A sports talk host on a Boston radio station has been suspended for five days after impersonating sports super agent Don Yee with a fake Asian accent.
The real Yee is Chinese American and speaks with no accent at all.
Christian Fauria is a former New England Patriot who works for WEEI FM.
Yee represents such NFL players as Tom Brady and Jimmy Garoppolo who just signed a five year, $137.5 million contract with the San Francisco 49ers. That’s $27.5 million a year, the highest ever in NFL history.
According to Deadspin, Fauria was reacting to news that a Boston Herald columnist was pranked into writing an article by someone impersonating Yee by using a series of text messages.
Fauria read the texts on the air using the offensive accent. His co-hosts on the Ordway, Merloni & Fauria show laughed as if it was all funny. You can hear the segment on Deadspin.
In a statement, WEEI called Fauria’s use of the accent “insensitive and an ill-conceived attempt at humor.”
“We regret Christian’s commentary and we apologize to Mr. Yee and those offended by the segment,” said WEEI in the statement. “We do not support or condone Christian’s comments, and we have suspended him for five days effective immediately.”
Fauria also apologized in a series of tweets.
Earlier today I made a horrible attempt at humor. In a segment during the show, I impersonated agent Don Yee in an insensitive and regrettable way. I want to publicly apologize to Don and anyone in the audience who heard it.
— christian fauria (@christianfauria) February 10, 2018
I have also reached out to Don directly to personally apologize. I have been disciplined by WEEI management and I fully support their decision.
— christian fauria (@christianfauria) February 10, 2018
Here’s a clip with the real Don Yee in 2016 talking about how he became a sports agent.
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RE: Sports Talk Host Suspended After Using Faux Asian Accident: So they acknowledge what a terrible attempt at humor it was yet I don’t see any achknowledgment of the racist nature of it. Something racists don’t seem to understand is that just because they didn’t intend for something to be racist doesn’t make it any less racist.
RE: Sports Talk Host Suspended After Using Faux Asian Accent: What I’m more annoyed of is that fact that he got a 5 day suspension. If he had mocked a monkey sound or talk more ‘ghetto’ or even call the hair ‘nappy’ to an African American – that said person would be fired, fined, put in sensitivity training and what not. But to mock an Asian on air with a racist way of speaking – 5 day suspension. That’s BS.