The Sacramento International Auto Show is one of those second-tier shows you don’t normally hear much about unless you’re in the area, or unless a local TV reporter goes to the show to shoot a segment and instead acts the fool to such a degree that he gets fired. The latter reason is why you’re hearing about this now.
The reporter was Angel Cardenas, a correspondent for KMAX-TV’s Good Day Sacramento, and while station has removed the video segment from their YouTube page and website, at least one person recorded it and posted it to Facebook, so you can cringe along here:
Oh, dude. What are you doing?
There’s two main bits to the segment, one in a dense flock of pristine ‘50s Ford Thunderbirds and one by the Ford exhibit on the show floor.
I know 50s Ford Thunderbirds aren’t the most exotic classic car out there, but those examples are clearly immaculate and lovingly maintained by devoted owners who probably voided their bowels into their chinos when they saw this dipshit climbing all over their cars and thoughtlessly dinging one obsessively-maintained T-Bird door right into another.
The lack of care and respect for these privately-owned cars is pretty appalling, and generated a lot of viewer backlash, as you can imagine.
It’s not like he wasn’t aware, somehow, that the cars owners’ wouldn’t be thrilled with this kind of thing. At one point, he says
“I feel like a kid in a candy store without the owners because you can do anything.”
Yeah, that doesn’t mean you should do anything, buddy. Especially on camera.
The segment with the new Fords isn’t much better. I feel more for the private owners than a huge company, but it’s still idiotic to jump on the hood of a car that’s on a gated-off display turntable. Eventually, someone at the booth did tell him to get off the damn car, echoing the sentiment of his co-hosts at the studio, who seem to possess a bit more sense.
It’s not like there was some greater message or statement being made here, or even anything all that entertaining. Just a guy, climbing on some cars for no reason.
As you may expect, things didn’t work out so hot for Cardenas. The Producer of the Sacramento International Auto Show reached out to the General Manager of KMAX TV and complained, resulting in the Cardenas getting fired.
The lesson? The same lesson as always: don’t mess with someone’s ride.
(thanks, Rick!)