"The Dog House with JV and Elvis," hosted by Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay, "will no longer be broadcast," CBS Radio spokeswoman Karen Mateo said Saturday...Now, it seems, the company must demonstrate to each interest group that it matters as much as the last one that was able to extract a firing. You can listen to the prank call here. I can see firing them for being lame and bad. Maybe we've reached the end of shock jockery.
Vandergrift and Lay broadcast a call to a Chinese restaurant in which the caller, in an exaggerated accent, placed an order for "shrimp flied lice," claimed he was a student of kung fu, and compared menu items to employees' body parts.
The initial airing of the call went unnoticed, but a rebroadcast after Imus's firing prompted an outcry from Asian-American groups. Vandergrift and Lay were initially suspended without pay, but Asian-Americans quickly demanded the same penalty applied to the much higher-profile Imus.
"This is a victory not only for the Asian-American community, but for all communities who find themselves constant targets of racist and sexist programming," said Jeanette Wang, an executive with the Organization of Chinese Americans.
May 13, 2007
Is this the end of shock jockery?
When CBS fired Don Imus, we heard a lot of agonized analysis about how there was something distinctly different about shock jockery that comes in the form of ridiculing specific individuals who were innocent, young, female, and attempting to enjoy a glorious moment in their lives that they'd worked very hard to achieve. But there's no such exquisite particularity in the post-Imus domino effect
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In the intersection of free speech, bad manners, sensitivity and political correctness, it seems likely we'll see more of this rather than less (unless the targets are white, male and/or Christian, but that's another topic). None should be surprised.
While I had never listened to shock jock radio and don't morn its passing, I think that the rise of the victimization industry is a bigger threat to our freedom of speach.
"Flied lice" is a dish invented for non-Chinese. Someone who actually had that kind of accent problem would order something else, and place the order in Chinese.
Cleative humor require disciprine. These Amelican bozos rack disciprine.
No matter how they were prepared, I think that lice would be hard to eat with chop sticks.
I don't see this as a threat to free speech. Free speech is the guarantee that you won't face criminal prosecution for what you say (hence, for example, I would be opposed to a law that actually made it illegal to say anything-- as I blogged on here when a town in Texas wanted to make using the 'n' word a crime--, just as I oppose any kind of legal censorship.)
Free speech does NOT, however, protect you from the consequences of what you may say. For example, if I call my boss a fink then I can't be prosecuted in criminal court for it, but my boss has every right to fire me. What this says is that there are some limits to what is acceptable on public airwaves (note that this did not happen on satellite radio).
As to the Asian-American community they have clearly learned from the African-American community that threats involving consumer boycotts do work-- the lifeblood of any radio show is its sponsors, and to go after the sponsors is a particularly effective way of getting a show knocked off the air. CBS radio was probably not looking at being politically correct, they were most likely looking at the bottom line and taking calls from worried sponsors, who had been taking calls from Asian-American consumers who were being organized.
Is consumer activism a good enforcement mechanism? Not necessarily, it favors those persons or groups who can more effectively organize one-- including larger numbers of consumers, and the leaders with the biggest megaphones. But it beats not having an enforcement mechanism.
tim:
Get off of the paranoid high horse already. The prime example of someone who is in prison for the consequences of something he said is Sheikh Rahman, whose anti-American diatribes (delivered in a mosque, at that) while themselves covered by the first amendment, were used to convict him as an accessory to the first WTC attack since his sermons were cited as having motivated the attackers to commit their acts. So I'm not sure that there is any element of 'political correctness' in holding people accountable for the consequences of what they say, it is a matter of drawing the distinction between free speech as a legal issue (clearly covered by the first amendment) and the consequences of free speech as a societal issue (not at all protected under the Constitution.)
In fact, over a century ago, if memory serves me right (I know much less about the law than most on this blog) didn't Oliver Wendell Holmes make this distinction crystal clear by refuting the contention of a man who had yelled, 'fire!' in a crowded theater and begun a panic in which several people were crushed to death, and then claimed he was protected by the first amendment?
"threats involving consumer boycotts do work."
But no boycott was mentioned here, or did I miss something?
Just for the sake of argument, at what point could a media outlet say "no" to demands of a victimization group?
