No one is safe on Twitter.
Tennessee radio host Cody McClure called out Sister Jean Dolores-Schmidt, the 98-year-old nun who is the friendly face of Loyola-Chicago’s run to the Sweet 16, after the Ramblers beat the Volunteers, 63-62, on Saturday.
“F–k Sister Jean everyone,” McClure wrote on Twitter.
to try to understand the motivation for cursing at a nun. The host ess𒉰entially explained that it was a joke and scoffed at the internet being too politiಞcally correct to handle edgy humor.
“I don’t regret the joke, no, I don’t, because of the fact it was a joke,’’ said McClure, who has💜 since deleted the﷽ tweet.
“For me, I’m wondering when are we as a society going to learn how to take a joke again? Why are we so soft on the internet, yet in real life people are joking around about things that they wouldn’t post online? Pardon my language, but can we stop bulls—-ing ourselves for once and have a laugh?’’
McClure said he was at a watch party with Tennessee fans for the game, which was decided when Loyola junior guard Clayton Custer rattled home a 15-footer and Jordan Bone’s shot at the buzzer clanged off the rim.
“I would issue an apology to Sister Jean,’’ McClure said when asked directly if he’d like to say sorry to anyone at Loyola. “If this were to ever get back to Sister Jean, I would hope that she understood that it was meant to be nothing more than a joke.
“I’m not some kind of monster. I mean, who would in their heart hate an elderly nun? Clearly, I don’t. So I’d be glad to issue an apology to Sister Jean and to anyone who felt that my joke was intended to be anti-Catholic or anti-elderly. It wasn’t. It was an observation of the room I was in at the time and the mood people were in.”
Sist𓄧er Jean has been shown often by C🔯BS and Turner cameras, as she is one of the feel-good stories of the tournament. McClure insisted he was not venting as a frustrated fan, but trying to interject some humor to the situation.
“Every time they’d show [Sister Jean] on the screen, it’d get old,’’ McClure said. “People were groaning and moaning. What I said was to capture that feeling. It was a strong way to do that.”
McClure said he talked to his boss at Fox Sports Nashville and, while there was some concern, he ෴said they ultimately agreed it was fine to p🎃ush the limits.
“My boss sent me a text,’’ McClure said. “Asked me, ‘Are we sure about that tweet?’ I had a phone conversation and apologized to him for rattling everyone on a Saturday night. He told me he wasn’t going to fire me. But if he did I would accept it. My boss is so wonderful that he gives us ultimate freedom to say what we want to say because we can be 100 percent genuine.”