I noticed
this story on CNN yesterday:
PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- Two disc jockeys were fired after playing an audiotape of the beheading of American Nicholas Berg by militants in Iraq and cracking jokes about the grisly death.
Listeners called the radio station to complain after hearing Berg's screams followed by the DJs laughing and playing musical accompaniments.
The DJs, known as Marconi and Tiny, were fired Thursday from their morning show perch at Portland's KNRK-FM, which is owned by Pennsylvania-based Entercom Communications Corp. Station employees would not release the DJs' legal names.
The station's manager broadcast an apology, saying: "The actions of the KNRK news morning show were insensitive, inappropriate and repulsive. On behalf of Entercom Portland and KNRK, I apologize to our listeners."
My first thought on reading this was "what the hell is wrong with those guys?" I can't even imagine the utter lack of taste, not to mention lack of respect for human life, that would lead you to set to music the screams of a person being executed. And even if you didn't personally have a problem with this sort of thing, how could you not expect to get fired for doing it on the air?
But then I began thinking about how some of the more famous radio hosts are coming perilously close to this point. We have sickos like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage cracking jokes about the torture of Iraqi prisoners, and Jay Severin saying that we should kill American Muslims. These guys are all still on the air, and it doesn't look like they're going anywhere. Nobody on their side of the political spectrum seems to be very upset with them either.
Of course, there are a few relevant differences between the Oregon DJ's, and Limbaugh/Savage/Severin/etc. First, despite the disgusting comments of the latter, they haven't quite sunk to using sound effects of torture as a joke. But no such sound effects exist right now. I wonder, if an audiotape were to be released of Iraqi torture victims, whether right-wing hosts would use it for humor purposes. Does anyone think that they would get fired for this, given what they're getting away with now?
Another difference is that these DJ's were apparently nobodies, at least compared to Limbaugh and Savage (though perhaps they were on the same level as Severin). You could argue that Limbaugh and Savage are protected because they have huge audiences and bring in the advertising dollars. But does anyone doubt that even the most popular hosts in the country would be fired without a second thought if they did what these DJ's did?
I think that the identity of the victims--Iraqis and Muslims on one hand, and a non-Muslim American on the other--makes all the difference in determining who gets fired immediately, and who remains untouched. This is just a hypothesis, and it can't be proven until some right-winger does a sound-effect gag or something similar making fun of an "unpopular" victim. (I don't think that they have sunk quite this low yet, although they've come close, and I could be proven wrong on this.) In any case, given the way the right-wingers are behaving these days, and the continuing flow of gruesome information from Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, it probably won't be long before this hypothesis is put to the test.