In a sort of “offshoot” of this thread:, I thought we’d start a little archive here of things you’ve actually heard newscasters, and most importantly sportscasters say. My husband and I usually keep a notebook every football season with ‘stupid Mike Ditka and John Madden quotes’, but it got so full we couldn’t lift it. So let’s just archive some stuff here:
“Take that black guy!” - Commentator Jerry Glanville said this referring to a Charger hitting an Oakland Raider, who was wearing black.
“When he goes right in the pile like that, that’s called a Fudge Packer!” - Joe Theisman. When he was met with an uncomfortable silence he finished with: “Well it IS!”
and from two weeks ago on Sunday Night Football, the great Joe Theisman again, when arguing a lateral vs. a forward pass:
“Well, I’m still not sure that he takes it from behind.”
OK, now YOU play.
Well, it was a news readerette up in Charleston, SC, not a sportcaster, that said the stupidest thing I’d ever heard.
They had just done a story on a very bad windstorm, and News Readerette seques into a story on junk mail by saying, “Well, the wind is whipping up a tizzy outside, and junk mail is whipping up a tizzy in your mailbox.”
I actually shook my head to clear out my ears. I couldn’t believe she’d done such a horrible seque.
There is the recent case of the local female newscaster in (I think, Oregon) who, when segue-ing to the weather report, commented of the weatherman’s incorrect prediction regarding snow, “So, Jim, where was that nine inches you promised me last night?”
I was watching a tv special a few years ago where famous gymnasts combined their movements with dance and music. Between numbers, one male gymnast made a few remarks. Among them was something like, “If you’re an accountant or a teacher, then after college there’s a place for you. But for gymnasts, there isn’t anything. That’s sad. We have to do something about this.” :rolleyes: He went on in this vein for a full minute.
When Michael Jordan returned to the Bulls after unsuccessfully trying baseball, I heard someone on the radio say something like, “He’s come back to us. You know, that’s real loyalty.” Call me crazy, but I would think that if he were so freaking loyal, he wouldn’t have left in the first place!
On the same broadcast I heard an announcer say, “Christians have been waiting for their saviour for almost 2000 years. The Bulls only had to wait x months!” Geez, could you try to be more pompous?
There was a story about about a small company that manufactures chocolate gorillas for people to buy. It was a simple human interest story.
When they cut to her, she said, “Well, I guess we now know where chocolate men come from.”
She was white. Most people in Detroit are black. Some people took this as a racial slur(gorillas turning into black people), even though she only meant general evolution of gorillas into general humans.
Sadly, she was fired. People protested, but the network did not bring her back.
It was none other than Dan Rather commenting about a world record made by a black woman from England, “She is the first African American women from England to hold this world record.”
A couple of decades ago, I had the television news (Pocatello, Idaho) on while I was fiddling around in the house. A reporter was standing in the sagebrush - I don’t know what the story was - but she stopped me cold in my tracks with “Never in the anals of mankind…”
How 'bout the TV football reporter who in a post-game interview asked of the DB who’d scooped up a fumble and run for a touchdown, “Were you aware at the time that this was your first-ever NFL touchdown?”
This isn’t a sportscaster but is a newspaper headline and it isn’t a boner. In fact I have a feeling it was done deliberately.
In the 1934 World Series the Detroit Tiger infielders complained that Dizzy Dean came into second base standing up on a double play ball, thus interfering with a fielder making a play.
In a later game Dean did the same thing and Bill Rogell, the Tiger shortstop who wasn’t inclined to take any **** from anybody, hit him right in the forehead with his throw to first base. Dean was knocked out and taken to the hospital for examination for a possible skill fracture. A next day’s Detroit paper headlined the story, “Dean’s head X-rayed - Nothing found.”