Because he’d be too ignorant! A broadcast position requires an acceptable body of knowledge. An employer needs to know that his DJ would be knowledgeable enough about the world to not do something stupid like call a black person a monkey without realizing that everybody will interpret it as a racial slur!
Monstro wrote:
well, I dislike all talk radio hosts programs I’ve ever heard so perhaps firing him is in order anyway 
But while firing for making an inflammatory statement may make good business sense, depending on your target market, I would withhold judgment on whether it really was intended to be racially inflammatory unless I had a pattern of behavior on the part of that host.
I’m not claiming you said he did, and i’m also not saying it wasn’t meant to be insensitive:I’d guess a whole lot of hosts would do things like that on purpose if they could.
And, to the thread posters in general, isn’t there a middle ground here in between intentionally inflammatory and merely stupid? I mean, the joke was just begging to be made at some point: the host could have gone with the joke despite connotations, not because of them. The more I read the article the more it looks like it was on purpose, but I withhold judgment.
Exactly. I wouldn’t put my station’s reputation and financial liability on the line for someone who didn’t know this. I guess we all have different versions of what is “common knowledge” (thus making the term somewhat meaningless) but this seemed to me to be pretty widely known. It is interesting that several posters in this thread didn’t know the term, meaning it is less commonly known than I’d thought. Still, it’s common enough IMO that a broadcaster should know it. If he didn’t, I’d seriously question whether I’d want him on my station.
Just happened up here in Boston.
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/275/region/Talk_show_host_under_fire_for_:.shtml
The host who made the remark hasn’t commented publicly yet so I don’t know if he asserts that there was no racist meaning behind it. The station seems to have made a stand that the remark was, if not rascist, certainly inflamatory.