In recent days, R&B singer Rihanna has been the unfortunate target of several disrespectful attacks. One of the most recent attacks came from a Dutch magazine called Jackie. In an article written about Rihanna the magazine stated, “She has street cred, she has a ghetto ass and she has a golden throat. Rihanna, the good girl gone bad, is the ultimate niggabitch and displays that gladly, and for her that means: What’s on can come off. If that means she’ll be onstage half naked, then so be it. But Dutch winters aren’t like Jamaican ones, so pick a clothing style in which your daughter can resist minus 10. No to the big sunglasses and the porn heels, and yes to the tiger-print pink shizzle and everything that glitters. Now’s let’s hope she won’t beat anybody up at day care.”
Rihanna responded to the magazine via Twitter and stated that the “magazine is a poor representation of the evolution of human rights”. The Editor-in-Chief of Jackie posted an apology via Facebook. The apology stated,
“Dear readers,
First: thanks for all your responses. We are of course very fed up over this and especially very shocked. However I’m glad that we’re engaging in a dialogue on this page — not everybody does that. Thanks for this. Other than that I can be brief about this: this should have never happened. Period. While the author meant no harm — the title of the article was intended as a joke — it was a bad joke, to say the least. And that slipped through my, the editor-in-chief’s, fingers. Stupid, painful and sucks for all concerned. The author has been addressed on it, and now I can only ensure that these terms will no longer end up in the magazine. Furthermore I hope that you all believe there was absolutely no racist motive behind the choice of words. It was stupid, it was naive to think that this was an acceptable form of slang — you hear it all the time on tv and radio, then your idea of what is normal apparently shifts — but it was especially misguided: there was no malice behind it. We make our magazine with love, energy and enthusiasm, and it can sometimes happen that someone is out of line. And then you can only do one thing: apologize. And hope that others wish to accept it.
From the bottom of my heart I say it again: we never intended to offend anyone. And I mean that.
Regards,
Eva Hoeke”
Hopefully the magazine will not allow anymore terms of blatant disrespect surface through anymore of their articles. What are your thoughts on what Jackie had to say about RihRih??
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