Les Jones

But why?
If I owned a media company, and one of my employees was saying ridiculously indefensible shit on my station, and him saying it was potentially going to cost me lots of money in lost revenue, he'd be really, really lucky if all I did was suspend him for 30 days.

But, I'm a mean old capitalist, not a free-speech commie liberal like you.

They said ridiculously indefensible shit every day. That's why XM hired them.

Maybe the XM people thought that this particular ridiculous shit was going to cost them more money than it would make them.

It's their company, and their money -- I'm failing to see what the outrage is.

Steve, it's a free country. So yeah, O&A are free to say offensive stuff, people are free to be offended, other people are free to change the channel, and XM is free to fire them. We're all free to do lots of things.

But it sounds to me like those guys are paid to say outrageous things, and that's what their audience wants. I seriously doubt that the people who are complaining about what was said were loyal listeners of the show.

I heard Mancow say some stuff that I found offensive a couple times and quit listening, and that show's on FM radio. Clearly, I'm not the audience for his schtick.

Where exactly does all this end? Tune in to the new, softer HBO to hear Tony Soprano say, "Fudge you!" "No, fudge you!" This silly tit-for-tat in getting radio jock's careers sidelined is silly.

Steve,
I too am a conservative.Who is to stop someone or some media company from firing Hannity or Rush, for something THEY find offensive?

I love O&A, but I love Rush and Sean too.The lines are being drawn, my friend. On top of it all this was on a PAY service with channel blocking capabilities.Humor and comedy are being silenced in this country,and pretty soon opinion,if it doesn't fall in line with the PC police.

What if Rush was suspended for one of his parody tunes, it would be no different.

It's just like anything else, if you don't like it,change the channel and don't listen.

Humor and comedy are being silenced in this country,and pretty soon opinion,if it doesn't fall in line with the PC police.

Right. It's a real slippery slope here. I sure can't see any line between political commentary, and "humor" that doesn't have even the slightest political content.

When they came for the people who think it's har-de funny to call black women with 4.0 averages at a good university skanky niggras, I remained silent. When they came for the people who laugh about how hee-larious it would be to watch Condi Rice be raped and murdered, I remained silent. But when they came for me, and my criticism of Democratic tax policies, there was no one left to speak out.

Oh, and

I too am a conservative.Who is to stop someone or some media company from firing Hannity or Rush, for something THEY find offensive?

The Goverment, of course.

Where exactly does all this end? Tune in to the new, softer HBO to hear Tony Soprano say, "Fudge you!" "No, fudge you!" This silly tit-for-tat in getting radio jock's careers sidelined is silly.

What if You Tube started producing their own videos, and one had a "comical" simulation of Condi Rice being raped and tortured to death? If there were howls of protest, would that lead to the inevitable emasculation of The Sopranos?

Only if enough people got upset and complained, I guess.

But, hey, lots of people are offended by something like "Brokeback Mountain." People got offended by
"Peyton Place" back in the day. People are always going to be offended by something.

So we cordon these things off. The Sopranos is on HBO. Opie and Anthony are on XM. "Brokeback Mountain" was rated R. None of those venues belong to the public. If you don't like it, don't watch it or listen to it. Part of our societal contract is to be tolerant of things that other people do and say that we don't like as long as we don't have to be exposed to it if we don't want.

"It's their company, and their money"

And that makes it right, we get it.

This isn't just about a couple of radio guys you don't like.

"Part of our societal contract is to be tolerant of things that other people do and say that we don't like as long as we don't have to be exposed to it if we don't want."

THANK YOU. See, this is why I should leave this stuff to the smart people.

What folks need to keep in mind is that this isn't simply a matter of what O&A/Imus/whomever has said that is so terribly offensive, it's that freedom of speech is being limited. People have the right to offend others. People who are offended have the right to not listen.

