Shock Jocks And Politics

"Opie & Anthony" host Anthony Cumia fired over racially-charged tweets
By KEN LOMBARDI CBS NEWS July 4, 2014


Sirius XM has fired "Opie and Anthony" host Anthony Cumia after he went on a Twitter tirade against the black community earlier in the week.

"The decision was made, and Cumia informed, late Thursday, July 3 after careful consideration of his racially-charged and hate-filled remarks on social media," Patrick Reilly, senior vice president, Communications, SiriusXM said in a statement to TheWrap.

"Those remarks and postings are abhorrent to SiriusXM, and his behavior is wholly inconsistent with what SiriusXM represents," said Reilly.

On Wednesday, Cumia wrote roughly a dozen posts on his personal Twitter account, vividly describing an altercation he claims to have had with a black woman in New York's Times Square. Cumia alleged that the woman physically and verbally attacked him while he was taking pictures of the sidewalk, as she was upset over being in some of his shots.

Cumia further claimed that several black men came to her defense and also assaulted him during the incident.

During his profanity-laced description of the events, Cumia referred to the unidentified woman as a "c---" and wrote, "I hope she gets shot."

Among his comments that have been criticized by many as racist, Cumia wrote, "There's a deep seeded problem with violence in the black community" and "It's really open season on white people in this day and age. No recourse. Fight back and you're a racist. The predators know this. Good luck."

It's really open season on white people in this day and age. No recourse. Fight back and you're a racist. The predators know this. Good luck
— Anthony Cumia (@AnthonyCumia) July 2, 2014

There's a deep seeded problem with violence in the black community. Try to address it and you'll be exiled to racistville. But it's real.
— Anthony Cumia (@AnthonyCumia) July 2, 2014

My posts on twitter after I was assaulted were profanity laced indeed but racist? Nope. Why should I afford my attacker any courtesy? Insane
— Anthony Cumia (@AnthonyCumia) July 3, 2014

Following his termination, Cumia took to his Twitter page again to write, "Sirius decided to cave and fire me. Welcome to bizarro world. Fired for s--- that wasn't even on the air & wasn't illegal. So, who's next?"

This isn't the first time the shock-jock has faced controversy. In 1998, Opie and Anthony were fired from a Boston radio station after reporting that then-mayor Thomas Menino had died, causing a near-panic throughout the city.

In 2002, the duo was fired again, this time by New York station WWFS (then known as WNEW) after they encouraged a couple to have sex in Manhattan's St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Sirius XM has yet to comment on what type of future Cumia's partner Opie Hughes will have at the satellite radio station.


Shock jock
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A shock jock is a type of radio broadcaster or disc jockey who entertains listeners or attracts attention using humor and/or melodramatic exaggeration that a notable portion of the listening audience may find offensive. The term is usually used pejoratively to describe provocative or irreverent broadcasters whose mannerisms, statements and actions are typically offensive to many members of the community. It is a popular term, generally not used within the radio industry. A shock jock is considered to be the radio equivalent of the tabloid newspaper, for which entertaining readers is as important as, or more important than, providing factual information. Within the radio industry, a radio station that relies primarily on shock jocks for its programming is said to have a hot talk format.

Confusingly, the term has been used in two broad (but sometimes overlapping) contexts:

1. The radio announcer who deliberately does something outrageous and shocking (e.g., to improve ratings).
2.
2. The political radio announcer who has an emotional outburst in response to a controversial government policy decision.

The idea of an entertainer who breaks taboos or adopts a career role in the realm of the frequently offensive is not a new one. Despite the claims of decency activists, there are few eras of history in which there have not existed blue comedians; notoriously offensive performers (Petronius, Benny Bell, Le Pétomane, Redd Foxx and Lenny Bruce for example). African-American Ralph Waldo Petey Greene (1931–1984), who started broadcasting in 1966, is considered to be the original radio shock jock in the modern era.[1] Petey gave a start to, and influenced, the alleged king of shock jocks such as Howard Stern.

Shock jocks also tend to push the envelope of decency in their market, and may appear to show a lack of regard for communications regulations (e.g., FCC rules in the U.S.) regarding content. But nearly all American broadcasters have strict policies against content that is likely to draw indecency forfeitures, and air personalities are often contractually obligated to avoid broadcasting such content. Indecency fines are, in fact, rarely issued by U.S. regulators—no broadcaster has been issued a forfeiture for indecent content since 2003, although several earlier cases are in appeals court.

