HUNTINGTON, N.Y. — A recent episode of a reality TV show is under fire for being disrespectful and offensive toward firefighters.
PIX11 reported that in Sunday’s episode of Bravo’s show “Princesses: Long Island,” one of the so-called princesses was doing a photo shoot to promote her product and incorporated a FDNY 9/11 memorial statue from the Jonathan Ielpi Memorial Park.
The scene shows Amanda Bertoncini at the FDNY memorial and one of models is hanging on the bronze statue of firefighter Ielpi, according to the report.
You can hear the photographer tell the model, “Kiss the fireman, try to feed him the beer.” Then, Bertoncini exclaims, “Yeah, feed him the beer! Then act scared.”
Melissa Ielpi-Brengel, the sister of Jonathan Ielpi, the 29-year-old that lost his life on Sept. 11, was outraged when she watched the episode, according to the report.
“Pretending I’m drinking with this man who was killed, it may not be against the law to do it, but it is the most disrespectful and disgusting thing that I think you can do,” Ielpi-Brengel said. “It opens up the wounds and it makes you just want to cry all over again.”
Bertoncini posted an apology to the Ielpi family on Facebook, which included the name of the product she is trying to sell. The apology was not seen as sincere. In the apology she claimed to have not known it was a 9/11 memorial.
“Unfortunately there will be people who tune into the show just to see what happens next. But at least this shows that we, as 9/11 families, and for all people that were killed, we’re not going to allow people to disrespect it, to forget about it, make jokes about it, because it’s not a joke. And it never will be,” Ielpi-Brengel said.
Bravo pulled the episode.