Misc

Leo Laporte Is Still An Incorrigible Racist

38 Comments
For better quality watch the video fullscreen.

Katie Benner is a smart and savvy technology reporter for the New York Times who hates Naturebox.

Katie Benner (File Photo)

Benner was phoning in to This Week In Tech to discuss her NYT’s article on how women entrepreneurs who seek financing from angel investors are often on the receiving end of inappropriate verbal advances and touching.

We at TotalDrama fully condemn these scumbags and hope they die a long and painful cancerous death.

The person responsible for finding a correct image of Benner was Karsten Bondy, the lovable but incompetent bow-tie wearing producer and technical director of such hit shows as Triangulation. However TotalDrama places 100% full legal responsibility (FLR™) for this screw up on the racist (example 1 & example 2) patriarch Leo Laporte who should have been the safety net here.

Not only has Benner been a regular guest on Tech News Tonight (which we hear Laporte watches religiously), but she’s also appeared two other times on This Week In Tech (appearance 1 & appearance 2). How does Leo Laporte not know what Katie Benner looks like at this point? Do all Asian people look the same to Leo Laporte? The rest of this trainwreck can only be experienced by watching the video above.

Update: Thanks to the #drama chatroom member who uncovered another photo of “Katie Benner” switched out at the last moment.

Editor’s Note: This one is a joke made by a chat room member, spoofing Leo’s racist error. The video and everything above is real.

38 thoughts on “Leo Laporte Is Still An Incorrigible Racist”

  1. This time I have to somehow defend Leo: how can it be racist if you’re really not capable to see the difference between to people of a different race? He’s clearly embarrassed and even after a while not certain. There’s no (lazy) ignorance or negativity shown to or talked about her (or people of East Asian race).

    I know in the US almost everything can be labeled as racist nowadays. This is an honest mistake. Stupid and rude nonetheless, but calling it racist is quite a stretch.

      » Quote comment

    Reply

    1. Sure I can give someone the benefit of the doubt but this is Leo Laporte, someone who’s had a history of mocking other ethnicities/genders. Some of these were linked in the original writeup. Was any of that a positive commentary on other races? I think you need to see the bigger picture here.

      Week after week this blog provides verifiable evidence that Leo Laporte is a disgusting human being and there’s always one moron who still believes it could have been an honest mistake… that it’s not indicative of anything systemic. You really believe that still?

        » Quote comment

      Reply

      1. Brittany Pettibone:
        Yeah this is just another example of the TWIT crew’s incompetence and half-assery rather than actual racism.

        The guy left the racially diverse San Francisco to start a podcasting empire in Petaluma… a city which is 80% white and is not a tech hotspot. He clearly doesn’t want to deal with minorities. Maybe someone here could provide an explanation in lieu of racial intolerance?

          » Quote comment

        Reply

  7. I find this post amusing but a little harsh. Firstly the TD, being on the generous twit payroll is probably suffering from malnutrition and consequently bouts of fainting and double vision. These kind of mistakes are likely to happen when the poor chap can only match via pantone shades and generic features like glasses / no glasses.

    Secondly, Mr LaPorque is not a young man and is cruelly afflicted by Beetus which he’s doing his best ameliorate with a strict Mason Jar Diet, but alas his vision and judgement is also being critically impaired, although his appetite is fortunately proving to be surprisingly resilient. Onwards and upwards Mr LaPorque!

    As he reasonably postulated, maybe Katie would prefer the image they used as it was obviously taken with the benefit of proper lighting, thus avoiding any unfortunate facial optics from excessive illumination; furthermore Penny Kim is a close enough match for most twit video stream viewers, if not dare i say, for all three of them.

    As the Netcasting Guru that manages to offend advertisers and still get them to buy ads, all while phoning-it-in during his hectic breaks between bi-monthly cruises, he MUST shurely be doing something right!

    “Let he who is without a fork, cast the first Mason Jar”

      » Quote comment

    Reply

    1. Buford T. LaPorke, Purveyor of Scarves and Authentic Hand Woven Tarpaulins: As the Netcasting Guru that manages to offend advertisers and still get them to buy ads, all while phoning-it-in during his hectic breaks between bi-monthly cruises, he MUST shurely be doing something right!

      Yes he’s good at firing expensive employees and downscaling studios. Note that either of these (and not his professional etiquette) could also allow him to maintain his bi-monthly cruises. Thank you for your comment.

        » Quote comment

      Reply

    1. Thurrott Legend:
      That photo of Lucy Liu is hilarious! Damn near spit my drink out.

      Lecia, you do this fake comment shit all the time. It’s so odd how you love your awful jokes and find the, clever. Your jokes are not clever, ever, never.

      You also have a habit of return commenting your detractors on all your fake names. You may want to cut that out to fool us.

        » Quote comment

      Reply

      1. Mr Leica is (b)anal*,

        While you are to be commended for your persistence in banging the same drum for little reward, it’s beginning to resemble a caged animal swinging repetitively against an engraved brick wall.

