Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Texas anchor James Eppler is facing calls for his firing after a since-criticized “joke” tying BTS’ upcoming Oreo collaboration to anti-American rhetoric.
A Lubbock, Texas news anchor is the subject of a viral firing campaign after attempting a joke about a BTS cookie collaboration on air Wednesday. James Eppler, an anchor on local Fox affiliate FOX34, claimed during a lighthearted segment that the 13 messages printed on the upcoming BTS-branded Oreos spelled out “death to America.”
His co-anchors looked visibly confused on camera. TMZ’s writeup of the FOX34 segment and Eppler’s immediate attempt to walk the joke back on air notes that Eppler, who also teaches at Texas Tech University, tried to brush off the comment seconds after making it.
The collaboration in question is real and very much promotional. Oreo and BTS are releasing a limited-edition hotteok-flavored cookie on June 8, with 13 different messages from the group baked onto the cookie faces.
Eppler’s invocation of the phrase was the issue. Koreaboo’s breakdown of the Lubbock broadcast and the rapid social-media pile-on that followed notes that the phrase has historically been linked to extremist groups and protest rhetoric against the United States, which made its placement in a K-pop snack segment land particularly badly.
Fans were not amused. ShiningAwards’ recap of the fan response and the tagged posts pulling Oreo’s corporate account into the controversy highlights that BTS supporters began tagging the Oreo brand handle within hours, asking it to address the use of its branded campaign as the setup for the joke.
“This is blatant racism and xenophobia toward Asian artists, using your campaign to amplify harmful rhetoric for a cheap punchline,” one tagged post read in part. Other fan comments labeled the segment racist and called for Eppler’s immediate termination.
Eppler’s day job made the joke land harder. He holds a teaching position at Texas Tech, which now finds itself indirectly tied to the story, with TMZ confirming it had reached out to both the station and the university for comment.
Neither has responded publicly. As of this writing, FOX34 has not issued a statement, and Eppler has not posted publicly to apologize for the on-air remark.
The Oreo collaboration itself was set up as a soft-news win. The Oreos X BTS launch represents one of the larger Western consumer-brand tie-ins for the K-pop group since its members began returning from their staggered military enlistments earlier this year.
For BTS fans, who have spent months tracking each member’s discharge and comeback rollout, the Lubbock segment landed as a hostile detour. The Oreo brand, similarly, finds itself dragged into a culture-war fragment it did not author and cannot easily scrub off the rollout.
The June 8 release date is still on. Whether Eppler will be the one delivering the morning weather that day is, at this point, the less certain question.