Popular envelope-pushing areas for shock jocks include sexual (especially kinky) and/or scatological (toilet humour) topics, or just unabashed innuendo.

Many shock jocks have been fired as a result of such punishments as regulatory fines, loss of advertisers, or simply social and political outrage. On the other hand, it is also not uncommon for such broadcasters to be quickly rehired by another station or network.

Shock jocks in the United States have been censored under additional pressure from the United States government since the introduction of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005, which increased the fines on radio stations for violating decency guidelines by nearly 20 times.[2]

Rush Limbaugh is listed as being a “shock jock,” as well. Wikipedia says the following about him:

Rush Hudson Limbaugh III (/ˈlɪmbɔː/, lim-baw; born January 12, 1951) is a conservative American radio talk show host and political commentator. Since he was 16, Limbaugh has worked a series of disc jockey jobs. His talk show began in 1984 at Sacramento radio station KFBK, featuring his ongoing format of political commentary and listener calls. In 1988, Limbaugh began broadcasting his show nationally from radio station WABC in New York City. He currently lives in Palm Beach, Florida, where he broadcasts The Rush Limbaugh Show, the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United States.[1][2]Talkers Magazine in 2012 lists Limbaugh as the most-listened-to talk show host with a weekly audience of 15 million.[3]

In the 1990s, Limbaugh's books The Way Things Ought to Be (1992) and See, I Told You So (1993) made The New York Times Best Seller list. Limbaugh frequently criticizes, in his books and on his show, what he regards as liberalpolicies and politicians, as well as what he perceives as a pervasive liberal biasin major U.S. media. Limbaugh is among the highest paid people in U.S. media, signing a contract in 2008 for $400 million through 2016.[4]

Limbaugh has German ancestry.[6] His family has many lawyers, including his grandfather, father and brother David. His uncle, Stephen N. Limbaugh, Sr. is a federal judge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. His cousin, Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr., is currently a judge in the same court, appointed by George W. Bush. Rush Limbaugh, Sr., Limbaugh's grandfather was a Missouri prosecutor, judge, special commissioner, member of the Missouri House of Representatives from 1930 until 1932, and longtime president of the Missouri Historical Society.[7] The Federal Courthouse in Cape Girardeau is named for Limbaugh's grandfather, Rush Limbaugh, Sr.

Views

In his first New York Times best seller, Limbaugh describes himself as conservative, and is critical of broadcasters in many media outlets for claiming to be objective. He has criticized political centrists, independents, and moderate conservatives, claiming they are responsible for Democrat Barack Obama's victory over Republican John McCain in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election and inviting them to leave the Republican party. He calls for the adoption of core conservative philosophies in order to ensure the survival of the Republican party.[60][61][62]

James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times quoted Limbaugh as saying after the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States that the Democrats will "take your 401(k), put it in the Social Security Trust Fund."[63]

African-Americans

Limbaugh has been noted for making controversial race-related statements with regard to African-Americans. He once opined that all newspaper composite pictures of wanted criminals resembled Jesse Jackson, and another time that "the NFLall too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons."[64][65] While employed as what he describes as an "insult-radio" DJ, he used a derogatory racial stereotype to characterize a black caller he could not understand, telling the caller to "take that bone out of your nose and call me back."[65] In March 2010, Limbaugh used the similarity of recently resigned Rep. Eric Massa's surname to the slavery-era African-American pronunciation of "master" to make a pun on the possibility that Gov. David Paterson, New York's first African-American governor, would pick Massa's replacement: "Let's assume you're right [caller]. So, David Paterson will become the massa who gets to appoint whoever gets to take Massa's place. So, for the first time in his life, Paterson's gonna be a massa. Interesting, interesting."[66]

Limbaugh has asserted that African-Americans, in contrast with other minority groups, are "left behind" socially because they have been systematically trained from a young age to hate America because of the welfare state.[67]

Capital punishment

Limbaugh supports capital punishment, saying "the only thing cruel about the death penalty is last-minute stays."[68]

Drug abuse

Limbaugh has been an outspoken critic of what he sees as leniency towards criminal drug use in America. On his television show in October 5, 1995, Limbaugh stated, "too many whites are getting away with drug use" and illegal drug trafficking. Limbaugh proposed that the racial disparity in drug enforcement could be fixed if authorities increased detection efforts, conviction rates, and jail time for whites involved in illegal drugs.[69]

