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Fair Play For Jay Severin

May 4, 2009
By .
Politics & Current Events

Alone among the millions of websites that have addressed the topic of Boston talk radio host Jay Severin's suspension, for saying, among other things:

  • "So now, in addition to venereal disease and the other leading exports of Mexico – women with mustaches and VD – now we have swine flu."
  • Later, 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."
  • "Yeah, well, [emergency rooms have] become essentially condos for Mexicans."

I will suggest that Severin should not have been fired.  Not because I feel any sympathy for Severin, a professional bigot of the crassest sort.  Not because I have some misbegotten notion that the First Amendment protects creeps like Jay Severin from reaping the harvest of social and professional disgrace they sow when they spout these opinions.

Rather, it's because his employer, Boston talk radio station WTKK and its parent Greater Media, Inc., profited from Severin's work and encouraged him to say this sort of thing, at least until the kitchen got too hot.  And a hot kitchen it must have been indeed, considering that years ago, discussing Muslims in America and their deadly fifth column threat, Severin said:

"You think we should befriend them; I think we should kill them."

No, I blame Severin for what he said no more than I would blame a vicious attack dog for ripping the scalp off of the neighbor's kid.  Severin, like the dog, was just doing what he was rewarded for doing.  Severin, like the dog, should simply be put down, painlessly, because he's a mere brute who was trained to behave this way.  Just as the law holds the owner of a vicious beast responsible for its actions, we should hold Severin's owners responsible, rather than the dumb animal.

The Federal Communications Commission should strip Greater Media, Inc. of all its broadcast licenses.  While I'm, in principle, a free speech absolutist and disagree with any governmental penalty for speech, I bow to the superior judgment of the Supreme Court.  If the First Amendment allows FCC to impose financial penalties on those who merely broadcast Carlin words, it surely allows penalties for those who would broadcast, and profit from, years of tirades from a dumb beast like Jay Severin.

Last 5 posts by Patrick

5 Comments
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5 Comments

  1. Ken  •  May 4, 2009 @3:15 pm

    I know you're being facetious. But as a breach of contract/breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing argument, it's not bad. It would be interesting to know whether Severin's contract makes him a for-cause employee.

    (I was shocked to learn that the People's Republic of Massachusetts is an at-will state.)

  2. Chris Berez  •  May 4, 2009 @4:51 pm

    Oh man, I was wracking my brain trying to figure out why this guys name was familiar. He used to have a show in D.C. on WJFK. He was one of the most pompous douchebags I've ever heard. He used to spend a great deal of every show bragging about how many women he'd slept with.

    I didn't listen to him regularly. But JFK was my station, and if I was out and about after 7, I'd listen because it was the only thing on. I remember him saying some things that really pissed me off during the invasion of Iraq, but for the most part I didn't listen that often so who knows what I missed.

    His show was an even more massive failure in the ratings in D.C. than Bill O'Reily's show. And trust me, that's quite the feat.

    It's been years since his show was canceled on JFK. I'd completely forgotten about him until I saw that name and was driving myself nuts trying to figure out why it looked so damned familiar.

    The guy was an insufferable prick and this doesn't surprise me at all.

  3. Patrick  •  May 4, 2009 @4:57 pm

    What's worse Chris, than any of Severin's outrages in either city, is that I forgot to use "Banned in Boston" in the caption.

    To my knowledge no one else used it either, so I'm claiming it.

  4. TJIC  •  May 4, 2009 @6:16 pm

    Alone among the millions of websites that have addressed the topic of Boston talk radio host Jay Severin’s suspension…I will suggest that Severin should not have been fired.

    Not only are you not actually alone; I beat you to it by several days.

  5. HelenBreen  •  May 10, 2009 @9:11 am

    I am a middle-of-the-roader who enjoys talk radio which I find entertaining. Like others on this board, I am familiar with irrepressible El Rushbo, sanctimonious Hannity, bully boy O”Reilley, Bad Boy Howie Carr and others. But NO ONE of them has the venomous voice of Jay Severin. I refer not only to his latest rants against Mexicans, but to fanatical hatred of Obama, his misogynous diatribes on the rear end of Hillary, now on the shape of Michelle. What never ceases to amaze me is that most of his callers seem so sane! As a woman (of a certain age) his reference to “stimulating my package” in the economy debate was sickening and caused me (and others, I am sure) to flip the dial back to Howie Carr. Take a good look in the mirror, Jay, and drop the Lothario shtick!

    The man is demented. His fawning over his audience becomes a bit much. He is soooo glad to be in Boston when it is obvious that he wants to have made it big in New York! In my view Jay (very bright!) is dissatisfied with his career because he never made the big league in media, a fact that rankles him when he sees lesser lights (maybe Mathews or Scarborough) who have national shows. In a word, he is vain and bitter – and it shows. Like the Emily Rooney debacle! Not to forget his ill-starred “appearance” on Kiss Me, I’m Imus show last March.

    And let's not forget his constant reference to himself as a patriot – the last refuge of scoundrels!
    Adios, amigo!