Cabaretier who insulted Black talkshow host apologizes

After a politician apologized and resigned Thursday over a racially insensitive Tweet, a cabaret performer who insulted Black TV talkshow host Humberto Tan in November, followed suit on Friday. 

"I extend apologies, because what I said came across wrong. I did not mean it like that," Jack Spijkerman said on Friday in the radio program BNR’s Friday Move. "I especially apologize to Humberto." Spijkerman said he has received threats from angry television viewers and needed to hire security after he latched out at RTL  Late Night talk show host Humberto Tan "My God, you’re not only dark [skinned], you’re dumb as well.” The audience reacted with shock and Tan, of Surinamese descent, was dumbfounded. Spijkerman seemed to think he had done no wrong when he followed up his remark by saying, “I can say that. To him I can.” The broadcast was televised on November 8. Spijkerman stressed he had not intended to insult. "Humberto is a close friend of mine and I did not mean to come across as racist," he said.

He became the second prominent Dutchman who apologized for racially insensitive behavior this week. John de Laet, an Amsterdam-West board member of the party who in a tweet on Thursday december 5th linked Nelson Mandela’s passing with the blackface zwarte piet tradition in the Netherlands, last Thursday stepped down as board member of GroenLnks Amsterdam West. The party said in a statement that the tweet was inappropriate. These developments follow several weeks of heated debates about what is racially insensitive and what's not.