You know,
I had a question like this on a test I gave to my media law students as Shaw under the context of Hate Speech. The situation involved Rush Limbaugh when he used the garden utensil pejorative about the woman at the center of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case. As the history from that scenario showed, the guy wasn't guilty of hate speech as he was engaging in his first amendment rights. On top of that, in both cases this one and Limbaugh, the speech is exceptionally mild when you compare them to their counterparts, i.e. Mike Savage who actually was yanked from MSNBC. As economic boycotts actually my do some damage, in my opinion, the removal of one knucklehead shock jock will only result in their replacement by a new jack@$$ talk emcee. From a media pov (and I would love to hear other opinions on this) I think our FCC should take a page out of the Canadian broadcast rule book. They are completely intolerant of broadcasts which derogate on the basis of race, gender, color, sexual orientation, physical mobility, even class status. Of course this would mean major shifts in programming on BET and other rump shaking channels. In my opinion (once again) I think then the terminology is stopped at the grassroots level as opposed to these acute brushfires of stupidity and brain [you fill in the blank].
Russell
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