I can see firing them for being lame and bad.
Amen! I stopped listening to radio in the morning a year or so back, because all they had on were idiots similar to this doing the morning show. Now, I listen to music on my computer to get ready in the morning. For the times when I drive, I have a wonderful little device that allows me to listen to my IPOD on my car stereo. If wanted to hear crap like "The Dog House", I'd follow around a group of drunk Frat guys. There'd probably be more originality.
It's nice to see many groups being able to assert pressure on companies who control the platform.
As far as free speech - I don't really see any relationship b/w free speech concerns and this incident (there's a tenuous FCC licensing connection I would guess). But more than anything, this is the "marketplace of ideas" in action.
If these guy had called most restaurants, when they got to, 'Can I see your naked ass?' they would have been responded to directly. They took advantage of the Asian cultural prefernce for maintaining a formal politeness. I found this prank much more offensive than Imus' 'nappy headed' remark in that, in that, Imus was mimicking what he thought was the speech of African-Americans.
Eli,
Wow.
Who knew I ticked you off so much?
Happy Mother's Day. I suspect your's needs it more than most.
While it is true that this is not technically censorship, (maybe) it could be inferred that it is the fruit of censorship, given that the "public" airwaves are held to be the property of the people administered by government regulation, and to pretend that management is not making decisions with one eye on the preferences of those government regulators is naive in the extreme. Further, I'd contend that none of the great corporations built on use of government regulated airwaves is truly a private actor, which makes their supposedly non-governmental censorship a lot more suspect than that of, say Wal-Mart's employee speech regulations. (If any).
That said, this will only increase the value of speech on the internet, which is far more free, and in most cases immune to organized pressure group campaigning.
Banning "offensive" speech is like banning "ugly" guns: both chip away at bedrock liberties guaranteed by the constitution.
Uhhh.... ching chong chang Rosie O'Donnell escapes notice though? This is getting absurd. Only saving grace is two lame shows got canned and not something I actually listen to, but still this is out of hand.
Lighten up people.
This is an example of the marketplace of ideas at work. So was the Imus case.
Censorship has nothing to do with it. Edgy programs get their audience that by being edgy. But being on the edge is risky by definition.
The risk: Going over the top and pi**ing your sponsors off.
This is old as broadcasting itself.
I DO see it as a threat to free speech.
Not so much that a shock jock or two gets tossed, but that the institutions and networks to impliment the old Bolshevik "correct thoughts" are in place in America and well-organized.
We are seeing the shutdown of free speech under the aegis of Herbert Marcuse and the "politics of confrontation" that seeks to shutdown any speech that offends the "oppressed". It started in the 60s and has just gotten entrenched as the "privilege" of Lefties, blacks and other "aggrieved groups"....who themselves are held immune from consequence of their own black racism or Marxist hatred of America.
Have no doubt that the same forces that gunned for and got Imus are also out trying to intimidate advertisers, colleges, and bookstores to drop other "offensive" thinkers and speakers.
The rules are clear. Victim groups can demand and get firings or scared shitless sponsors fearing violence to drop speakers. All while the "victim groups" are free to spew whatever venom they want on radio and at campuses about Zionist Jews, whites creating the AIDs virus to kill blacks, denounce America as a Nazi nation, call Marines trained psychotic killers, and slur the "3 white boy rapists and their 43 accomplices" of Duke in every way imaginable (same age and innocence as the Rutgers players the race-baiters anguished over).
I think the "rules of the game" are pretty well-understood by all.
I also think Americans are beginning to realize the poison the Marxists and refugees like Marcuse brought into America have created hatreds and divisiveness where none existed before, and helped shut down robust, civil dialogue in the name of totalitarian PC.
ridiculing specific individuals who were innocent, young, female, and attempting to enjoy a glorious moment in their lives that they'd worked very hard to achieve.
The line of approach is completely wrong, a horrible reading of Imus's remark, in spite of what Imus later said saying the same thing. His initial reaction, on Thursday after Nappy Wednesday, was the right one : get over it and worry about something that matters.
Imus has a ranch for kids with cancer, and he reported once that he had sent some boys home, when they wouldn't stop calling the girls ho's.
