Air Madness: The Larry Mendte Story

There is nothing better than a scandal involving public figures. We’ve had a couple of good ones recently, including the whole Elliot Spitzer/prostitution thing, and the Larry Craig bathroom stall incident. Hillary Clinton claimed she landed in Bosnia under sniper fire, then someone got a hold of a tape recording of the landing, and shes calmly striding across the runway shaking hands with a bunch of army guys, with a smile on her face and Chelsea in tow. Of course, maybe the only thing better than an awesome scandal is one that involves some hometown players.

I’m talking about this whole Larry Mendte-Alycia Lane situation that’s been playing itself out recently. Quick re-cap: back in ’03, Mendte switched from anchoring the NBC 10 news to working for CBS 3 (sideline: remember when it was NBC 3 and CBS 10? Hurricane Schwartz is the only survivor from those days), and CBS 3 at that time also brought in Lane from an affiliate in Miami as essentially a hired gun to boost ratings. Prior to 2003, CBS 3 had devolved into showing nothing but The Price is Right, Letterman, Kilborn, King of Queens, and dead air. The Lane and Mendte one-two punch was lights out for the other networks, and the pair were seemingly unstoppable.

Things began to unravel when Mendte became overshadowed by Lane, someone who he saw as just another pretty face, not a serious journalist (Mendte’s job before NBC 10? He was an ‘anchor’ on Access Hollywood- so he’s a real Edward R. Murrow type). Then it came out that she sent photos of herself in a swimsuit to Rich Eisen via email, emails which were accessed by Eisen’s wife, who totally Hextalled him by revealing the whole thing to the public. Then, over the winter, Lane and her current boyfriend and then Q102 DJ, Booker, were partying in Manhattan, when Lane decided to get into drunken fisticuffs with NYPD cops. She was arrested on the spot and promptly fired. In those long-ago and carefree days of the winter of ’07-’08, this was all a source of great entertainment to me and millions of others in the Philadelphia area.

Interestingly, Booker was also fired recently. A Q102 spokesperson told the Associated Press that Booker was fired from his position as host of ‘Booker In The Morning’ because the music station was, quote, ‘trying to reduce the number of complete douchebags on the station by exactly one.’

Degrees of separation between myself and Alycia Lane: Four. My coworker’s girlfriend had a brief but hilarious affair with Booker while said coworker and his girlfriend were ‘on a break,’ and Booker of course still dates Lane.

The latest chapter in the Lane-Mendte saga cannot top Lane slugging a cop and screaming ‘I’m a reporter, Bitch!’ Yet it is still awesome. The FBI served a search warrant on Mendte’s home in Chestnut Hill, 19118, and seized computers and related evidence. The charges? That he accessed her private email account, which is illegal, like opening someone else’s mail. Mendte’s wife is Dawn Stensland, anchor for the cheap yet effective Fox News. This came about because Mensa-society member Larry Mendte left the window open on the computer at work he was using to snoop in her account, and a Lane loyalist who continues to work at CBS 3 alerted the authorities.

Mendte is now himself on the sidelines, benched while this whole thing plays out. Here is my question…how can I get into someone else’s email accounts and read their emails? Thus far, the stalking of my ex-girlfriend can only go as far as constantly monitoring the comments on her Facebook page and driving by her house twenty times a day. Having the ability to read her emails would be a huge win for me. Furthermore, I would like to talk with Mr. Mendte about somehow accessing the text message inbox and outbox on her cell-phone. That would also be a big help.