Go Away. Please.WRKO, a Boston AM radio station, is giving a tryout to Imus co-host Bernard McGuirk.
McGuirk was hired, according to Imus, "to do nigger jokes". When I was a kid, I would have gotten the big bar of Palmolive in my mouth for saying that word. McGuirk, who has made his career doing racist and sexist jokes and still
thinks that's funny, is getting a job interview for his efforts. Personally, I'd rather see him eat the soap. The last thing Boston, a city where race relations are delicate to say the least, is a hard-core recist like Imus's buddy Bernie on the airwaves.
Derrick Z. Jackson has an
excellent column (excerpts, below) in today's Globe about the media's collective amnesia in the face of racism. He starts with Jerry Falwell's propping up of the South Africa regime in the 1980s and ends with Bernie getting a tryout in Boston.
Boston Globe: Boston station considers hiring former Imus sidekick
BOSTON --A Boston talk radio station plans to audition Don Imus' former producer to co-host former House Speaker Tom Finneran's morning talk show, which is suffering from sagging ratings.
Bernard McGuirk, who first called the Rutgers University women's basketball team "hard-core hos" in an exchange that led to public outcry and Imus' dismissal, will audition live on WRKO-AM next Wednesday through Friday.
In response to McGuirk, Imus called the women "nappy-headed hos." Imus and McGuirk, a 20-year producer and on-air jester for the "Imus in the Morning" program, were eventually fired.
"This is show business -- it's about personality and it's about entertainment and there's no question in my mind, Bernard has an incredible personality," Jason Wolfe, WRKO's vice president of AM programming and operations, said. "He's entertaining, very witty; that, in combination with the intelligence-slash-wit of Finneran, could be interesting."
Boston Herald: Imus sidekick draws fire: To be WRKO ‘guest’Boston Globe: DERRICK Z. JACKSON
Local and national media let racism slide[]
Talk-radio station WRKO-AM has invited Don Imus's racist sidekick Bernard McGuirk to be a co-host with former Massachusetts House speaker Tom Finneran on "Finneran's Forum."
McGuirk kicked off the banter about the Rutgers women's basketball team that got Imus kicked out of his nationally broadcast radio and television shows. Imus called the Rutgers black players "nappy-headed hos" after McGuirk called them "hard-core hos."
This was the final straw in a career of likening prominent African-Americans to the worst stereotypes of gorillas, cleaning ladies, and pimps.
It was summed up by the interview Mike Wallace did with Imus a decade ago. When Imus challenged Wallace to come up with an example of a racist incident by Imus, Wallace reminded him that he claimed in a car ride that "Bernard McGuirk is there to do nigger jokes." After at first denying using the n-word, Imus confessed that he did and he did not care what people thought about it.
What is Finneran trying to prove by having McGuirk on? To prove that his 2001 voter redistricting really was racist? Yesterday Finneran said on his show of McGuirk's comments, "That's history. That's in the rear view mirror. That's behind us."
If Finneran really believes that "hard-core hos," said just six weeks ago, is "history," then the next thing he and WRKO should see in the rear-view mirror are their advertisers waving goodbye.
In a couple cycles of commercials for "Finneran's Forum," prominent firms such as J.C. Penney, New York Life, Salem Five, Ira Toyota, Uniroyal Tires, and Venezia Restaurant had ads. Savings Bank Life Insurance of Massachusetts has an ad on the website for Finneran's show.
Do these advertisers want to be associated with a man who Imus did not deny was "there to do nigger jokes?" Stay tuned.
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