"Afterwards Chris Shaffer said to me, Do you realize what you said?" WCCO-TV's Bill Hudson told me Friday. "So I went back and looked at the tape and couldn't believe it."
Hudson, a weekday morning show anchor, was reading a story about the Powderhorn Park neighborhood when the N-word came out of his mouth.
"It's just a very, very unfortunate incident. One I feel very sadly about. That's the unfortunate part of live television," said Hudson.
Hudson apologized on air Thursday for the slip; the apology was posted for a time on the WCCO-TV website.
"I have been receiving lots of nice e-mail from people. In my 28 years of broadcasting, this is the first time something like this has happened and it would have to be this. What I was attempting to say, and I remember stumbling over the word but I don't remember how it came out, was neighborhood. It came out neiggerhood but when you say it fast, what does it sound like."
Sounds like a word you wouldn't want to say, especially sitting next to co-anchor Angela Davis. "Angela heard it immediately and didn't say anything to me, fortunately. Probably would have thrown me off for the whole show," he said.
People who know Hudson, including Davis, say he is not the kind of soul to have this word on his heart or head. Some friends of mine have half-jokingly suggested that maybe this is an early sign of Tourette syndrome. "Well, that's a problem. Could be," laughed Hudson. "It's a slur of the tongue in more ways than one. It's just a very embarrassing, very humiliating experience."
It's more than that, according to St. Paul's Human Rights Department director Tyrone Terrill, who said the offensive word sounds nothing like "neighborhood."
