Just a few years ago something like this—famous historian Niall Ferguson making a spurious gay joke at the expense of famous economist John Maynard Keynes—would have gone for the big laugh he must have expected and would certainly not have made the news and required or even called for an apology.
Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of “poetry” rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive.
I wonder about the some who did not find them offensive. These remarks came as he was trying to explain why Keynes would make a statement like, “In the long-run we are all dead,” to which he was disagreeing (people do have children and those children have children, after all). In the apology on his blog, Ferguson writes:
But I should not have suggested – in an off-the-cuff response that was not part of my presentation – that Keynes was indifferent to the long run because he had no children, nor that he had no children because he was gay. This was doubly stupid. First, it is obvious that people who do not have children also care about future generations. Second, I had forgotten that Keynes’s wife Lydia miscarried.
Not sure all the stupid parts are adequately explained, but I ritually accept his ritual apology.