On Wednesday, comedian Arte Lange made a career-altering decision to go off on a sexually explicit Twitter tirade about what he wants to do to ESPN reporter Cari Champion.
The tweets got him banned from ESPN and fired from his Comedy Central gig.
Lange fatefully jumped to his Twitter feed while watching ESPN’s First Take and began to regale followers over how sexually aroused he was by reporter Champion.
“The chick on ESPNs First Take is so Fu**in hot,” he said at the top of his long tirade.
The former Howard Stern radio show contributor then posted a series of very explicit descriptions of what he wanted to do to Champion and at one point even said he had a “slave fantasy” over his obsession with the African American reporter.
It was not long before Lange reaped the consequences of his actions, first with ESPN announcing that he would be banned from ever appearing on the network and then with Comedy Central banning him from one of its own shows.
As ESPN told Fox 411: “His comments were reprehensible and no one should be subjected to such hateful language. They objectify and demean one of our valued employees under the thin guise of ‘comedy’ and are offensive to all of us. We will not dignify them with any other comment.”
Shortly thereafter, ESPN put a lifetime ban on Lange preventing him from ever appearing on the sports network.
Lange also found out that Comedy Central banned him from its @Midnight comedy show.
After the fallout hit, the comedian went back to his Twitter feed to defend himself. He Tweeted that he would not apologize and reiterated that he was just joking.
I’m about to tweet a few things I can’t believe have to be explained in a rational world. I observed that @CariChampion was a gorgeous lady
— Artie Lange (@artiequitter) November 5, 2014
He went on to note that he was only making jokes because he’s a comedian with a rough comedic style. He then wondered aloud if he should apologize, but ultimately decided he wouldn’t.
Tricky question. I would rather load trucks for a living then ever apologize to one of these awful PC groups ruining the country
— Artie Lange (@artiequitter) November 5, 2014
The comedian did, though, say that if Cari Champion was offended, he didn’t mean to offend her and would apologize for that.
For the next several days Lange seemed to delight in re-tweeting the abusive, curse-filled, death-threatening messages he got via social media.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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