New rule: Lolo Jones, Olympic hurdler, has to stay away from social media and any other technology that enables her to voice her thoughts to the general population.
Watching the testimony of Rachel Jeantel, witness in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin murder trial, Jones tweeted the following:
Rachel Jeantel looked so irritated during the cross-examination that I burned it on DVD and I’m going to sell it as Madea goes to court.
— Lolo Jones (@lolojones) June 27, 2013
Wow.
There’s no need to over-analyze this impolitic reference to Tyler Perry’s Madea character, but this latest incident might be a nice moment to reflect on Jones’s tendency to shoot herself in the foot (bad business for a hurdler).
During the 2012 London Olympics, Jones tweeted, “USA Men’s Archery lost the gold medal to Italy but that’s ok, we are Americans… When’s da Gun shooting competition?” A bit tone deaf considering she tweeted this less than two weeks after the Aurora, Colorado movie theater massacre at a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
And earlier this month, she posted a Vine video in which she shows off her paltry $741 paycheck from the US Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, complete with mock phone call to her landlord to say she’d be a bit late with the rent.
This rankled bobsledders, for whom $741 apparently seems sensible for an entire season’s work (Jones took up bobsledding this past winter to try to find the success that eluded her at the London Olympics). To quell that, Jones claimed she was trying to help her fellow bobsledders by drumming up financial support. “I can’t imagine,” she stated,
halfway through my track season having to stop and raise money to finish. The vine of the paycheck is just showing the difference between track and bobsled, and to be honest bobsledders work more hours than track! The bottom line is that all Olympic athletes dedicate their lives to their sports and do not receive lucrative paychecks like athletes in mainstream professional sports. So hopefully this will make people appreciate just how hard Olympians work, often just for the love of the sport.
Long story short, Lolo’s got a good sense of humor and epicly bad judgement.