For non-UK readers (pretty much all of you, come to think of it), this won't mean much - the equivalent of this good news in the US would have been when Rush Limbaugh was sacked from ESPN.
The BBC has dramatically taken Robert Kilroy-Silk's daytime TV show off air while it investigates his anti-Arab diatribe in a Sunday newspaper column.
The Sunday Express has reacted furiously, accusing the BBC of "gagging free speech" and demanding the presenter be reinstated immediately, insisting there was nothing racist in Kilroy-Silk's column.
Source: Guardian
The column itself made a spine chilling read. Kilroy-Silk has written columns for the Express demonising asylum seekers as parasites who come to Britain to leech off the welfare state, trumpeted the Iraq war from the word go and is resolutely against any kind of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Unfortunately the column isn't online, but the Independent quotes verbatim:
In his article, Kilroy-Silk began by expressing contempt at the anti-war campaigners of the Iraq war. He said: "What do [Arabs] think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders?
"That we admire them for the cold-blooded killings in Mombasa, Yemen and elsewhere? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors? I don't think the Arab states should start a debate about what is really loathsome."
He suggested that the destruction of the "despotic, barbarous and corrupt Arab states" and their replacement by democratic governments could be a "war aim".
He said: "After all, the Arab countries are not exactly shining examples of civilisation, are they? Few of them make much contribution to the welfare of the rest of the world.
"Indeed, apart from oil - which was discovered, is produced and is paid for by the West - what do they contribute?
"Can you think of anything? Anything really useful? Anything really valuable? Something we really need, could not do without?"
The West had been singled out, he said, despite providing Arabs with science, medicine and technology.
"They should go down on their knees and thank God for the munificence of the United States," he said.
Pretty gruesome, huh? The Express itself isn't much better as a paper, leaning centre-right at best. I've emailed them at least three times about similar columns Kilroy-Silk has written - this time I simply gave up. Thank Allah people are finally noticing this wingnut.