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‘I Will Punch You!’: Local News Anchor Tortures Arachnophobic Weather Man With Tarantula

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» 33 comments

Ray Cortopassi is a jerk. No, I’ve never met the anchor for Indianapolis’ Fox59 Morning News and have seen nothing of him except the below clip, but judging solely from that, he is a jerk. A hilarious, hilarious jerk.

In the clip in question, Cortopassi uses a giant tarantula from a segment to sadistically torture poor Jim O’Brien while he’s trying to give his weather report. The arachnophobic weather man eventually makes a bee-line straight for the studio door leaving anchorwoman Angela Ganote to attempt to finish the segment. This lasts for a few seconds until Cortopassi starts scaring her.

Like I said, a total jerk.

Watch the great clip from Fox59 below:

(h/t Funny Local News via HuffPo)

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  • lowercasegod

    An hilarious jerk.

  • http://twitter.com/wittier Ken Danieli

    Cute, but they failed to pay it off. 

  • Anonymous

    that idiot should be fired.  

  • Anonymous

    Of course this had to be on FOX.  Very professional.  

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZIQS6YEA47QFXGOR4JWUBU2QRM Shark City

    Some onions, garlic, black pepper and the tarantula, stir with a little butter. UUWEEE!

  • Guest

    Maybe we missed the part where Ray chugged all the beers and then drank the bong water before the segment.

  • DietCokeHead

    Really?

    Local FOX affiliates scare you idiots too?

    Only a liberal could turn a stupid little story like this into a political thing.

  • Anonymous

    The wetherman is a p@ssy and a lib!

  • Anonymous

    You must be illiterate, because I didn’t turn this into a political thing.  

  • Anonymous

    Not so fast I bet you would be scared too.  

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GWUMDXSUYVXFOVKEDR7OG3SD7A John Doe

    Tommy was talking about Rush mediaite copycatting, theblaze.com had this piece about the spider on their website a long time ago.

  • DietCokeHead

    Oh come on… when a dem mentions fox in a sarcastic way, it’s obviously political. They don’t carry Obama’s water, so therefor, they’re unprofessional. Just admit it, is all I ask.

  • Anonymous

    You sure did , ya bloated carp of a lib!

  • Anonymous

    The whole news weather segment was unprofessional and I just made a comment that it was on FOX.  There was nothing political about it.  

  • Anonymous

    Not so fast now don’t get your panties in a bunch. 

  • Anonymous

    If we gave out a prize for the media personality who was the biggest drama queen over the non-scandal regarding the disagreement about when President Obama should address a joint session of Congress, I’d nominate Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher, who yesterday insisted that “Speaker John Boehner Should Resign For His Unprecedented Insult to the President”:Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2011/09/02/mediaites-christopher-melodramatic-over-obama-speech-boehner-should-re#ixzz1Wq1hG7o2

  • Anonymous

    Keep talking. I always yawn when I’m interested.

  • Sharpo

    can I shave your wife this weekend?

  • Anonymous

    why would you deny what you did?  Are you completely amoral?  Hell, the proof is a few posts up and you deny it.  

    Talk about panties in a bunch, you were caught bare ass lying there doofus.

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  • Anonymous

    TV news people are among the dumbest people walking the earth today. So dumb, in fact, that when they get fired, the throw a tantrum and launch lawsuits. In other words: “I’m too dumb to do anything else in life besides sit in a chair and read words writting by someone else. So I will SUE you because you unfairly STOLE that job from me…a job I was SUPPOSED to have until I die.”

    THAT is the mindset of your typical local TV Nooz Hack. Happily, this breed of creature LOVES looking into mirrors to see if their hair is out of place. And they LOVE trolling message boards to see what’s being written about them. In that light, I just bludgeoned their whole profession right in front of their face. TV Nooz people are a bunch on inbreds.

  • Anonymous

    Dim Libs are as scared of anything FOX-related as the weatherman was of the tarantula. I love seeing DIM LIBS get hysterical over FOX. It’s their very own Spider…hahahaha. And no amount of caterwauling from DIM LIBS will negatively affect the dominance of FOX. I LOVE it!

  • Anonymous

    Dim Libs are as scared of anything FOX-related as the weatherman was of the tarantula. I love seeing DIM LIBS get hysterical over FOX. It’s their very own Spider…hahahaha. And no amount of caterwauling from DIM LIBS will negatively affect the dominance of FOX. I LOVE it!

  • Anonymous

    this was stupid and not nice. let’s encourage people to be nice to one another, not junk like this.

  • http://www.sarainitalyblog.blogspot.com/ sarainitaly

    Jim O’Brien is my kind of people. I would have punched Ray too, once the spider was put away, that is. 

  • Anonymous

    Isn’t that grounds for beating the anchorman to a pulp and telling God he just disappeared, you don’t know what happened to him?

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  • http://www.facebook.com/mklitt Marilyn Knapp Litt

    Isn’t a lemon boa involved too, if tangentially in scaring the woman anchor?  Trust me, Indy news can drag.  When Jane Pauley first started here, she ran out of news and said, “That’s all there is,” and stared at the camera for about a minute.  (Indy news also incubated David Letterman.)

  • http://www.darklady.com/ Darklady

    1) Why did the cameras even stay on this once it was obvious the anchor wasn’t respecting his co-workers and they were genuinely afraid?

    2) Does this jerk still have his job? 

  • http://twitter.com/SukieTawdry1 Sukie Tawdry

    Tarantulas are scary looking (yet often quite beautiful), but none has a bite fatal to humans. The so-called “banana spider,” often referred to as a tarantula, is highly venomous to humans, but it is not a member of the tarantula family. However, none of this changes the fact that the anchor is a jerk.

  • Glutton

    He didn’t say anything political you moron. He said this type of stuff could only happen on Fox. Fox is “fair & balanced”, remember?

  • Glutton

    No, but the guy should be fired for disrupting the news broadcast like that. It’s one thing to play a practical joke but not while on air, unless it’s the sports guy. Many of us actually care about the weather report so we know what to expect the next day.

  • Anonymous

    Political? Really? You are right on one count…”a stupid little story….”

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