Thursday, November 13, 2008

Two Crazy Love-Struck Mental Patients

If you think you work in a dysfunctional office, you ain't got nothing on the folks at Philadelphia's NBC affiliate WCAU [which, apparently, should stand for 'We CAUtion you to hide the kids before tuning in to watch our news tonight']. You'll recall that the nation was thoroughly entertained by the zany antics of two other Philadelphia news anchors - Larry Mendte and Alycia Lane at the CBS affiliate KYW - earlier this year. The denouement of that one came when he admitted to hacking into her email account shortly after she punched a New York City cop. Little did we know that - at the same time - there was some monkey business taking place across the street at 'CAU.

As with most cases involving just about any story, this one involves two people having sex who shouldn't be having sex [turns out they shouldn't even be having coffee]. And, like most other cases involving anything, it involves a guy sleeping with a woman half his age. Finally, like most cases involving anything, it involves somebody suing someone, which is good because lawyers need to eat, too, and this economy is awful.

The story: 44-year old news anchor Vince DeMentri was having an affair with 26-year old anchor Lori Delgado. That much, it seems, everyone can agree on. From that point forward, however, the two parties have greatly different interpretations as to what transpired. DeMentri says that when the affair was discovered, he was fired but Delgado was allowed to keep her job. He is - surprise, surprise - suing 'CAU for gender-bias. Delgado claims that DeMentri began stalking her, leading her to quit her job last month because she feared him [how quitting would somehow make her safer from him is beyond me, but then again, I'm not 26]. Can't we all just get along? Oh, and by the way, Delgado's married. So's DeMentri, although you probably already assumed that.

According to Delgado, DeMentri stalked her throughout the city, confronted her husband [boy, that must have been some conversation, huh?] and acted in the proverbial 'threatening manner'. But what's great about a lawsuit is all kinds of stuff comes out in the depositions. Indeed, this story only came to light when Delgado filed a motion protesting DeMentri's lawyers requests to depose her. My favorite tidbit to surface so far involves the single most important piece of equipment to any news man or woman: at one point in the affair - one assumes toward the end - DeMentri hid Delgado's hair dryer [and no greater tragedy can befall a news anchor, you know]. Delgado initially thought the dryer-thief was any one of the numerous female news personalities at the station that apparently hate her 26-year old guts.

These two crazy kids are now both out of work [joining the other tens of thousands on the unemployment rolls]. We don't know what the future holds for them - although my guess is botox and tummy tucks for her, hair weaves and a tanning bed for him - but we're all very thankful that they decided to make news rather than read it. Let's hope more television personalities decide to sleep with one another, then go postal and stalk one another, hide hair dryers and confront each other's spouses. Takes our mind off the economy and the war.

copyright 2008 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

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