How can you get yourself fired from your new radio station job in two weeks? Here’s a textbook example, in case you’re interested:
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.
There was, of course, the predictable and understandable political firestorm. And then things got even worse for Lenihan, who had been on the job for about two weeks. The AP reports:
Thursday didn’t get much better. He was awakened at 5:30 a.m. by shock jock Howard Stern, who informed him he was on the air.
Stern wanted Lenihan to discuss his firing Wednesday for using a racial epithet in describing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Lenihan had the morning show on St. Louis radio station KTRS.
“Howard Stern was most upset about it,” Lenihan said. “He told me to … sue these people. He said this is moronic.”
To top it off, Lenihan was suspended Thursday from his job at Logan College of Chiropractic, where he’s taught anatomy and neuroanatomy since September 2004.
Most of the day, Lenihan took calls from the media. A few white supremacists called him too.
Lenihan also got a call from associates of Larry Elder, a nationally syndicated, black conservative talk show host, who invited him for an interview.
Elder told The Associated Press that he suspects Lenihan morphed the words “coup” and “boon” to come up with “coon.” He said prominent blacks have made disparaging remarks about Rice and gotten away with it, and feels Lenihan’s firing was unfounded.
You can listen to the audio HERE and judge for yourself.
So it’s a slam/dunk case of bigotry, right?
That’s open to debate.
There was an infamous case a few years ago that raised a similar question. Some years ago Rep. Dick Armey called Rep. Barney Frank, who is gay, “Barney fag.” Armey insisted it was a mere slip of the tongue. Some believed him, others (let’s say “many”) did not. His case that it was strictly a mistake wasn’t helped by him having made jokes such as this:”Yes, I am Dick Armey. And if there is a ‘dick army,’ Barney Frank would want to join up.”
BUT the big difference here is: Army was clearly not a political friend of Frank’s. He clearly took some very pointed potshots at Frank. In this case, Lenihan was praising Rice when the no-no-word slipped out.
Does it strain credibility to think that he could have made a slip (even if some armchair psychiatrists will proclaim it Freudian)? Nope.
Yours truly had a situation in junior high school, although it was not catastrophic for my school career (my grades took care of that).
In the 8th grade my favorite Spanish teacher was telling the class about how he had gone to Europe and many other countries.
I wanted to ask him “Did you ever go to Spain?”
So I opened my mouth to ask him and it somehow came out: “Did you ever go to hell?”
There was an uneasy moment, but he let it (and me) pass. Many years later, when I had dinner with him and his wife (who was also a Spanish teacher of mine) at their house, we laughed about it. It was much funnier 20 years after the event than in the seconds that followed my comment.
So it can happen. And if it does, is it a Freudian slip? If so, does that automatically mean it should be a career (or in this case double career) hanging offense? Or have the penalties for political correctness become like the take-no-prisoners zero tolerance laws at some schools where a kid who brings an aspirin to school could be expelled?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.