He called a heavily tattooed Rutgers women's basketball team nappy headed ho's, and he was talking not about how they played basketball, but how they looked.
In both cases, the kids are embracing a narcissistic and dysfunctional black culture. In both cases he wants them to stop. In the first case, he had the responsibility and authority to make it stop ; in the second case he wants it to stop but can only mock it.
That mockery is the joke, and is not shock jock stuff at all, except that it offends people who can't follow what's going on in life, and they're always fun to offend.
The line in question is so unexceptional as to be unnoticeable in the course of the hours of shows, and I listen while working to all of it, and have for years.
Something very strange was going on, and I'm pretty sure it has to do with Hillary, whose arch-enemy was Imus ; and who had a Democrat primary to win.
Either Imus went along with the ``I did a horrible thing'' line to try to defuse the media storm, which is not a sign of good character but Imus isn't actually as straight-arrow as he says he is, or his being a fan of Black preachers did him in when he talked to a good one over the weekend, but now everybody has to argue this starting with how horrible the line was for the girls, those 19 year old innocent flowers, fragile envelopes of fine souls, albeit the same age as girls fighting for us in Iraq.
But you cannot argue anything from there, because you're wrong in the first step.
The right argument is that the line was correct and called for, and that as long as you can point out that blacks are making self-defeating choices, the road to truth is still open on the air.
That is what is now closing, and media execs hide under their desks sucking their thumbs, and audience be damned.
Some of the audience was able to follow it, even if they could not.
It's so sad to see these poor shock jocks fired. How will they make a living now? If the only talent you have is to be as rude and filthy as possible, what other job is open to you?
I fully expect to see Howard Stern on an street corner soon with sign out saying, "Will describe midget sex for food."
When that happens I'm sure we will all share the bitter tears of regret.
Err, on second though, maybe we won't.
If, instead of acting impulsively, you bothered to think about this issue, you may be as conflicted as I am. Of course Cedarford is right that the grievance industry is using the Imus model to shut it's victims down and exercise their power. And Tim is not wrong to suggest that people who insult white males like Linda Mason at CBS, are getting a pass.
But if you are a Conservative rather than a Libertarian, you believe in societal guidelines. And if you transgress those guidelines, you get punished. That does not mean getting hauled off to a dungeon, but it may mean losing your lucrative job insulting people on the radio.
I discuss that HERE with regard to Opie and Anthony. Since I am an optimist, I believe that the snowball that Al Sharpton started may have a trajectory that he did not expect. Perhaps the intellectual environment will be a little cleaner at the end of the day.
I had to come back because Eli Blake is totally out to lunch in his characterization of terrorist Omar Rahman.
tim:
Get off of the paranoid high horse already. The prime example of someone who is in prison for the consequences of something he said is Sheikh Rahman, whose anti-American diatribes (delivered in a mosque, at that) while themselves covered by the first amendment, were used to convict him as an accessory to the first WTC attack since his sermons were cited as having motivated the attackers to commit their acts. So I'm not sure that there is any element of 'political correctness' in holding people accountable for the consequences of what they say, it is a matter of drawing the distinction between free speech as a legal issue (clearly covered by the first amendment) and the consequences of free speech as a societal issue (not at all protected under the Constitution.)
Eli would have some people believe the "Blind Sheikh" was just opining in generalities and somehow convinced like minded people to act on his abstractions, so he faced consequences.
Nothing is further from the truth.
Rahman founded one terrorist group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, that killed Copts and Egyptian government officials until Egyptian police managed to kill, imprison, or have courts execute all but a few (Rahman as a cleric escaped the noose). Later he became a leader of the Islamic Group, which killed Christian Copts and tourists, most notably in Luxor in 1997 when they got 58 - mostly Swiss.
Rahman arrived in the US, overstayed a tourist visa and applied for refugee status back in the insane days when America considered someone sought for killing tourists, Christians, and Egyptian officials a potential "refugee from political persecution".
Within a year he issued a Fatwa - not an abstract sermon - calling on his Mosque followers to: " Kill Jews wherever they are", "target American civilians here and abroad with death". His Mosque followers, vipers like he, killed Kahane, a Jewish activist and tried killing Jewish students on a bus in the Bronx. Then the WTC Attack.
