animals is funny, y’all — it falls short of being an actual apology.
To his credit, Sherman has taken the high road throughout, posting a reply to the initial message.
Maybe he’s laughing because he didn’t even get a 15-yard flag for it, much less a more painful penalty.