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A.J. Clemente delivers spot-on commentary on the news

By   /   April 22, 2013  /   5 Comments

The first day on the job. It’s just the worst, isn’t it? All the new people you meet. All the new job duties you’re introduced to. It’s a lot to have to process. So, naturally, mistakes will be made, and they will be embarrassing, and you will have a very hard time living them down.

This is especially the case for KFYR’s newest on-air personality, A.J. Clemente, who made his on-air premiere on the April 21 evening news broadcast. And no sooner had the camera trained in on him did he choose to utter his first (and last) words to the world at large, and they were this: “F*cking sh*t.” Things kind of went downhill from there.

WARNING: If you watch the video, two profane words will enter into your ears, burrowing their way into your brain and gobbling up your immortal soul, at which point you will spend the rest of your days wandering the earth an empty husk. So just so you know that will happen, that will of course happen.

 

So now you’ve heard of A.J. Clemente and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad first day on the job. But fortunately for A.J., his employers at KFYR stood behind their employee because, naturally, they were the ones who hired him in the first place and obviously felt that he was worth putting their trust into, so certainly they would never … haha, I’m just kidding. They suspended and fired him. Because of course they did.

From the KFYR Facebook page:

To all of you who are writing in…I want to apologize for an incident that occurred prior to our early newscast this evening, when one of our employees used profanity on the air.

He did not realize his microphone was on, but still, that’s no excuse. WE train our reporters to always assume that any microphone is live at any time. Unfortunately, that was not enough in this case. WE can’t take back what was said. The person involved has been suspended until we resolve the situation. All we can do at this point is ask for your forgiveness, and I can offer my personal assurance that I will do my best to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again under my watch.

Ho boy.

Look, first of all, what’s with the word WE being randomly capitalized repeatedly? Is KFYR some kind of Borg collective? WE here at the SodBlog are confused by that. Then, of course, let’s appreciate the sentence “WE can’t take back what was said.” Because that’s apparently something that KFYR desperately wishes that they could do. That they could invent a time machine, go back in time to Sunday night, tackle A.J. Clemente to the ground and force a cyanide capsule into his mouth, before he had the chance to utter those vile profanities on air. But since they can’t do that, I’ll do them a favor and do them one better. I’m going to use my magical wizard powers to undo all of the damage caused by Mr. Clemente’s vile utterances. I’m going to wave my hands and fix all of the damage that his untoward potty mouth caused to any human being anywhere. Are you ready? Watch. I’m doing it right now. Tada! Abracadabra! Fixed! With my magic! Please, don’t throw any stones at me.

Yes, for those of you with sarcasm currently disabled in your brain’s General Settings, there was no damage caused by two curse words aired on public television. Care to know why? Well, it’s because it turns out that those two words, like every other word uttered by A.J. Clemente as he desperately tried for form sentences to describe who he was and where he came from, those were all merely audible noises created by different formations taken by A.J. Clemente’s lips as he exhaled through his mouth. Meaning, unless A.J. Clemente had a half dozen onion sandwiches for lunch before his ill-fated first attempt at broadcast television (which he might have, I don’t know), he didn’t perform any actual feats of physical harm towards anyone. Because they’re just curse words, you bunch of freaking ninnies.

But this is North Dakota, and we are all scared of the cuss words and we do not appreciate being forced to hear them while we wait for Wheel of Fortune to come on the teevee box. So A.J. is out of a job, and the KFYR Facebook page is currently filling up with pro-A.J. comments at a rate that their Facebook comment deleter is having a very hard time keeping up with. Don’t worry, though, as this will all blow over for KFYR (or KFIRE, as I will henceforth be referring to them as, because of how clever I am) at some point. Meanwhile, our new best friend A.J. Clemente is now stuck here in Bismarck, North Dakota with the rest of us, without any source of income or viable means of escape. WE can relate. Maybe he can get a job in the oil field. The kids all seem to be doing that these days.

Look, I’m not here to defend A.J. Clemente and his awful gutter trash of a vernacular. I came here to bury A.J.’s career, not to praise it. Obviously, when they strap a microphone to your chest, it might be a good idea to not enunciate the words your brain is thinking. I know better. That’s why I’m a blogger. Nobody cares if I swear, so long as I go back and put little *s in place of the vowels, which somehow makes it all better. That’s what I’m suggesting to A.J. Clemente. In the future, invest in apostrophes to undo the damage caused by your unfortunate slips of the tongue.

Or maybe just cut back on the swearing altogether when you’re on live television. Which really shouldn’t be a problem, going forward.

Bismarck resident Erik Hagen is the author of the SodBlog and more of a KX man, to tell you the truth. Send your favorite obscenities to sodblog@me.com or visit his website at sodblog.com.

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  • Published: 4 days ago on April 22, 2013
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  • Last Modified: April 22, 2013 @ 11:39 pm
  • Filed Under: SodBlog

About the author

Blogger/Columnist

I came into this world naked, covered in blood and slightly hysterical. Very little has changed since.

5 Comments

  1. Oh sure says:

    It would be one thing if this was the only KFYR employee to have ever uttered obscene words on the air. But Mr. C wasn’t. Those of you around for a while may remember Diana Elis from the Dickinson station uttered something similar when her microphone was still on. Was she terminated? I don’t believe so. Are these two the only KFYR employees to have committed such transgressions? Doubt it.

    • Erik Hagen says:

      Somebody on the KFYR Facebook page helpfully linked to a YouTube clip from a few years ago, where one of the KFYR anchors refused to use the word “brain fart” on air for fear of an outcry. That kind of put this whole imbroglio into a new perspective for me.

  2. Gary says:

    imbroglio? Is that a swear word? Shame on you!

    • Erik Hagen says:

      To be honest, I’m not even sure if it’s a word at all. It doesn’t look like it should be one.

      Either way, I’ll go quietly.

  3. kojoto222 says:

    The bigger question is why they have an Asian woman and a Latino man as co-anchors in a state where the Asian and Latino populations hover around 1%?? Reporters on TV stations are supposed to reflect the community they serve. I’m all for affirmative action but this is overkill!!!!

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