Last week, you may remember that The Sun suspended Kelvin Mackenzie after the disgraced former editor of the newspaper compared part Nigerian Ross Barkley to a gorilla, labelled him as thick and took unprovoked shots at the city of Liverpool by claiming any young, rich men in the city had only attained such wealth through being drug dealers.
Of course, Mackenzie's comments, by his own morally bankrupt standards, were pretty tame when you consider he lied about the Hillsbrough tragedy, blaming Liverpool fans for the disaster and lying about their actions on the pitch involving the dead victims, described Brighton as "a nasty town of drugs, gays, AIDS and drunks" and was responsible for The Sun's 'Gotcha' headline, glorifying the deaths of over 300 Argentine soldiers.
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In the wake of his suspension, Mackenzie described accusations of racism towards Barkley as "beyond parody", claiming that he was unaware of the young Everton midfielder's Nigerian heritage.
It's taken a week, but The Sun have finally issued an apology for publishing Mackenzie's piece with the offending comments.
The newspaper also claimed that they were unaware that Barkley was part Nigerian, stating that when the England international's background was brought to their attention, they decided to remove the article from their website.
Yeah, about that.
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As you can clearly see, three years ago The Sun mentioned how Barkley could in fact represent Nigeria at international level. Yet apparently they were unaware of this fact three years later, when both Mackenzie and his editors decided not to bother doing the most basic of research into the subject matter of Mackenzie's disgraceful piece and allowed it to be published.
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How will The Sun attempt to explain this lack of knowledge of Barkley's background that they actually knew about and had previously reported on?
Once again, one of their apologies has proved to be hollow and meaningless.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: Ross Barkley, Everton
