Steve Martin seems like he might be focusing on the wrong part of his racist tweet that he came under fire for over the weekend.
The 68-year-old comedian tweeted and then quickly deleted on Friday night his response to the question, "is that how you spell lasonia?" He wrote, "It depends. Are you in an African-American neighborhood or at an Italian restaurant."
When there was an outcry over his tweet that people felt he implied that African-Americans could not spell the word, "lasagna," he offered his mea culpa and tweeted: "I did apologize. But again, a second later I realized what an offensive thing I'd done. Deep bow."
However, he made it a point to tell media outlets like TMZ and Salon that they had misquoted him:
Apparently, TMZ misquoted (and has since corrected) Martin as saying "It depends. Are you in an African-American restaurant or at an Italian restaurant," when he really wrote, “It depends. Are you in an African-American neighborhood or at an Italian restaurant.”
The difference was between the words "restaurant" and "neighborhood." It doesn't seem like such a major difference, though. It looks like Martin felt people misinterpreted his joke that African-Americans can't spell. However, Twitchy pointed out that the misinterpretation could have been that Martin was joking that African-Americans tend to use the word "La" in front of names. Um, that doesn't make things any better or less racist.
Even so, Martin seemed pleased with Twitchy's update on their article:
