Hot Tub Incident Dooms Scumbag TV Host

SHADY DEPTHS, CA – Wave Betterman, the immensely popular host of television’s raunchiest show, American Scumbag, stunned his national audience at the end of last night’s program by announcing that he had just been fired for egregious behavior. While choking back tears, Betterman closed the show by admitting that he had blatantly failed to conduct himself up to Scumbag's lofty standards. He then profusely apologized to the network, his colleagues, and his fans.

Scumbag producer Jack Splatt commented afterward, “Betterman, of all people, knows very well what Scumbag means. We’ve proudly brought the sleazy and disgusting actions of this great nation’s public figures into living rooms across the country for a full decade. Adultery, rape, bribes, violence, lies, corruption, and more from politicians, celebrities, clergy, and business leaders, all broadcast in graphic detail. Now that’s entertainment. That’s what the American public demands, dirt and debauchery. And we’ve always delivered. Until Betterman on Saturday, that is.”

When pressed for details, Splatt revealed that Betterman, disturbingly, had a long history of aberrant behavior, of doing the right thing, of acting morally and honestly. “What if everybody did that? We wouldn’t have a show. Scumbag lives by its ratings. We Scumbag managers confidently believed that catching choir-boy Betterman in a truly despicable scandal would send our ratings through the roof and make us all millions, billions even.”

Splatt went on to explain that the show had set Betterman up in a sting operation where, with cameras rolling, his outrageous behavior, fully captured for all to see, sadly left no alternative but firing from the show.

During the Scumbag taping Saturday night in Miami Beach, Betterman was interviewing six scantily clad, totally gorgeous, buxom young women in a hot tub whom he thought were there to entice a local celebrity into a sex orgy. As Wave, sharply dressed in his Armani business suit, questioned them from the tub’s exterior, the ladies playfully tossed their tops aside, then their bottoms as well, and invited him to join them for a little underwater hanky-panky before the celeb arrived.

But Betterman, married for ten years and the father of three little girls, to everyone’s complete shock and disappointment, became flustered and embarrassed and declined to jump in. He instead walked off the set, slumped in a corner, claimed to have developed a migraine headache, and said he couldn’t go on.

Although he hadn’t known it, Betterman was, himself, the actual celebrity target that evening. However, with cameras filming, he hadn’t taken the bait to become a Scumbag low-life sleaze-bucket superstar in his own right. That was the final straw.

So last night, American Scumbag high honchos unceremoniously axed Betterman for conduct detrimental to the show as the hot tub clip aired nationwide. Faced with the damning evidence, during the show’s live wrap-up immediately afterward, the visibly shaken Betterman took full blame for his firing, admitting that his actions did not live up to the utter depravity demanded on Scumbag. “No one wants to see how I behaved. I’m a complete failure to television. I let all of America down. I am so sorry,” he ended. Then Betterman turned, slowly, head down, and left in shame, cameras still rolling.

10.07.09