As you know, we love Adam Richman on this blog. He's a member of the Power Hall of Fame. He's been named the number one person multiple times. I follow every step of his career and we've interacted on Twitter before. That being said, it excuses zero percent of what he did on Instagram. It started with his use of the hashtag, "#thinspiration." Obviously, one of the bigger story lines following Adam Richman's career launch is his tremendous weight loss. He was featured in People Magazine for it. Considering the Man v. Food of it all, the weight loss is impressive. He deserves all the credit in the world for it. However, the thinspiration term is an unfortunate one. In the anorexic community, it is considered taboo. When Adam apologized for using the word, he was absolutely sincere. He removed the post and said he had no idea the weight the word carried. It's sincere, of course. I don't think most people knew the weight of the word. I know I didn't. I had no clue it was taboo. But then, Adam received backlash. That is how he found out about the meaning of the word. Unfortunately, he responded to the backlash. Adam has always talked on Twitter about trying not to feed the trolls, but he caved in this situation. Responding to these attacks, Adam used inappropriate language with terrible comments. I don't want to share them here, but you can definitely find them on other websites. The things he said to people were inexcusable. If you saw the Instagram posts, though, you would maybe at least follow where it all went wrong. The comments people made to Adam were atrocious, vulgar, and despicable. He should have ignored or deleted them. But he responded. Emotionally, like a true human being. The response was disgusting and he became no better than the people provoking him. And he truly regrets it. Yes, it's in the past. Yes, he's probably concerned about the public response to the comments, in part. But nevertheless, Adam is genuinely sorry. You can clearly see the remorse in the following interview.
I understand where he's coming from. The comments from the trolls would anger anyone. Unfortunately, Adam acted on this anger. I wish he hadn't and so does he. But there's no excuse for the things he said. Now that we've addressed this, I want to say one more thing. Maybe I'm biased towards Adam. Maybe if I didn't look up to him so much, I wouldn't be so easy to forgive. Maybe I need to forgive. But I do forgive him. I know I'd have the same empathy if he wasn't a role model. But the thing is, he is my role model. And he made a mistake. Maybe I no longer see him as this "superhero" figure who will save everything and be awesome, but I do know I have a t-shirt. I have a t-shirt that says, "Adam Richman is my hero." Is.
Good post and fair commentary about someone you have admired. He has apologized and people need to accept it or not. But it is time to move forward. People do make mistakes. It's what they do afterwards that makes the difference.
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