Sam Newman, who has possibly less to do with any of the current goings on in the United States than any other living person, is once again facing calls to be sacked from his spot on The Footy Show after airing some deeply cooked thoughts on the character of George Floyd, whose murder on May 25th at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked waves of Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the globe.
Newman took to his You Cannot Be Serious podcast earlier this week to assert that George Floyd was, and this a direct quote, “a piece of shit.”
“George Floyd, who is a piece of shit incidentally,” Newman began, leading co-hosts Don Scott and Mike Sheehan to make some sort of attempt to intervene.
“You know who George Floyd is? He has been in jail five times, he held up a pregnant black woman with a knife, he’s a drug addict, he’s a crack head and he’s a porn star,” Newman continued. “I’m just telling you who George Floyd is and they’ve made a monument to him and he’s a piece of shit.”
For what it’s worth, the “porn star” quote is a largely unfounded claim, attached to a spate of social media posts seeking to smear Floyd’s character.
Newman has only just been reinstated to a regular TV slot on The Sunday Footy Show by Nine (who, full disclosure, wholly owns this publication); a move that drew widespread scorn due to Newman’s poor track-record with race on The Footy Show in the past. That record includes multiple on-air racist remarks, and a notable incident in 1999 where he appeared on the show in full blackface; an incident that resulted in Newman being forced to apologise to the Indigenous community.
Newman re-debuted in the show last Sunday in a planned recurring segment called Sam’s Shed, where Newman interviews guests in his home with “no topic off limits.”
