Court Ruling: MOB JUSTICE?

I just got word today that both our lawsuits have been permanently dismissed by the New York Appellate Court. After more than two and a half years of fighting against injustice, injustice, it seems, has been upheld.

Despite the opinion of MLK’s own daughter, Dr. Bernice King, who said that I should not have been fired, the court ruled the other way. Despite a petition signed by nearly 70,000 individuals, it didn’t matter. The court had already made up their mind.

Despite public support from legendary broadcaster Al Roker, CNN’s Don Lemon and NBC’s Craig Melvin, to name a few, the court had already made their decision before any of the facts of the case were heard.

And to think, it all started with an “errant syllable”.

As it turns out, there are MANY ways to create the sound “k’un”. The “k” sound which can be created by “k” or a hard “c” followed by any number of vowels creating the long “u” or “oo” sound. So you could go with “kun” or “kune” or “koon” or you could arrive at the racial epitaph “coon”, which of course, hasn’t been prevalently used in several decades.

Unlike the case of WHAM13’s Doug Emblidge who transposed the name of New York Attorney Joon Kim live on air back in March, the social justice mob didn’t come after him. Although what he said could have been interpreted as “coon” the Mayor said nothing. The TV station he works for said nothing and at the end of the day, NOTHING came of it. Good for him for not working for a spineless station (@News10WHEC).

As I tweeted “I understand exactly how @dougemblidge made that mistake and I will be the first to defend him for stumbling on his words. However, after everything that my family went through, you would expect him & @13WHAM, AT THE VERY LEAST, to acknowledge what occurred.”

But someone out on the internet, decided that the utterance I made was different. It was not just a stumble or an errant syllable, it was, and must have been an intentional racial slur.

In “normal times” there would be nothing more to make of it. An unintentional stumble and life would go on.

But not in the year 2019 when the race-baiting Mayor of the City of Rochester, Lovely Warren, decided to weigh in.. or in 2020 when Supreme Court Judge William Taylor ruled to dismiss the case before material facts and witnesses could be heard, and certainly not in 2021 after a panel of New York Appellate Justices upheld the lower court’s ruling.

All of this, the loss of a job, loss of a 20-year career and now the loss of a 2 ½+ year legal battle was over what???

A singular errant syllable?? A stumble over a group of words.. a speech error, a verbal slip that comes with much precedence.

Precedence that includes the fact that the EXACT same verbal slip occurred AT LEAST a half dozen times by other on-air personalities over the last 10+ years, including Mike Greenburg of ESPN Radio who famously made the flub during his talk show in 2010 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qJOA4Tt3Ko). Who btw was given the opportunity to apologize and explain on-air before resuming his Hall of Fame Career.

Not to mention the MANY experts of speech/linguistics who have reached out or have written articles about my flub with full explanations of what occurred, including that of Nationally-Renowned Linguist, John McWhorter of the Atlantic who wrote this piece in the aftermath of the Calamity… https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/weatherman-jeremy-kappell-should-be-reinstated/580201/

So not only is there precedence and scientific reasoning for the occurrence, even the judges involved with tossing the case, including New York State Supreme Court Judge William Taylor, expressed that there was NO INTENT either.

But that didn’t make a difference. The NY Court System decided none of the facts of the case matter. The only thing that mattered is that someone, somewhere heard a racial slur and that’s it.

There will be no day in court for the Kappell’s. No discovery, no evidence, no hearing, just an immediate conviction by the scandalous Mayor and the “social justice mob” that she caters to.

This is Cancel Culture at its worst where we’ve traded the idea of “innocent until proven guilty” by a jury of peers under a court of law, to, for all practical purposes, guilty via the opinion of the social media mob with no chance at redemption.

Mob justice, IS NOT JUSTICE.

-Jeremy Kappell

Meteorologist, Speaker, Talk Show Host, Blogger and American Patriot