Billy Packer's old Southern Roots betray him again

I like him, I've grown up with him, and most of the time I think he knows more about basketball than the others I hear, so I'm probably always going to defend him probably. You may or may not remember many years back when he called Allen Iverson a "tough little monkey". The politically correct crowd tried to make him out as a racist, which he isn't. What people around the country don't understand is that a lot of little kids in the south, white or black, at one time or another were called tough little monkeys.

Well, here we go again.

Packer says he wasn't being homophobic

CBS college basketball analyst Billy Packer said he wasn't being insensitive or homophobic when he made a comment while being interviewed Friday from Atlanta on "The Charlie Rose Show," which airs on PBS.

At the end of the interview, Rose, who was in New York, asked Packer whether he needed a runner for the Final Four. "Because I could jump on a plane and could be there," Rose said.

To that Packer, a Charlotte resident, responded, "You always fag out on that one for me, you know. You always say, oh, yes, I'm going to be the runner, then you never show up."

Audio and video clips of that interview have been appearing on Internet sites.

"I said he fagged out on me, and it had nothing to do with sexual connotation," Packer, 67, said Wednesday in a phone interview. "I got to know Charlie a number of years ago and have great admiration for his program and intellect."

Dictionary.com defines "fag out" as meaning "to tire or weary by labor; exhaust." Which is what Packer said he meant.

"I can assure you I will use that phrase again and I won't think twice about it," he said.

Get REAL people, its in the damn dictionary. Anyone offended by it is downright ignorant.

This reminds me a lot of some firestorms generated when people have used the word "niggardly". This is a perfectly legitimate word meaning stingy or miserly, which just happens to have an unfortunate similarity to the second worse word in the English Language. I won't mention the worse word in the English Language, but use it around your favorite girl and you are toast. Anyway, there have been a whole host of stupid controversies over the use of niggardly you can check out HERE.

The sad thing is, Packer's comments haven't really offended anyone, it is just opportunistics dumb-asses trying to self promote by feigning offense at the expense of someone else.

If you are so inclined and want to checkout my nominees for Jackass of the Month
Jay Mariotti Calls for Suspension of Billy Packer
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