Boston Globe reported.
Radio talk show host John DePetro was pulled from the air after he made a derogatory remark yesterday about the sexuality and the weight of Green-Rainbow party gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross.
“This corporation has zero tolerance for this type of nonsense,” George Regan, spokesman for the station, said last night. “It will not be tolerated. We are now in the process of an investigation. Mr. DePetro will not be heard on the airwaves of WRKO-AM tomorrow morning.”
What do you think the punishment will be, a slap on the wrist? DePetro is just a hack, the environment that WRKO creates is the problem.
Please share widely!
There are two dozen bloggers on BMG, including some of our other-wing contributors, who would be much more entertaining and informed than this jerk.
Peter Porcupine and Goldstein would be fun to listen to, though I would probably want to throw a shoe at the radio at times. Lynne from Lowell, MetroWest, Lightiris, there are a bunch of fun people on this list who could liven the airwaves. Snarkiness sounds good on the radio, too.
Snarky?? Perish the thought!
NOT Snarky? How dare you? ;>)
I could talk about my work for Mark Warner. I’m having trouble picking winners. Need to stay away from the racetrack.
Snark in a blog is like icing on a cupcake. Okay, it’s not essential, but it sure is a selling point.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never been anything but sweetness and light, with nary a sarcastic or snarky bone in my body. I wouldn’t know a cutting remark if it slashed at my ankles, and I certainly would never indulge in the gratuitous mocking of those I find doltish, lazy, or simply wrongheaded.
He gets the boot…He epitomizes ignorance. I say it’s about time, John has been bordering in racism as well. Just last week he made a comment about David Dinkins letting the Blacks beat the Jews and not doing anything. He used that as a point of reference with regards to Deval and Laguer. I can’t stand him!
http://www.bluemassg…
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boring boring boring as well as offensive and one dimensional to have Scott-Allen Miller and then DePetro on all morning.
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WRKO has had good people in the past. I wrote them an email this morning.
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He has to feel like he’s been screwed. There’s no way he’s more offensive than Howie.
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Dennis and Callahan’s METCO/Gorilla comments were much worse and they only got two weeks off. They were worse because they weren’t true. Worse because they made it seem ok to further a negative stereotype. Worse because it went after a very devisive issue, the scars of which still remain.
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Look at this as an opportunity if you’d like. Howie will go further than this and someone will be able to call ‘RKO on it.
he is their cash – cow. His audience would go mental.
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DePetro is expendible.
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David –I only heard you once on Santos. Have you been on other shows?
They’re just as ignorant and they reach a wider audience. I’m a sports fan, and I can’t bear to listen to them.
What else can the right wing media talk about? Healey? Bush? Romney? Cheney? Rumsfeld?
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I hope in some small way, Deval Patrick as governor can allow for a change of tone in this state on talk radio. I’m not betting on it, however. But it’s about time people voted with their dialing fingers and changed the station. I’ve never listened to this guy, and I doubt much will happen to him. Doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world to say (I’m guessing here he said dyke).
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I’m not saying the PC police should be alerted, but really, folks, can we get back to some basic civil decency? His apparently unrelenting verbal assaults could very well lead some moron to take it to the next level.
Oh, I stand corrected. The Herald reports (in their headline) that he called her a “fat lesbian.” Perhaps impolite, but certainly not a lie. But still…
I hear you on the fact that our citizens are becoming more and more jaded each year. There was a time when people prided themselves on their honor, which was a combination of their word, their reputation, and their manners. We can cry about this change and shake our fists at our neighbors, but when are we going to do something about it? This is why a leadership change is so important to me. Mitt Romney is going around bad mouthing us in other states, and Healey is sitting back silent on the issue. Deval Patrick seems to have the ability to show both patience and compassion, two qualities that are very important in a wholesome character. We need to “be the change we wish to see in the world”. ~Mahatma Gandhi
Two strikes and you’re out.
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Memo to WRKO: I’m available! đŸ˜‰
Boston.com is reporting that John DePetro got the axe.
Bye Bye Johnny
If WRKO doesn’t fire them, so much for their “zero tolerance” policy. He already had his one strike in the summer, calling Amorello a “fag” – but not in the gay way! LOL. What a jerk. He doesn’t belong on the radio.
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There are hundreds of people better equipped to do it, regardless of their political stance on the issues. Let’s hope they don’t hire someone as equally devisive, as equally hateful and blatantly assholish. Let’s hope they don’t hire someone willing to deceive his entire audience by reporting innuendo, not fact, and by resisting any legitimate facts.
ISN’T Grace Ross a Lesbian?
