Friday, April 10, 2015

The Opie & Anthony Feud

They were a radio duo for twenty years, but split up last year after Anthony went on a racist Twitter rant and was fired. Since then, they have been airing some of their long-simmering dirty laundry.

Newsweek has the story. Here's a small excerpt...

The duo’s fight was in many ways a long time coming: Both Anthony and Opie point to events from as long ago as 1999, as well as multiple “jabs” exchanged between the two since Anthony’s firing. “Since he got fired nine months ago, he’s been passive-aggressively taking shots at me on podcasts, allowing people on his show to trash me,” Opie said on his show this week. The disagreements, which have been raised on social media and on air, include everything from how Opie treated Anthony's girlfriend in the late '90s to Anthony not visiting Opie's home.

“Me and Anthony had not had a relationship since 1999. That is a fact,” Opie said on his show on Tuesday. “Before that, from '94 to '99, we were best friends.”

The tipping point was supposedly a woman Anthony was dating in the late '90s. When the pair moved from Long Island to Massachusetts, they were both in serious relationships. “It was the four musketeers,” Anthony says. “We were new in town, new at doing this kind of radio. It was exciting, fun and we depended on each other very much.” The foursome wouldn’t last, as Anthony and his wife began an ugly divorce in 1999, and he eventually began dating someone new. “Opie’s girlfriend was very good friends with my wife, so he had to deal with his girlfriend, who is friends with my wife, who I can’t stand because of the divorce process,” Anthony says. “It was instant resentment. I broke up the team.”

For Chicago fans, this story is very reminiscent of the Steve & Garry breakup.