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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (5402)	2/27/2001 1:14:00 AM
From: Mr. Whist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

James: Here's the AM "hate radio" story that I was describing. Following story ran in one of our local papers a couple weeks ago. This Gach guy (who sounds a lot like Limbaugh, by the way), was taken off the air shortly after the "yellow monkey" remarks were made, although the radio station never would say why. (From Cincinnati Post newspaper, 2/15/01) From New York's Howard Stern all the way down to Cincinnati's Bill Cunningham, the most controversial and divisive topics have become daily fare for radio's army of talk show hosts. The quest to be provocative can be offensive to some: Monday night, a WLW radio host repeatedly used the phrase ''yellow monkeys'' during a tirade in which he brutally criticized the Japanese after a fishing boat was rammed and sunk by a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine. On Wednesday a federal judge criticized ''trash, profanity and filth'' on radio talk shows, specifically citing WLW's Cunningham as racially divisive. Lincoln Ware, program director of black-oriented WDBZ-AM, which has had its own controversial talk show host, defended radio talk shows as a way to get other points of view. ''Now we can actually hear how people feel and have always felt, but haven't had an outlet to express it,'' Ware said. ''White people are listening to us to find out what we're thinking, and some have guts enough to call. And blacks listen to WLW to find out what's happening in the white community.'' ''It's sort of like eavesdropping,'' Ware said. ''In some cases, it may change people's thought patterns.'' But, are talk show hosts really reflective of their community? Callers to The Post Wednesday complained that WLW-FM talk show host J.R. Gach repeatedly referred to the Japanese as ''yellow monkeys'' during a Monday night discussion of the collision between an American submarine and a Japanese trawler. ''It was pure hate,'' said Keith Koerner of Bellevue, Ky., who heard the show and called The Post to complain. ''He repeated the slurs throughout four hours. It was pretty disgusting.'' Koerner said he called WLW this week and received a call back from program director Darryl Parks apologizing for the broadcast. Parks had no comment for The Post about the Gach remarks. Sources at the station say Gach thought he was doing a tongue-in-cheek take on the issue, and that he didn't think he was using an ethnic slur that would offend listeners. Sources also say Gach was lectured about the term by management but was not disciplined or ordered to apologize. Incidents like this prompted U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Nathaniel Jones to remark during a panel discussion on racial justice that radio talk shows are driving whites and blacks in Cincinnati further apart. He especially criticized the ''trash, profanity and filth'' coming from the mouth of WLW talk host, Bill Cunningham. ''The health of this community is not helped by the constant attacks on black leadership and the remedies crafted to address longstanding problems,'' Jones said. Cunningham, though, insists ''I'm a uniter, not a divider'' as a talk show host. ''We are the marketplace of ideas,'' he said Wednesday. In response to Jones' criticism, Cunningham said, ''It's regrettable to have such an eminent person engaged in such hateful comments. He has a reputation as an ultra-liberal judge who frees criminals and finds things in the Constitution that are not there. Any disagreement with his political viewpoint constitutes hate speech.'' A local human relations group which has monitored radio hosts such as Cunningham said Wednesday it is continuing to study the impact of talk radio on prejudice and bigotry. The Greater Cincinnati office of the National Conference for Community & Justice has ''spent a good couple of years analyzing the medium of talk radio,'' executive director Robert ''Chip'' Harrod said Wednesday. ''We concur with Judge Jones that all mass media have the potential of improving or harming intergroup relations,'' Harrod said. ''In the absence of having interaction with people different from us, we rely on mass media for our opinions.'