[barend]

Host, praising Rice, utters slur; fired
Thursday, March 23, 2006 Posted: 1420 GMT (2220 HKT)


ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) -- A St. Louis radio station quickly fired a talk show host for uttering a racial epithet as he talked about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on his morning show Wednesday.

Dave Lenihan apologized on the air immediately after making what he said was a slip of the tongue. KTRS president and general manager Tim Dorsey agreed the remark was accidental but said it was nonetheless "unacceptable, reprehensible and unforgivable."

Lenihan had been heaping praise on Rice, who has frequently said she aspires to run the NFL one day but has more recently ruled out seeking to replace retiring Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

"She's been chancellor of Stanford," Lenihan said on the air. "She's got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football. She's African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. A big coon. Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that."

He said he had meant to say "coup" instead of the racial slur.

KTRS listeners soon began calling the station to complain. Twenty minutes after the utterance, Dorsey went on the air to apologize to Rice and KTRS listeners.

"There can be no excuse for what was said," Dorsey said. "Dave Lenihan has been let go. ... There is enough hate. We certainly are not going to fan those flames."

NAACP chapter president Harold Crumpton commended Dorsey for his swift action.

Reached at home, Lenihan said he was still trying to figure out what happened and was drafting a letter of apology to Rice. He said he never uses the slur he uttered and thinks Rice is "a fantastic woman."

Lenihan, formerly a drive-time host at WGNU radio in St. Louis, had been at KTRS for less than two weeks.

"It was my dream job," he said. "Ratings were going well. It kind of stinks."

cnn story

well... there you go...

verbal typo or hatefilled slur?

"There is enough hate. We certainly are not going to fan those flames." -Dorsey

uhhh...

"She's been chancellor of Stanford. She's got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football...."

yeah, it certainly started off hatefull.....

freudian or not... that's fucking stupid.... the guy fucked up, but he wasn't bashing her on the air...
this whole political correctness thing is way out of hand...

people fuck up words all the time, so by chance he gave an 'n' instead of a 'p'

i know most people are probably going to disagree with me here, but i think all those people that phoned in were c*nts!!! the guy slipped up and was quick to assert that it was not what he meant, and everybody started calling... i think i know where the goddamned HATE really was.





jesus... all this over some cheese...



i was trying to work a rizotto joke into the title but couldn't be bothered

[Otal Nimrodi]

You know, I've noticed this too. Political correctness has gotten out of hand! Now, PC is okay. But it can be taken too far. I got in trouble for imitating Speedy Gonzales at school, in a bit I was doing imitations of Loony Toons characters. I didn't even single him out, I just used him.

[barend]

see now that's exactly the kind of ironically opressive nature of political correctness i've been talking about.

everytime some poor bastards says 'you people' refering to a group arguing with him like the begenning of 'anger management' with adam sandler or whatever all hell breaks loose...

there a bunch of fucking thugs who don't even need a physical presnce to fuck you up...

now thanks to these fucktards, we live in a world where it's terrible and hateful to do a foreign accent for a laugh, but okay to shoot a guy in the face six times at a train station because he's got darker skin.

that's fucking great!

[Deepsycher]

I cannot see that putting someone out of their job for an accident said in words none intentional, claimed by those who made a connection to an offensive joke from the mistake, is going to get anyone anywhere, unless for a "hire and fire" society.

Wondering: Did it state in the contract that none intentional accidents are not forgivable?

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 23 March 2006 - 08:14 PM

[Despondent]

I didn't think Limbaugh ought to have lost his NFL gig. Works both ways.

[Deepsycher]

Can a solid none huge reputation help for accidents like that?
Like stating to the listeners, "Not to be taken seriously" and excuse for any mistakes made, which will be corrected upon discovery.

[Gobbler]

Aijaijai, isn't political correctness great? It protects those who are too stupid to either don't care about words or don't get the real meaning behind them... hooray for smacktards...

[J m HofMarN]

Yah know what they should have done? The owner of the station should have come on the air and said "We stand behind our dj, he's a dumb weeny fool... ermmm I mean a gift to the gene pool!" and left it at that. If I were Condoleezza Rice I'd do the sensible thing and send a letter to the station accepting his apology and asking them to give the guy his job back. But somehow I doubt that'll happen.

[Gobbler]

Yeah, because she's a racist, obviously.

[Deepsycher]

Aijaijai, isn't political correctness great? It protects those who are too stupid to either don't care about words or don't get the real meaning behind them... hooray for smacktards...

What do you mean, I thought he was out of a job now?
Curious, how was he meant to know before making the mistake?
Well I can see that not everybody knows the real meaning behind everything out there until it has happened or upon discovery.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 24 March 2006 - 08:47 AM

[Gobbler]

What do you mean, I thought he was out of a job now?

Oh, the smacktard in question is not the host, but everyone who's stubborn enough to see this as a malicious hate crime.

Curious, how was he meant to know before making the mistake?

Eh... common sense, I guess... and from what the article says, it seems as if he had some of that even before the words just slipped out.

[Deepsycher]

So political correctness was used for whoever put the host out of the job as for seeing the mistake as a hate crime. Common sense, perhaps was not serious enough to retain if the joke was intentional. I expect that the contracts should state how certain speeches or jokes can be seen as hate crimes and to be extra careful especially to fragile audiences.

Oh I do not mean fragile audiences as to everyone that sees it as a joke, but for some of those who are not apart of the offended culture and for others who are always complaining for the most petty issues they make out to be racist, when there are no indications or lack of evidence to prove their point to what they are saying. Perhaps he thought off the joke at the time and accidentally said it in place of another speech which could be exceptional: For an apology to the audiences and those who may be offended by the none intentional mistake, I can see as reasonable.

In this case, curious to see if there were lots of fragile audiences complaining at that time.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 24 March 2006 - 09:37 AM

[Despondent]

But it wasn't a joke, right? Simply a freudian slip.

If the coon word isn't in your vocabulary, there's no potential problem. Not something I'd say period, let alone have it slip out. The station was in actuality, bending over because of political correctness.

Liberal policies coming home to roost Rice. I don't think she's ever championed that PC cause.

[Deepsycher]

So sorry I meant the words "coon" in place of "coup," I am confused wether this is a joke, racism or combined just now. In place of "joke" (now my mistake to "word") could the host be thinking of the "word" coon at the same time for another thought or a verbal cross link?

Well I see he said "it was a slip of the tongue," but that sounds long to me from coon to coup.

"It seems that Political Correctness is putting people out of jobs rather than correcting both sides." Curious of the phrase "covering up the carpet", lets "dishonour" or "fire" those who make verbal mistakes just to set an an example to the real offenders.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 24 March 2006 - 04:14 PM

[Despondent]

It comes down to business, though, doesn't it? Nobody wanted the fallout so they quickly dismissed association. It's their right, and it's not right. But it's not right for the St. Louis Cardinals to be attached to the stigma either. It's the same political correctness coming back to bite its own tail.

Or maybe it's the Anheiser Busch corporation. NOBODY wanted that guy's cooties once he was identified as "it".

coon and coup (with a silent "p") are not so dissimilar phonetically.


And it gets the audience once it's out of the barn.