By now you are surely aware of the fact that WEEI host Alex Reimer was suspended indefinitely after saying Tom Brady’s daughter was being an “annoying little pissant” in a scene of the first episode of Brady’s new Facebook reality show. He caught the ire of Brady, who went on WEEI and implied that Reimer’s comment might cause him pull out of his agreement to make a weekly appearance on the station. That elicited this statement from WEEI:
It’s definitely weird to call a small child a pissant on a radio show, but WEEI is already home to some of the most vile, moronic commentary in the sports radio universe, and it’s lame as hell for the station to knife one of its own employees just because he made Tom Brady mad.
It’s not just Reimer’s own employer who has had a deranged reaction to this scandal. Here is the Boston Herald’s Steve Buckley, who considers himself a friend of Reimer’s, writing about his colleague as if he’s in need of an intervention:
This isn’t just a case of Reimer needing to think about what he says, though that’s a big part of it. He also needs to learn the fine art of nuance. I can tell you that off the air Reimer is a caring individual who respects people and institutions. I had lunch with Alex and his dad just last month and, speaking as someone who lost his own father at age 15, it was uplifting to see them talk about the Sox, Patriots, etc., in the easy, carefree, innocent fashion that fathers and sons do.
But things have a way of going horribly wrong with Alex when the red light in the studio goes on. Obsessed as he is with everything being a hot take, he can’t see roses. He sees only thorns.
He wants to be Gerry Callahan and/or Kirk Minihane, two seasoned, card-carrying tough guys. But listen to how mushy these two tough guys get when they talk about Jimmy Fund “play lady” Lisa Scherber and all those beautiful kids fighting cancer at Dana-Farber. For all the daily bombast, it’s at times like these that their humanity is revealed in a way that’s entirely organic.
Boston is a town in which a local sports columnist will urge his young protege to adhere more closely to the values of Gerry Callahan and Kirk Minihane, two guys known for making racist jokes, wondering if Adam Jones lied about being the target of racist insults, and calling Erin Andrews a “gutless bitch.” We should just get rid of Boston.