{"id":20410,"date":"2014-12-07T17:50:59","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T23:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=20410"},"modified":"2014-12-08T01:55:47","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T07:55:47","slug":"british-soccer-star-facing-ban-over-racist-and-anti-semitic-instagram-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/british-soccer-star-facing-ban-over-racist-and-anti-semitic-instagram-post\/","title":{"rendered":"British soccer star facing ban over &#8216;racist and anti-Semitic&#8217; Instagram post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\">(JTA) \u2014 British soccer player Mario Balotelli, the foster son of a Jewish mother, is facing a five-game ban over what his league deemed a &#8220;racist and anti-Semitic&#8221; message on social media.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">The British Football Association last Friday charged Balotelli, 24, who plays for the Liverpool team, with breaching a league rule that bars &#8220;abusive and\/or insulting and\/or improper&#8221; social media posts.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">His Instagram post featured a photo of Nintendo computer game character Super Mario and read, in part, that the character \u201cjumps like a Black man and grabs coins like a Jew.\u201d<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Football Association rules do not allow postings that include &#8220;a reference to ethnic origin and\/or color and\/or race and\/or nationality and\/or religion or belief.&#8221;<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Balotelli, who is nicknamed Super Mario, apologized Dec. 2 on Twitter for the post. He is the son of immigrants from Ghana.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Jewish leaders in Britain criticized the Super Mario post as anti-Semitic and racist.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Following criticism of the post, Balotelli responded with a tweet that said, \u201cMy Mom is jewish so all of u shut up please.&#8221;<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Balotelli has until Dec. 15 to respond to the league&#8217;s charges.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">The rest of the Super Mario post reads: \u201cDon\u2019t be racist. Be like Mario. He\u2019s an Italian plumber, created by Japanese people, who speaks English and looks like a Mexican.\u201d<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Balotelli\u2019s apology tweet said in part, \u201cI apologize if I\u2019ve offended anyone. The post was meant to be anti-racist with humor. I now understand that out of context it may have the opposite effect.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"British%20soccer%20star%20facing%20ban%20over%20%27racist%20and%20anti-Semitic%27%20Instagram%20post\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1491],"tags":[6470,8790,8795,6469,6430,8788],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20410"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20411,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20410\/revisions\/20411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}