News anchor fired over double-profanity debut; Scott Van Pelt offers support

It's your first day of work. You're nervous, your palms are sweating, you want to make a good impression on your boss, your co-workers and your new customers. You breathe deep, open your mouth to speak, and ...

... drop a double-profanity bomb as your first two words.

Starting your career with the f-word and the s-word would be bad enough in any professional setting. But when you're a TV newscaster? Yeah, catastrophic.

Meet AJ Clemente, the new (for the moment) weekend anchor at KFYR of Bismarck, North Dakota. This weekend was AJ's first day on the job, and as you can see in the video, it didn't go very well. (We're not embedding the video here because of the words involved; if you don't want to get in trouble at YOUR job, use discretion.)

Clemente was suspended, but received immediate support from people who knew exactly how this kind of screw-up could happen. A "#FreeAJ" hashtag showed up on Twitter, and ESPN Sportscenter anchor Scott Van Pelt offered his own chin-up to Clemente: "It's just tv," he wrote. "Happened to me one night on S/C when I thought we'd hit a break. I had 15 years in the business. You'll be fine."

Alas, he wasn't. On Monday morning, the hammer dropped:

Godspeed, AJ. At least it can't get any worse at your next gig.

-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-