Fail! NYU prof fired for giving actor James Franco a “D”?

I need to come clean with y’all. TMZ.com is one of my guilty pleasures. Don’t hate!

And you should have seen the beaming smile on my face on Monday when when I got some blogging gold as TMZ ran a story about a former college professor at NYU who claims that the school discriminated against him by firing him for, among other things, giving actor James Franco a “D”.

The monkey’s out of the bottle now! More after the jump…

TMZ.com broke the story here:

José Angel Santana — who taught Franco in his “Directing the Actor” class — is now suing the University for his job back, claiming he was wrongfully terminated … because he’s an Hispanic man with the audacity to give Franco a low grade.

According to the lawsuit, Santana dropped the D on Franco for missing 12 of the 14 classes in the MFA course.

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When people found out that Santana gave Franco a D, Santana claims he suffered all sorts of public humiliation — at the hands of James Franco … and the University itself, which ultimately fired him … something he claims would never have happened to a white professor.

As Phil Miles, who blogged about this yesterday at Lawffice Space — scooped again! — notes, Santana bases his discrimination claim on more than just the grade he gave a sleepy Franco:

The professor claims he had an inferior office (described as a supply closet), he was paid less, and he was denied reappointment (ordinarily a “mere formality”) because of his race.

You can find a copy of the full complaint here. And below is a video of Santana and his lawyer telling TMZ how they believe that NYU screwed Santana.