Monday, July 15, 2013

Epic News Fail - Asiana Pilots Names Announced Incorrectly - Sum Ting Wong




As an alleged comedy writer, I cannot tell you how depressing this is. No way I can write something better than this.


It is hot, I am sweating like George Zimmerman at a 50 Cent concert.

It is going to be hot this week, I’m gonna sweat like Jenny McCarthy trying to get a word in on “The View.”

American 100 Meter record holder, Tyson Gay, tested positive for a banned substance; that is too bad, one of the few gay people out in sports and now he is suspended. 

Since you asked:

This is only 50% a joke. But I am seriously contemplating funding, producing and filming a documentary on how this "Capt. Sum Ting Wong" thing happened.

First of all, if you're an unpaid employee of the National Transportation Safety Board, an intern, you're life is not on the fast track to the White House. Hell, even the people getting paid at the NTSB don't want to work there. You're pissed. You're bored. You're probably a smart-ass C student in college, which I can totally relate. 

You see the plane crash at San Francisco on CNN - which was tragic in that three lives were lost and many ruined forever due to burns - but you know the calls from news shows around the country are going to start pouring in to get the pilot's names. And those production assistants are rude and pushy. 

Next comes the speculation that, because it is Asiana Airlines, the names will be Asian and possibly hard to pronounce and spell making the job of somebody not getting paid to be at the NTSB for a summer even more thankless. 

Then the joking starts. One name, two, before you know it you have all four wildly politically incorrect Asian pilot names describing in detail what happened and when. 

Because you're all young and bored, you decide to go out for beers in Georgetown to celebrate your incredible, but wildly under-appreciated, wit. Someone gets hammered. That someone decides to go back to the office because the train to their parents house in Reston, Virginia isn't for an hour. 

The office phone rings. The drunk intern who has fallen asleep head down on his desk, awakes with a start, wiping the drool off his face. On the phone it is some eager young production assistant for a local Bay Area news show, KTVU, channel 2, with reporters on the scene filming the story live, is trying to scoop the names of the pilots of the crash. (There is a three-hour time difference) 

As a drunk NTSB intern, you try to tell the aggressive P.A. you don't have the names yet. You have to repeat the names will not be given out until their next-of-kin can be notified. Being hyper-ambitious, the young production assistant in San Francisco does not take no for an answer. 

As the young drunk intern at NTSB, you think; "Fine, humorless, annoyingly persistent production assistant, you want names, I'll give you four doozies." 

Now I am positive the drunk intern at NTSB never, in his wildest imagination, thought those names would do anything other than make that annoying production assistant get laughed at but good by her co-workers. There is no way he thought those four names would not be figured out by, A, the annoying production assistant, B, their producer, C, the graphics guy, D, the news director and, E,  the anchor who read them like gospel on the air. 

Thinking they have scooped the world, the now excited, humorless production assistant types the names into the teleprompter being careful to spell them as they were given, and the guy in charge of the graphics writes them up on the screen and out on the air it goes. 

Epic fail.