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YOU judge if she’s fat, you’ve seen her (I’d put her mid-range, myself).
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Like I said on another thread, I don’t listen to DePetro like I do Howie (I won a door prize at his book signing, and now have tee-shirts, magnets and Mannheim Steamroller CD’s!) – but isn’t truth a defense against slander?
But saying those things in the context of a gubernatorial election can’t be explained away as mere observation of fact; it necessarily constitutes a claim that those characteristics have some relevance to her fitness to serve as Governor.
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And though I haven’t heard the audio, I would bet that by his tone in referring to Ross as a fat lesbian, DePetro was also making the implicit claim (or assumption) that those are also negative qualities, that irrespective of the question of ability to govern they indicate that she is less good, or simply less, of a person.
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That’s what this is about.
First off, yes, Grace Ross is very clear that she’s a lesbian. From what I’ve read, though, there’s no transcript available of what DePetro actually said. Slurs are not slander, but neither are they acceptable.
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Secondly, if we were to speculate on what he said and give him the benefit fo the doubt that he didn’t use a term like “dyke,” I’d point out that there are different ways to point out a truth about someone’s identity. Thinking of an example that could apply to myself, it would be one thing if someone said, “Fieldscornerguy is a Jew, and he mentioned his plans for Rosh Hashanah,” and an altogether diffent thing to say, “Fieldscornerguy? I’d never vote for that big-nosed Jew!” The latter may well be a true description of me, but it’s still an attack. And I have to guess that DePetro’s comments took a similar tone.
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Isn’t relevance a defense against juvenalia?
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If Grace Ross were running for the office of Governor of the state of straight’n skinny then by all means, have at ‘er… But she ain’t so you can’t…
Frankly this is tame compared to some of the other crap I’ve heard on the radio.
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My guess is that WRKO was looking to can his ass anyway and this gave them an excuse to do it.
Seriously, someone like Randi Rhodes could blow away the competition around here. She’s factual and takes no crap.
So much of their daytime programming isn’t even affiliated with Air America, and that’s the only time you can actually get their signal around here.
The station’s come a long way (and not a GOOD way) since the days of Jerry Williams and Gene Burns. I often disagreed with both of them, but I always found them stimulating and intelligent.
DePietro got fired because he was stupid. He didn’t parse his words like Dennis and Callahan do. I heard them making fun of her the same way, but they were much more vague, but no less mean-spirited.
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They probably wanted to get rid of him anyway and they found a convenient excuse to do it.
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When D and C got caught in their METCO flap, they suspended them and probably told them to lie low. They make too much money for the company to get fired.
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I like sports, but the morning show and the afternoon can get rough if you don’t fit their demographic.
” I wish someone would tell that fat lesbian to shut up”
[http://www.boston.co…] I was actually listening when he said it and was rather harsh in the context in which it was presented. The crazy part is that Grace Ross didn’t appear to be offended or she’s just saying that. I’m glad to see him go!
Candidate Reactions:
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“I believe it was an offensive comment and a lot of people have been offended by it,” Ross said in an interview with the Globe after a debate this morning in Dartmouth. “I don’t personally feel that offended by it. I’m running for governor, and you have to have a somewhat thicker skin than that.”
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“I’m proud of the fact that I’ve spent a lot of time on the right-wing talk show host circuit, and I have had great conversations that have been incrediblyrespectful about real genuine issues and differences,” she added. “But this was not respectful, and that’s not the way you have a dialogue.”
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“That was just a crass remark,” said Christy Mihos. “I heard it on the air yesterday and I just turned it off and said, ‘Who needs this stuff?’ Politics should be better than that. It doesn’t have to get this way. But this negative stuff, thankfully the people of the Commonwealth only have what, three or four more days to go.” (Crass? From CHRISTY???)
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Kerry Healey said, “I thought that what he said was inappropriate, and I’m very sorry that he said it.”
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Deval Patrick declined to comment when reporters asked about it.
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So what’s the deal – is Deval still worried about shoring up that anti-fat lesbian vote?
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Can you STAND four years of this?
Why should Deval comment on this? I want a governor who will pay attention to critical issues, not some nut on talk radio.
Don’t we all do that on a daily basis? Just yesterday, someone sent me an e-mail which I considered oboxious and irrelevant, and I chose not to waste the time replying. Politicians obviously should be expected to answer more, and I find Deval’s silence odd, but to act like he’s somehow putting himself above others and not “deigning” to answer certain questions–don’t you think that’s a bit much, Peter? I mean, does this really merit use of the royal “we”?
She never answered the question directly. Does she not wish to rile the king?