It was out there. But IIRC, he was a guest and not the host, and he was only making that suggestion to highlight its absurdity (or so he claimed). Besides, he’s a conservative. What do you expect?
I was raising my blood pressure by listening to talk radio today (why do I do it? The leftist ones irritate me almost as much as the rightist ones), and they mentioned something about Dick Armey’s slipup in passing. Does anyone know what they might have been referring to?
Daniel
Pretty much. Which isn’t the context you used it in, so nevermind.
This reminds me of the time I met an African-American lawyer who had been in the same legal service organization I was in in law school (I’m white, BTW). We were surrounded by judges, dignitaries, important people, and somehow it came out that we had both been in Phi Alpha Delta. I shook his hand and blurted out “It’s great to meet a fellow brother!” Of course, I immediately realized how idiotic that sounded and I was shocked, but nobody else seemed to notice or care. He chuckled, and that was it. A year later, I played saxophone at the guy’s wedding.
He called Barney Frank “Barney Fag.”
Does the guy not see the logical problem here? How can something be both reprehensible and accidental?
It’s called a goddamn slip of the tongue. Insofar as CNN is presenting a valid depiction of the event, this is absolutely fucking ridiculous. For fuck’s sake, he was complimenting Condi at the time.
Didn’t Rush Limbaugh “accidentally” call the New Orleans mayor “Ray Nager” a few months ago?
I’m sure he’ll be fired once management hears about it.
Reprehensible: deserving of rebuke or censure; blameworthy. Whether or not it’s intentional has nothing to do with it. If I shoot someone in the face by accident, would I escape blame or rebuke because it was an accident?
I’m going to assume this is the station’s motivation. Coincidentally, I’ve just read a communication law firm’s take on the FCC’s new rules in the post-wardrobe malfunction world, and it comes down to holding broadcasters to the expectation that they will always be able “to demonstrate to the Commission that the lapse was a genuine accident that could not reasonably have been prevented” if indeceny is broadcast (Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC) (Of course, the interpretation I read was specifically in reference to indeceny/profanity/sexuality, but I don’t think any station owner wants to taunt the FCC with anything remotely controversial.) The key here being that the mis-speak could have reasonably been prevented. If the FCC is cracking down, then any station will happily sacrifice a lowly DJ or host rather than face a fine or the threat of losing their license.
And of course I meant that broadcasting the mis-speak could have reasonably been prevented, not the mis-speak itself.
A charming negress.
Yick. Is that a common insult thrown at Barney Frank in the Capitol? If so, it seems like a different situation to me; if not, I can see the similarities.
Daniel
Is that a trick question?
I’d think it has a lot more to do with fear of losing listeners than FCC regs. KTRS is a big radio station, reaching beyond just here in St. Louis. This is the kind of thing that could turn into a boycott if it gained enough momentum. If you’re management, you’ll want to nip that in the bud, no matter how undeserved you think it is.
Uh, no. Armey characterized it as a “slip;” he meant to say “Frank” and instead said “Fag.” Barney Frank is openly homosexual.
This is insane. He didn’t even call Condoleeza a coon, he called the premise of her becoming the NFL commissioner a coon. It would be analogous to the “Barney Fag” slip if he had called her “Coondaleeza Rice.”
Please. Dick Armey’s slinging the word “Fag” at Barney Frank can’t be fairly characterised as a “slip” anywhere outside of Dick Armey’s fevered brain. Especially considering that Armey later let fly the equally charming “Yes, I am Dick Armey. And if there is a ‘dick army,’ Barney Frank would want to join up.” To dignify Armey’s deliberate word choice as a mere “slip” is bullshit, and to conflate this DJ’s obvious slip, for which he apologized within seconds, with Armey’s deliberate word choice damns the DJ by the comparison. The DJ made an unconscious error; Armey went for the fag joke more than once.
As for the FCC possibly fining the radio station over this, I have to hope that even the FCC at its most insane would understand that the guy didn’t deliberately do anything offensive and that no fine would be warranted.
I predict Rice will call the station manager, and the guy will get his job back. Just watch.
I agree that the slip about Frank was much, much more deserving of the label “reprehensible” than the slip about Rice. But you have to remember that Dick Armey is a member of the US House of Representatives. You can’t fire someone who doesn’t actually work for a living.
I’m with Sequent here – it’s basically the guy’s job not to say “coon” on the air, let alone twice. “Coon” is one of those exceptionally charged words that fall within the zero-tolerance zone. Are we oversensitive as a nation about that sort of thing? Probably. Is our oversensitivity a bad thing? I would argue not. I think in this case the station basically had no other choice. Imagine what people might have said if the station hadn’t acted as it did. To begin within, it would have been alleged that the DJ had said “coon” on purpose to create a furor, on the theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.