![]() I’m very sorry.Īlthough Blair does not interpret what he said as highly offensive, he acknowledges that many of his viewers did. On a weather report earlier this morning, I made an accidental slip of the tongue when talking about the Martin Luther King holiday, and what I said was interpreted by many viewers as highly offensive. ![]() Twenty minutes after the weathercast, Blair addressed viewers below is a text of his apology 1: However, many listeners who heard Blair’s slip of the offensive word responded in outrage to the station. This is a quick and subtle self‐repair that was perhaps judged by the speaker as having gone unnoticed. He does not address, explain, or justify his self‐repair, and continues his weather report almost immediately with the proceeding words ‘junior day’, and then a pause of. Blair does not proceed to further address his slip instead, he continues with the weather update, perhaps to maintain fluency. The trouble‐source is followed by a short pause of. He cuts himself off during the utterance of the word ‘coon’, replacing it with ‘King’. On line 7 Blair immediately initiates, and carries out a self‐repair, completing the repair in the same‐turn constructional unit as the trouble‐source (Schegloff et al., 1977). In Extract 1, weather reporter Rob Blair stumbles during a weather update, making a ‘selection error’ slip of the tongue (Aitchison, 2003), saying ‘coon’ instead of ‘King’ (7) when referring to Martin Luther King Junior Day. In “Troubles‐in‐speaking: Racial slips” (pages 27 – 31), Burford‐Rice and Augoustinos unpack Blair’s apparent speech error: The article analyzes, “ Speech errors, slips, and gaffes made in the public arena that are perceived to be either implicitly or explicitly racially offensive often result in significant social consequences to the responsible speaker and generate public controversy.” Particularly relevant is the case of Rob Blair, a Las Vegas TV weatherman, who on January 15th 2005, like Kappell, used the phrase, “Martin Luther coon, King.” To add some academic/historical context, I looked at an August 2017 article in the British Journal of Social Psychology, ‘I didn’t mean that: It was just a slip of the tongue’: Racial slips and gaffes in the public arena by Rose Burford‐Rice and Martha Augoustinos. Idonia Owens, chief of school equity in the Rochester City School District, finds Kappell’s apology unconvincing. Jerome Underwood, CEO of Action for a Better Community, thinks the question of whether Kappell intended to say the slur is largely beside the point, while Dr. Murphy traces the history of the phrase “Martin Luther Coon” and discusses Kappell’s intention and apology. ![]() Memorial Park at Manhattan Square See Finding MLK at Manhattan Square According to Google Analytics, A case study was read 692 times. For over two and a half years, the article kept getting read. The result was Comparing Rob Blair and Jeremy Kappell, two fired weathermen: A case study, BELOWĪfter that, something surprising happened. Right after Kappell’s firing, I did some research into academic studies of other instances where broadcasters made similar racial slurs that each said, as did Kappell, was unintentional. There may be an interesting back story behind Kappell’s failed attempts to sue WHEC. 6, but, according to Kappell, not at the Capitol building later that day. In the article, Murphy discusses how Kappell was in Washington for Trump’s speech on Jan. ![]() In January, Justin Murphy reported on Kappell’s life after WHEC in an article headlined: “Jeremy Kappell, fired over racial slur on TV, now peddles right-wing misinformation” ( Democrat and Chronicle, 1/13/21). Today, in “Appellate court affirms that WHEC firing of Jeremy Kappell over racist slur was proper” ( Democrat and Chronicle, 8/27/21), Gary Craig reported that Jeremy Kappell, a WHEC-TV meteorologist who lost his job for saying a racial slur while on air, has again lost his legal challenge against his former employer, which fired him.
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