Commentors have made mention about if HBO were to decide to censor The Sopranos - this is an exact metaphor as to what XM is doing to O&A. It is also setting precident for those who want to limit the speech of liberal OR conserative talk show hosts because they are offended (personally, I find Rush Limbaugh offensive on many levels, therefore I don't listen to him). This is Big Brother coming.

Actually, considering that O&A is one of only two daily shows on Ch. 202, it's more like if HBO were taken off the air entirely.

I would ask everyone to please remember that this ultimately boils down to wallets, not rights.

If XM wanted to, they could leave O&A untouched and continue on their merry. It seems, however, that enough folks made a stink about these particular comments that XM thought it would be less damaging to the bottom line to suspend them for a while.

This was a private broadcast over privately-held equipment. The FCC had nothing positive or negative to say about it, because it was none of their business. Do some of you folks not understand that? This is not about O&A's right to free speech being infringed by the government, because the government wasn't involved!

For better or for worse, the FCC regulates "decency" on public airwaves. That's an entirely different argument from the one some of you are making, that somehow a private organization choosing to suspend hosts it feels will hurt business somehow is a fast slide down the slippery slope to a removal of O&A's right to free speech.

Are you telling me that if one of my employees says something offensive during the course of the broadcast *I* am hosting, I shouldn't be allowed to can him for the good of my livelihood?

"This was a private broadcast over privately-held equipment. The FCC had nothing positive or negative to say about it, because it was none of their business. Do some of you folks not understand that?"

What makes you think we don't? I don't remember bringing up the FCC.

"Are you telling me that if one of my employees says something offensive during the course of the broadcast *I* am hosting, I shouldn't be allowed to can him for the good of my livelihood?"

If you hired him to say offensive things, and he'd done so for almost 3 years, I'd wonder why you suddenly changed your mind. And for the last time, I'm not saying XM isn't ALLOWED to do whatever they want. I'm saying I don't think it's a good idea. I'm saying I want to listen to the kind of programming they've been advertising ever since they hired O&A.

So according to Les, Treacher, and the rest, XM shouldn't set and enforce standards on the shows they broadcast, particularly if something that they broadcast offends a lot of people.

How exactly is this freedom again?

And just because you hire somebody to be offensive doesn't give them free reign. If I hire somebody to produce scatological humor and he decides instead to produce a snuff film, is it ok just because both are offensive?

Obviously not. So much for that defense.

And there's an important correction to Les's original post. O&A were not suspended for the bit with Charlie; they were suspended after they defended the bit under the guise that it was just "entertainment," and that radio was being singled out for unfair treatment. XM's press release indicated that O&A were suspended because they failed to appreciate the significance of the situation.

"So according to Les, Treacher, and the rest, XM shouldn't set and enforce standards on the shows they broadcast, particularly if something that they broadcast offends a lot of people."

No, no, no. Scroll up.

I mean, snuff films? Why stop there, why not pose a hypothetical where they nuke NYC? Holy crap. (Please excuse my language.)

I totally get that it's not censorship by the government. It's the complaintants complaining and XM either responding to the customers or censoring Opie and Anthony, depending on how you look at it.

That's fine, no laws were broken, no animals were harmed, I won't call my Congressman, etc., but I'm free to think it's dumb. If we really go down this path, there aren't many shows on HBO that would survive an attack by the lowest common denominator of the easily offended (see Deadwood, Oz, Queer as Folk, Six Feet Under, tons of comedy acts, etc.), and that'd be a shame. Fortunately I think HBO understands its audience well enough not to do that. XM obviously doesn't.

Remember Jim Zumbo?

Part of what made Remington and other sponsors drop Jim Zumbo was where the complaints were coming from.

I'll bet Zumbo's sponsors got bags of form letters from PETA types day in and day out. Shows like his are excoriated regularly on certain segments of the net. Remington and their sponsors perked up when it was their target market that got pissed.

If I'm running a radio program whose schtick is shock, I'm not going to worry if my complaint letters all come in printed on church bulletins. When I start getting complaining emails written in 1337-speak from .edu email addies, changes might be in order.