Joining the ever-lengthening list of people who have to walk back an inexplicable use of the n-word, screenwriter Terry Rossio, the man behind Aladdin, Shrek, and Pirates of The Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, took to Twitter this weekend to apologize for tweeting the racial slur in full during an argument (well, more of a rant) against the term “anti-vax,” a designation describing people who are convinced vaccines cause, or are at least linked to, the occurrence of autism. Tweeted Rossio, “I am sorry. I now understand that the word has no place in any conversation, ever.”
“You can’t make a point against hate speech and reference actual words of hate speech,” he continued. “That was insensitive and ignorant. I am immediately deleting the post to remove that toxic word from the internet, where it should never appear in any context.” Concludes Rossio, “I continue to stand against hate speech and dehumanizing labels in any form.”
