By Chris Hoenig
An Ohio news anchor somehow managed to use a racial slur on-air without even knowing it was a word. Not just once, but twice.
Or at least that’s what she said.
Kristi Capel, a former Miss USA pageant winner and current morning-show anchor for Cleveland’s FOX 8 News, said the slur on Monday morning’s program while discussing Lady Gaga’s tribute to The Sound of Music at the Oscars.
Comparing the Oscars performance to Lady Gaga’s albums, Capel said, “It’s hard to really hear her voice with all that jigab** music that she does. Whatever you wanna call it. Jigab**.”
While not used commonly with today’s unfortunate plethora of slurs, that term has a long-standing racist history that even the dictionaries acknowledge.
As angry Twitter reactions began to pour in, Capel took to the social-media platform to respond to a number of users, claiming to not even know that the slur was a word.
“I do apologize if I offended you, I didn’t know the meaning behind it or that it was even a word,” she copy and pasted multiple times. “Thank you for watching.”
But after several pastes, Capel actually went back and deleted the apologetic tweets.
Both she and the station have been silent on the matter ever since.