The one he was nailed for was a Fatwa he gave to kill more Americans in NYC, after the FBI finally penetrated his Mosque. That was to kill 10s of thousands by blowing up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the GW Bridge, UN, and a large Federal office building. His followers were caught with the first batch of fertilizer explosive.
He was convicted of Seditious Conspiracy, not "consequences of making speeches". Direct orders to his followers here and in Egypt to kill.
Link:
http://www2.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002384----000-.html
After being in jail, Lynne Stewart and two other traitors were convicted after their ACLU lawyers failed to get them off as "dissident lawyers guilty only of overzealousness" for passing on a letter to Islamic Group in Egypt to "Kill the Jews wherever they congregate. Kill more tourists".
His terrorist Fatwas were NOT covered by the 1st Amendment, Eli Blake.
His orders to kill and his instructions to go after certain NYC targets and Jews, tourists and Christian Copts in Egypt NOT "protected free speech".
Now we have even tougher laws to protect us from traitors like Lynne Stewart and unlawful enemy combatants like Rahman. That you would characterize terror commands as "1st Amendment protected unless actual consequences ensue" at this stage in our struggle with the enemy astonishes me.
I live in Utah, and there is a local DJ (who isn't even LDS) that wants to get Sharpton fired for saying that Mormons don't believe in God.
I don't like Sharpton, and I am LDS, but I'd rather ignore the guy than give him the benefit of the publicity.
hmmmm i think lying on the public airwaves is the greater sin. no one knows if it is the truth or not.
this is probably second although character defamation of a personal kind may outrank.
actually it may be time that we visit this issue as a country and come to some sort of understanding on who gets to operate where.
and i agree with Bernard McGuirk...Sharpton is a horses ass and the last person on this good earth to draw a moral line.
Personally, I'm sick of hearing people say that since THEY didn't watch/listen to Imus that it's fine and they don't care he was fired. I watched the show and LOVED it, it was better than any PC think-you're-so-crazy-for-agreeing-with-the-majority crap like Jon Stewart. I think people are being ageist, racist, and sexist to just see a picture of Imus and think he's got to be boring.
The PUBLIC airwaves are PUBLIC, as in we all listen to them and in our society free speech applies there as well. No interest group has the right to get a show taken off the air because of one out of context statement. If you are offended in a free speech society, the old rule applies: change the channel.
Is Imus the same as Elvis calling the Asian restaurant? Did he call the Rutger's girls and tell them what he thought? Totally different situations.
Threats of a boycott should be ignored. Real boycotts, with actual effects, should be taken into account from a real business perspective(ie. not spineless PR perspective). Anybody can "threaten" a boycott. It's meaningless.
"I live in Utah, and there is a local DJ (who isn't even LDS) that wants to get Sharpton fired for saying that Mormons don't believe in God."
My first instinct was to ask how Sharpton could be fired when it didn't appear he had a job in the first place (I don't consider "activism" to be a legitimate job even if one does get paid for it, and I wonder how long has it been since the good Reverend actually graced the pulpit of his own church on a regular basis), but some quick Googling revealed that he does have a radio show. OK--fair enough.
So should Sharpton's comments cost him his job in the same way Imus' did? Or will that never happen, because (I'm guessing) there aren't enough Mormon advertisers on Sharpton's network to generate a sizable outcry?
And should someone be fired/not fired for such things on the basis of "sizable outcry" alone, or because it simply is/isn't the right thing to do?
(Yes, I'm full of questions today--or full of something... *grin*)
Why do some people get so worked up when people are fired for saying or doing things that are clearly racist, offensive to any decent person, and in bad taste? All I see here is accountability. There's no free speech threat here; the firings reflect basic standards of decency.
tom, people get worked up because "offensive to any decent person" is not a standard for accountability. Who is this "decent" person you are talking about?
Standards need to be applied before incidents happen, not retroactively because an offended group complains.
if you haven't seen it yet, here's a great video of DL Hughley saying what he thought of the Rutgers women(about exactly the same as what Imus said).
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tIqD1GCvedw
So many issues to deal with..this is the one show that could clear my mind and make me laugh.. Thanks for taking that away from me..
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