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A fair and balanced compendium of spontaneous exclamations and excited utterances, with 22 entries on the front page. And, now, Home of the YATSASS™ Reports Yet Another True Story About Stupid Studies: • Breathing Bus Exhaust is Stressful • Depressed People May Take Drugs To Feel Better • Smart healthy people choose foods more wisely than stupid drunks • Stressed Out Moms Think Their Babies Are Annoying • People Are Groggy When They Wake Up • Airport Screeners Probably Can't Stop Spread of SARS & Flu • Study on Studies Yields Disappointment! • Lengthy Study with No Findings! A perfect YATSASS! • Making Fun Of Fat Kids Depresses Them • Drinking Highly Sugared Beverages Can Make You Fat! • Americans Prefer Safe & Effective Drugs to Unproven and Dangerous Ones • Study Shows Poor & Homeless Drink More Malt Liquor • Study on People in Studies Yields Predictable Answers, But Also Raises New Questions • Women Don't Like Getting Up to Feed the Newborn While Their Husbands Sleep Like Babies • Sperm Levels Drop With Frequent Ejaculation • People Who Don't Screw Around Get Less Clap • Swimming Can Cause Fluid Build-Up in Lungs • People Who Eat A Proper Diet are Healthier and Thinner • People who don't wet their pants feel better than people who do • Maybe Left Handed Winter Babies have More Brain Cancer, Maybe Not... • People who had nose jobs and people who didn't both like the same kind of noses • People pass more gas when they are active • Kids who spend too much time reading will get headaches • People who get drunk think others are more attractive than they do when they're sober In the old days, My thoughts were more coherent, and I could string together whole sequences of actual paragraphs! Those essays can be found here for those so interested.
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Saturday, November 04, 2006 Posted 12:40 PM
  Radio Talk Host Fired After Comments It's tough to come down on the right side of this one. A local radio talk show host has been fired after he made a controversial comment about one of the candidates for governor. NewsCenter 5's Steve Lacy reported that talk host John DePetro was fired Friday morning after he made comments about Green-Rainbow candidate Grace Ross, referring to her weight and sexuality while criticizing her involvement in a candidates' debate Wednesday night. Certainly DePetro's comments were improper and offensive. But, was terminating a provocative talk show host for being provocative the proper thing? I don't listen to Howie Carr. I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh. I like my discourse and debate to have a bit more substance than ad hominem attack. Their ratings suffer by the loss of at least one listener. I never heard John DePetro. Based on what I've read in the past couple of days, I guess I'm the better off for it. It doesn't sound like his form of forum is mine. That's OK. As the old saw goes, as long as there's a dial on my radio, I'm OK. DePetro called Grace Ross a fat lesbian. Interestingly, I had to find that out by reading a newspaper account; television and radio news only referred to his language as inappropriate. I figured Omigawd, he called her a dyke. I mean that's pretty offensive. Now we're talking vulgar A radio station may well have a flat rule against vulgarity and epithets. You could even have a code... like maybe the Hays Code? Sure, that was good for movies... But, Ross is fat. Not chubby, not mildly obese. If you asked 10 kindergarten kids on the street to describe Grace Ross, ten kids would say "She's fat." Ross is a lesbian. It says so on her website. If you asked 10 kindergarten kids on the street, "What is a lesbian?, you'd get arrested, but I digress. Neither description is relevant to whether or not Grace Ross would be a good governor of Massachusetts. There is no doubt a portion of the community who, without regard to her ideas on policy, would refuse to vote for her because she is gay. To the extent that DePetro informed his listenership, I guess he served them. Big, fat... is part of the wonderful American lexicon. Anyone other than Borat knows that in order to be a big, fat... one needs neither height nor girth. One needs only enmity. So, DePetro conveyed, with somewhat less than poet laureate style, that he dislikes Grace Ross. So, I'm kind of on the fence with fat. Yeah, it's offensive, inappropriate, irrelevant, puerile... Change the effin' channel! So, we come down to Lesbian. Once again, offensive, inappropriate, irrelevant, puerile. But with a little more edge. Whereas you can call me big, fat, and bald, you can't call me Lesbian, Jew, Black, Mexican. Physical attributes are OK, but ethnic and racial descriptions are off limits. Why? Although some big and/or fat, and/or bald people will tell you they have been discriminated against, we have yet to include those classes as constitutionally protected. Fat, bald or big does not inspire institutional hatred. Somewhat different with the other groups. So, must we stop anyone from saying the words? How would I like to referred to as a big, fat Jew? Nope, wouldn't like it. But, go ahead and call me that if that is your way. I know you better now. I'd much rather hear you say it than have you say it with me unaware. Anyone who heard DePetro, if they were not otherwise aware, now knows that he has hostility towards lesbians. It validated the feelings of a portion of his listenership, and offended the sensibilities of many others. For those people who's interests are more concerned with qualifications and ideas and less concerned with personal fitness and preferences, DePetro was revealed as a bigot and any of his other statements were, therefore, devalued. This incident was not DePetro's first brush with station management over his articulation of his bigoted beliefs. In July, DePetro called Massachusetts Turnpike Authority Chairman Matt Amorello a fag, which, as you may know, is a crude term for homosexual, which Amorello is not. DePetro said he meant fag in the "sissy boy way," not the "gay way." DePetro's highbrow style went over the heads of the brass at WRKO; he was suspended for 2 days following that incident, which brings us to this. Once a man came across a snake lying in the woods, impaled by a stick. The snake begged the man to help him. The man took pity, picked it up, brought the snake home, attended to its wounds and fed and cared for it. One day when the snake was healthy, the man picked up the snake and brought it back to the woods and released it. The snake turned and bit the man on the hand. As the man lay on the ground dying, he asked the snake why, after all the kindness he had shown to him, did the snake bite him. The animal replied, "Get off it! You knew I was a snake." WRKO knew who John DePetro was. If they didn't fire him in July, why fire him now? Or, why didn't they fire him in July. Or, why fire him? Or, as listeners, why not just prudently avoid him once you know what he is? If that happened, ratings would fall even lower than 10th out of 30, and station management would have fired him for the good old fashioned All American reason: economic, instead of the big fat sissy boy reason they came up with. © 2002-2008 Rob Falk, All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Denied. Your mileage won't vary; it will be less. | Subscribe to Rants!
  
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