Remember when Giuliana Rancic of E! made some off-key comments about Zendaya’s dreadlocks smelling of ‘weed and patchouli’ and then went on to unreservedly apologise for pushing forward negative and hurtful stereotypes?
Seems like her old Fashion Police co-star, Kelly Osbourne (who left the show because of Giuliana and E!’s handling of the comments about Zendaya, a pal of hers) forgot all about it.
Because now, Kelly’s, in her own words ‘fucked up’. She was on The View (America’s version of Loose Women, just without the same catchy intro) talking about Donald Trump when she made some pretty stupid comments.
She was trying to outsmart the Republican presidential candidate (wondering if a man like that could make it into office? Google ‘Michael Fabricant’). Because, you see, he’s made loads of fucked up comments about Mexicans, and Latino people in general eg ‘[Mexico] are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists.’
While that’s enough stupid, racist crap for any criticism of him to be an open goal, Kelly somehow flunked her point, exclaiming: ‘If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?’
She had the opportunity to backtrack, to reassess what she said and explain that Trump's an idiot to be so horrible to Latino people when he then employs them to do the jobs he can't bear doing. But instead she kind of nodded while Rosie Perez said she disagreed with Kelly’s point.
Kelly’s apologised via her
, saying: ‘I want to start by saying I ALWAYS take responsibility for my actions… I will take responsibility for my poor choice of words but I will not apologise for being a racist as I am NOT. I whole-hearted fucked up today.’
She also added: ‘I’ve learned a very valuable lesson. It is my hope that this situation will open up a conversation about immigration and the Latin community as a whole. By the way I clean my own fucking toilets.’
The problem with the apology, though, is that when the shoe was on the other foot, she was so angry that she quit her job. Maybe the only things to gain from Kelly’s apology is a) she needs to make a better apology, and could take notes from Giuliana on this and b) that the issue really shouldn’t be about her, even though she’s kind of just made it about her.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.