        I appreciate your attempts at mixing it up with ‘ dah bro’s ‘ by mutilating the English language, but it does your cause no good. Your ‘return comments’ or what some people refer to as ‘replies’ are woefully lacking in humour, logic or basic grammar.

        If this is truly the best you can do, take courage, it does get better, but you must make an effort. May I suggest you try LibreOffice as that at least has a grammar and punctuation checker and maybe reading some literature (alas your Mother’s lingerie catalogue does not count).

        From my browsing of the TotalDrama site, it’s clear that smartarses are indeed welcomed so take heart, try harder and who knows, as your ‘return commenting’ skills improve, you may gain enough courage and confidence to venture outside your mother’s basement and approach real bipedal females that come pre-inflated.

        Onwards and upwards Leica is (b)anal and remember,
        “It is better to succeed than suck seed”

        *excuse me if my incorrect assumption of your gender triggers your ovaries, but based on your previous submissions you do seem to be a little beotch which if I understand the American parlance, means you are actually a biological, if not functional, male.

          » Quote comment

        Reply

  9. How could this happen? The woman in that picture looks nothing like Katie Benner. Did they re hire Effen Dumb as a producer? I don’t think He would do something this stupid.

      » Quote comment

    Reply

  13. TD is really reaching on the racism thing. He is showing genuine remorse and disgust.

    However – it doesn’t mean we can’t turn it back on him or Yoko. When you hire rock bottom, you get rock bottom work in return. Someone who had their shit together would have a folder for each guest with multiple stock photos probably provided by the person themselves.

    Organizational Incompetence? Yeah. Racism? No.

      » Quote comment

    Reply

    1. ManBaby: He is showing genuine remorse and disgust.

      Not the impression I got, since he followed it up with a chuckle. Someone who is genuinely remorseful does not laugh. I would even go as far to say that he’s really convincing at expressing disgust solely as a defensive mechanism. He should have known that wasn’t her. Like I said he should have been the safety net since he knows her. He’s the textbook definition of a psychopath:

      – Lack of guilt/remorse
      – Lack of empathy
      – Lack of deep emotional attachments
      – Narcissism
      – Superficial charm
      – Dishonesty
      – Manipulativeness
      – Reckless risk-taking

        » Quote comment

      Reply

      1. I don’t disagree on any of your points.

        I will point out though, he laughs inappropriately almost constantly.

        I’m not even saying he’s racist or not racist. I just think the racism tag for this particular instance is really reaching. The word has almost lost all meaning due to its overuse in recent years. This is one of those cases.

        A better angle on this story would have been how incidents like this are the result of systemically chasing talent and experience away.

          » Quote comment

        Reply

        1. Thanks I appreciate your follow up. I agree with your last paragraph that this wouldn’t have happened if the frontline employees weren’t idiots. But I didn’t make this the central theme because it was ultimately his incompetence that caused what happened. The article could have been renamed “Leo is a still an incorrigible idiot” or “Leo still does not GAF” but the whole incident had racial overtones like this. So I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not calling it racism is a stretch.

            » Quote comment

          Reply

  16. Wow you really buried the lead on this one! Can’t really say this was racist.; he was probably assuming Katie was using a misleading profile pic (à la Tonya Hall). But that very last line: “She might prefer that we use a picture of Penny Kim.” That was an undeserved cheap shot out of nowhere. Not to mention a clear case of lookism. And also possibly sexism. But don’t worry, he’ll probably display his racism again soon, since he’s knocking out so many other -isms right now…

      » Quote comment

    Reply

    1. Potato Utopia: But that very last line: “She might prefer that we use a picture of Penny Kim.”That was an undeserved cheap shotout of nowhere.

      To be fair, pre-show when establishing the phone call with Katie, she bristled when he said her location (vacationing) on-air and said she’d rather not have it disclosed where she was and she was already getting threats, etc. They talked about that for a few moments. I actually took his comment about preferring to use the picture of Penny Kim as a call-back to the hassling Katie was getting – in the same way that she didn’t want her location given out, she might also prefer her actual picture not be used at this particular time. I took it as a joke/deadpan remark about a witness protection vibe kind of thing.

        » Quote comment

      Reply

      1. Thanks for cleaning that up. Then in this case Leo did nothing wrong.

        Whoever made this video shouldn’t have presented that last statement out of context like that. It’ll just create credibility issues with any future videos posted here.

          » Quote comment

        Reply

        1. Thank you for your comment. The reason that was included was to show Leo constantly jokes about stuff that really shouldn’t be joked about. It’s a fucking serious situation what happened to Benner. That is what he did wrong there. I can’t stop the video and explain the reason for every sound bite.

            » Quote comment

          Reply

          1. King Leo Laporte:
            Thank you for your comment. The reason that was included was to show Leo constantly jokes about stuff that really shouldn’t be joked about. It’s a fucking serious situation what happened to Benner. That is what he did wrong there. I can’t stop the video and explain the reason for every sound bite.

            Plus, within the context of the show, that was what’s heard. An apparent remark that could be interpret that Penny was better looking. I would guess +99% don’t listen to the pre show.

              » Quote comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *