Matthew Stevens, former Mississippi State beat writer for the Columbus, Miss. Commercial Dispatch, was fired on Monday morning after he aired some grievances about Lafayette, La. on his radio show.
Stevens apparently had a miserable time covering baseball in Louisiana, so bad that he spent a solid five minutes with his show’s co-host crafting an image of how truly bad it was.
He uttered phrases like:
“I can’t understand these people when they talk. I can pick out words and sentences, and I think I can figure it out. It goes over my head.”
“If Obama wants to cut Louisiana from the union tomorrow, we are better off as people.”
“I spent 90 minutes in my car driving around Lafayette and I didn’t come up with one neighborhood that I would find decent enough to stay and live.”
“I didn’t have a bad meal all week, but the rest of it was an absolutely horrid experience.”
This, understandably, upset some folks, caused the newspaper to issue an apology, and ultimately led to Stevens’s firing. Stevens himself apologized on his radio show, as a guest on another radio show and on his Twitter and Facebook pages, sounding sincerely contrite in each one.
While he did say the food was good, Stevens went a step further from the typical hot takes and sports shouting usually found on today’s sports radio, having apparently only encountered Farmer Fran and his friends on his southward trip.
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