Environmental issues

Limbaugh is critical of environmentalism and climate science.[70] He has disputed claims of anthropogenic global warming, and the relationship between CFCs and depletion of the ozone layer, saying the scientific evidence does not support them.[68] Limbaugh has argued against the scientific consensus on climate change saying it is "just a bunch of scientists organized around a political proposition."[71] Limbaugh has used the term "environmentalist wacko" when referring to left-leaning environmental advocates.[72] As a rhetorical device, he has also used the term to refer to more mainstream climate scientists and other environmental scientists and advocates with whom he disagrees.[73]

Limbaugh has written that "there are more acres of forestland in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492," a claim that is disputed by the United States Forest Service and the American Forestry Association, which state that the precolonial forests have been reduced by about 24 percent or nearly 300 million acres.[74][75]

Feminism

Limbaugh is critical of feminism, saying that "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."[76] He also popularized the term "feminazi", referring to about two dozen feminists "to whom the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur."[77] He credited his friend Tom Hazlett, a professor of law and economics at George Mason University, with coining the term.[78]

Iraq prisoner abuse

On the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal, Limbaugh said, "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation ... And we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time."[79][80]

Obama's policies

On January 16, 2009, Limbaugh commented on the (then-upcoming) Obama presidency, "I hope he fails."[81] Limbaugh later said that he wants to see Obama's policies fail, not the man himself.[82] Speaking of Obama, Limbaugh said, "He's my president, he's a human being, and his ideas and policies are what count for me."[81]

Claims of inaccuracy

Some groups and individuals have criticized Limbaugh's accuracy. The July–August 1994 issue of Extra!, a publication of the progressive group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), alleges 50 different inaccuracies and distortions in Limbaugh's commentary.[92][93] Others have since joined FAIR in questioning Limbaugh's facts. Comedian Al Franken, who later became a Senator, wrote a satirical book (Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations) in which he accused Limbaugh of distorting facts to serve his own political biases.[94]

Professor Ray Perkins has written a book titled Logic and Mr. Limbaugh: A Dittohead's Guide To Fallacious Reading, which takes "50 examples of logical reasoning from Rush's statements, identifies the logical arguments, and points out fallacies."[95]

Limbaugh has been criticized for inaccuracies by the Environmental Defense Fund. A defense fund report authored byPrinceton University endowed geoscience professor Michael Oppenheimer and professor of biology David Wilcove lists 14 significant scientific facts that, the authors allege, Limbaugh misrepresented in his book The Way Things Ought to Be.[96]The authors conclude that "Rush Limbaugh ... allows his political bias to distort the truth about a whole range of important scientific issues."

On October 14, 2011, Limbaugh questioned the U.S. military initiative against Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army(LRA), based on the assumption that they were Christians. "They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them." Upon learning about the accusations leveled against Kony, which included kidnapping whole schools of young children for use as child soldiers, Limbaugh stated that he would research the group.[97][98] The show's written transcript on his website was not changed.[98][99]




The appetite that exists in this country for “shocking” political, racial, religious or sexual bias statements is frightening to me. The fact that Limbaugh's show is “the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United States” is shameful. It shows the intellectual level and moral leanings of a goodly proportion of our citizens. No wonder so many of them are against Common Core being taught in the public schools. Students would be taught to learn a wide range of things so that they can read and think on their own, thus making them less subject to demagoguery and ultra-conservative economic views.

This quotation from the following article on party affiliation statistics is interesting. http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/23/a-closer-look-at-the-parties-in-2012/ “In more than 13,000 interviews conducted so far in 2012, 35% of registered voters identify with the Democratic Party, 28% with the Republican Party and 33% as independents. The share of Democrats has fallen three points since 2008, while the proportion of Republicans has remained steady. Currently, independents lean slightly more toward the Republican Party than the Democratic Party (15% vs. 13%). Four years ago, the reverse was true (13% leaned Democratic, 11% Republican).
Overall, the Democrats now have a five-point lead in party affiliation among registered voters when independents who lean to either party are included (48% to 43%). That is down from a 12-point advantage in 2008 (51% to 39%).” 

Liberals are with the Democratic party, but some who had been middle of the road Democrats are moving toward the right. I blame deep-seated societal racism, increasing poverty among whites and therefore increased fear, the low number of college graduates among the whole population especially in the South, the rise to political power of Evangelical Protestant religion, the drumbeat of uber-patriotism, the genuinely frightening rise in illegal immigration into Texas, embarrassing international events, and the constant onslaught on the public mind by the far right. We are capable of becoming the next Nazi nation if we aren't careful. I pray that doesn't happen. How could we forget the Holocaust? Some people are even denying that it even existed.