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I detest homophobia, and if a broadcaster went on the air and used the word "fag" as a homophobic slur, I'd find it offensive. But that's not what Billy Packer did. The word "fag" has multiple meanings, and when Packer told Charlie Rose, "you always fag out," he wasn't using the word as a homophobic slur. He was using it, as Brian Bassett noted in comments to the original FanHouse post, to mean "exhaust or tire out."
I'm 30 and first learned the word "fag" as a taunt in the schoolyard. I had heard the word for years before I learned that it was meant as a slur for male homosexuals, and once I realized that it was an offensive term, I stopped using it.
Packer is 67, and I think it's entirely possible that he first learned the term to mean something inoffensive. Outsports.com quotes CBS spokeswoman LeslieAnne Wade saying,
"I know he wasn't meaning to be insensitive at all. While it is a term that is in the dictionary, it was still a poor choice of words," Wade said. "I'm confident that he would agree that it was a bad choice of words."
It was, maybe, a bad choice of words. But nothing more than that. Many college basketball fans would love to see Packer fired, but this isn't a good reason for that.
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