This really needs to be heard to be believed. Boston-area radio talk show host Jay Severin was suspended this week for making highly inflammatory and racist remarks on his talk show about Mexicans. TYT's Cenk Uygur thinks the station didn't go far enough and Severin should lose his job:
As you heard in the video above, Severin has been suspended by WTKK-FM in Boston. But that is not nearly enough. If you don't get fired for this, what do you get fired for?
Here are just some of his prize quotes from the show:
"So now, in addition to venereal disease and the other leading exports of Mexico - women with mustaches and VD - now we have swine flu."
He described Mexicans as "the world's lowest of primitives."
"When we are the magnet for primitives around the world - and it's not the primitives' fault by the way, I'm not blaming them for being primitives - I'm merely observing they're primitive."
"It's millions of leeches from a primitive country come here to leech off you and, with it, they are ruining the schools, the hospitals, and a lot of life in America."
"We should be, if anything, surprised that Mexico has not visited upon us poxes of more various and serious types already, considering the number of criminaliens already here."
He also said that emergency rooms had "become essentially condos for Mexicans."
And on a 2004 broadcast, he compared Muslims to a fifth column in this country and said in response to a caller who thought people should reach out to Muslims: "You think we should befriend them; I think we should kill them."
But unfortunately calling for the murder of Muslim-Americans has become so commonplace and acceptable these days that he didn't even come close to getting fired for those comments. So, I guess he figured he had free reign to attack the other half of M&Ms.
Now before some of you start making a "Free Speech" martyr of Severin, be clear what free speech means. It does NOT mean that you have the right to spew any kind of ugly thought you have on public airwaves. It means that the government cannot curtail your right to speak your mind. It doesn't mean that you do not have to deal with the repercussions of what you say. In this case, Severin's boss is not the government and they must assume the responsibility for allowing such unmitigated hate on the air. Avoiding Godwin references, how similar was Severin's rant to Radio Rwanda? Is that the kind of allusions with which WTKK wants to be associated?
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