Mississippi State’s Mike Leach Apologizes for ‘Offensive’ Quarantine Tweet

There’s been a school of thought which says that death, unemployment, pandemics, you know, real problems. Would force people to stop inventing ways to be offended and instead, perhaps even make people lighten up.

That school of thought apparently does not exist at Mississippi State University.

On Thursday, Mississippi State head football coach Mike Leach, apologized for a tweet which showed a woman knitting her husband a noose, during quarantine. The meme read: “After 2 weeks of quarantine with her husband, Gertrude decided to knit him a scarf ..”

Leach deleted the tweet after a tremendous backlash from Twitter users, notably, several black football players.

As the Clarion-Ledger reported:

Senior linebacker Erroll Thompson, who was a captain on last year’s team, retweeted the original with a hand-on-the-chin, eyebrow-raised thinking emoji. Redshirt sophomore defensive lineman Fabien Lovett responded to the tweet with “Wtf.” Senior defensive end Kobe Jones responded to Lovett with “Facts. He tripping.” with a hand-on-the-face ashamed emoji.

Players, weren’t the only people offended by Leach’s tweet. MSU Associate Professor of Sociology Margaret Haberman, said that “lynching ‘jokes’ were incredibly offensive anywhere” and “especially in Mississippi.”

Thompson retweeted Haberman’s tweet.

Of course, Leach did not make a lynching joke. Lynching is an explicitly racist act and Leach’s meme had nothing to do with hanging for racist reasons, it had to do with hanging a loved one due to close proximity during quarantine.

Though, on the upside, it appears not all Twitter users were as foolishly offended as Haberman and Thompson.

As the Clarion-Ledger reported, “Mississippi State assistant women’s basketball coach Dionnah Jackson hit the like button on Hagerman’s reponse, as did more than 20 others. Her tweet also had dozens of replies.

“Many of the responses insist Hagerman is trying to create controversy over what they believed to be a simple joke about marriage. One person told her to ‘take a chill pill’ while another said “you are the joke.'”

Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn