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Going to the bathroom should be a private event. Everyone should be given the necessary solitude to answer nature’s call. But due to a snafu at CNN, one reporter inadvertently took all of America into the restroom with her.
To make matters worse, it was during a live address by the President of the United States….
In the summer of 2006, President George W. Bush was speaking on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans, LA. Like all other news agencies, CNN was covering the press conference…but unlike all other news agencies, they didn’t mute all their news anchors’ mics.
Kyra Phillips, a veteran newscaster who’d joined CNN in 1999, used the cutaway to President Bush’s speech as an opportunity to visit the ladies room. Being a busy woman, she didn’t bother to remove the wireless mic attached to her clothing.
Big mistake.
Accompanied by a colleague, Phillips began a conversation about her husband and her brother’s wife. She praised her husband as “handsome,” “passionate,” “compassionate,” and “a great human being” (even though she would go on to divorce him two years later). When she turned her attention to her sister-in-law, she had less admirable talking points. Phillips claimed that most brothers were protective of their sisters, but in their relationship, she was the one who had to protect him because, “His wife is just a control freak.”
Yep, all of this conversation – along with the obligatory toilet flush – was heard loud and clear over the voice of President Bush as he humbly accepted responsibility for the natural disaster that had struck a year earlier.
Not wanting to miss the opportunity to poke fun at her pain, comedian David Letterman invited Phillips onto his show for his famous “Top Ten” segment where the reporter sheepishly read a list of (hilarious) excuses she had for the technical difficulty. Among them were these gems:
“I still haven’t mastered complicated on-off switch.”
“Larry King told me he does this all the time!”
“How was I supposed to know we had a reporter embedded in the bathroom?”
“Like you’ve never gone to the bathroom and had it broadcast on national television?”
“You have to admit it made the speech a lot more interesting!”
Millions could identify with her pain…because they’d been right where she was: guilty of gossip. The whole affair could have been quietly avoided if Kyra had just conformed to the wisdom of Proverbs 11:13.
A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret.
Click here for the online report.
Topics Illustrated Include:
Accident
Complain
Embarrassing
Gossip
Mistake
Technology
Trust
Wisdom
(Resource cataloged by David R Smith)
