A Boston sports talk radio producer appeared to make a racist joke about ESPN’s Mina Kimes on Tuesday, but his bosses have a staggering defense: It was actually a sexist joke about someone else.
WEEI’s “Greg Hill Show” was discussing a proposed Boston ban on miniature bottles of alcohol, also known as “nips.” When a co-host asked the others what their “top five nips” were, producer Chris Curtis said, “Mina Kimes.” Everyone else with a mic seemed to ignore the comment and named popular alcohol brands, but it got a laugh out of fellow producer Chris Scheim after Curtis glanced his way.
“Nips” is also a English-language slur against Japanese people that became commonly used during World War II. Kimes, one of ESPN’s biggest stars, is of Korean descent.
Curtis’s bosses tried to clear the air with an all-time half-baked excuse. “A spokesperson at Audacy, WEEI’s parent company, said the company had no comment, but suggested that Curtis meant to say actress Mila Kunis’s name rather than Kimes’s,” the Boston Globe reported.
It’s unclear how a crude sexist joke is supposed to be better than a flagrantly racist one.
As for Kimes, she has taken the incident in stride, changing her profile picture on Twitter to one of Kunis.
ESPN wasn’t buying the harebrained excuse. “There is no place for these type of hateful comments, which were uncalled for and extremely offensive,” the network wrote in a statement.
A Boston sports talk radio producer appeared to make a racist joke about ESPN’s Mina Kimes on Tuesday, but his bosses have a staggering defense: It was actually a sexist joke about someone else.
WEEI’s “Greg Hill Show” was discussing a proposed Boston ban on miniature bottles of alcohol, also known as “nips.” When a co-host asked the others what their “top five nips” were, producer Chris Curtis said, “Mina Kimes.” Everyone else with a mic seemed to ignore the comment and named popular alcohol brands, but it got a laugh out of fellow producer Chris Scheim after Curtis glanced his way.
“Nips” is also a English-language slur against Japanese people that became commonly used during World War II. Kimes, one of ESPN’s biggest stars, is of Korean descent.
Curtis’s bosses tried to clear the air with an all-time half-baked excuse. “A spokesperson at Audacy, WEEI’s parent company, said the company had no comment, but suggested that Curtis meant to say actress Mila Kunis’s name rather than Kimes’s,” the Boston Globe reported.
It’s unclear how a crude sexist joke is supposed to be better than a flagrantly racist one.
As for Kimes, she has taken the incident in stride, changing her profile picture on Twitter to one of Kunis.
ESPN wasn’t buying the harebrained excuse. “There is no place for these type of hateful comments, which were uncalled for and extremely offensive,” the network wrote in a statement.