Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston went to Melrose Elementary in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday, and what was supposed to be a breezy photo op turned into yet another instance of Winston being a dumb shithead in public.
While delivering a motivational speech to a group of students, Winston went off-script in an attempt to rouse the classroom:
“All my young boys, stand up. The ladies, sit down,” said Winston. So, yeah, not off to the best start here. Things only got worse:
But all my boys, stand up. We strong, right? We strong! We strong, right? All my boys, tell me one time: I can do anything I put my mind to. Now a lot of boys aren’t supposed to be soft-spoken. You know what I’m saying? One day y’all are going to have a very deep voice like this. One day, you’ll have a very, very deep voice.
But the ladies, they’re supposed to be silent, polite, gentle. My men, my men supposed to be strong. I want y’all to tell me what the third rule of life is: I can do anything I put my mind to. Scream it!
Winston has been catching an understandable amount of shit for those comments, and he followed them up with a lame explanation. From ESPN:
“I was making an effort to interact with a young male in the audience who didn’t seem to be paying attention, and I didn’t want to single him out, so I asked all the boys to stand up,” Winston said, according to the newspaper. “During my talk, I used a poor word choice that may have overshadowed that positive message for some.”
You’ll notice that Winston never actually says, “I’m sorry” in that statement, but these kinds of half-hearted apologies are all you can expect from people who are used to getting away with things.