Chris Curtis, a producer of The Greg Hill Show on WEEI-FM in Boston, issued an on-air apology Thursday morning for a racial slur he made against ESPN analyst Mina Kimes.
Curtis came under fire Wednesday after a video surfaced of him using the slur in reference to Kimes on the show when discussing mini liquor bottles, often referred to casually as “nips.” He will also be suspended from the show for nearly a week.
“In a pathetic failed attempt at a one-liner, I attempted to bring up Mila Kunis, which was not really that funny, sophomoric and sexist,” Curtis began. “But for reasons I don’t understand, I said Mina Kimes. That was never the intention for me to say her name. It had nothing to do with the subject matter and it dragged her into a controversy through no fault of her own regarding a slur and her race, and it is not at all what my intention was. But it doesn’t matter because of the absolute chaos that my words created for someone who is just doing her job covering the NFL at ESPN.
“I want to apologize to Mina Kimes. I want to apologize for the stupid, lame attempt at a joke. It was something that, there’s just no other way to put it, it was dumb and it was silly and it’s brought a lot of things to the forefront for people that did nothing wrong, and it was all because I had a clumsy attempt to try to bring humor to a story in Boston. I just want to apologize to the listeners of the show, specifically Mina Kimes as well.”
He later said he would be suspended through Tuesday and that he would return to his producer role Wednesday.
Dave Cullinane, a producer of The Kirk Minihane Show for Barstool Sports, tweeted out a video clip in which WEEI co-host Courtney Cox asked the show’s radio personalities to rank their top five nips. The question coincided with a discussion about the city of Boston potentially proposing a ban on mini liquor bottles.
After the hosts were naming their favorite kinds of liquor, Curtis chimed in and said “Uh, I’d probably go Mina Kimes.”
The term is a racial slur used against people of Japanese descent. Kimes, who is of Korean descent, has yet to publicly address the incident. However, she did change her Twitter avatar to a picture of Mila Kunis after Audacy, the corporate owner of WEEI, told Chad Finn of The Boston Globe that Curtis meant to refer to Kunis instead of Kimes on the show.
