Bob Grant was “less constrained” about race: “”if they didn’t observe Martin King Day, there would be trouble from the savages.”
What would you call someone who routinely referred to black people as “savages,” and declared that, as a white person, New York’s nonwhite majority was a “bad thing”? Someone who wondered why it was taking basketball star Magic Johnson “so long for the HIV to go into full-blown AIDS,” and who thought a proper response to a gay rights parade would be “to have a few phalanxes of policemen with machine guns and mow them down”? Someone who used his perch on the public airwaves to promote white supremacist organizations?
A bigot and a racist, one might think.
They, too, were dogged by accusations of racism.
But read the New York Times obituary (1/3/13) for right-wing talk radio icon Bob, and you get a different sense. Grant, in the Times‘ lead, had a “testy, confrontational manner.” The headline called him “combative.” The paper explains that “Mr. Grant thrived on the radio despite being boycotted for racist remarks.”
It’s not that the Times is unaware of Grant’s record–the piece includes some of the most offensive comments Grant ever uttered.
But the way the paper characterized the comments was certainly odd. The paper notes that “his arch disdain for liberals, prominent black people, welfare recipients, feminists, gay people and anyone who disagreed with him was familiar to his listeners.” (“Arch disdain” is an interesting way to characterize someone who thought, among other things, that welfare recipients should be sterilized.) The Times even noted that famous white racist David Duke was a “frequent guest on his show in the 1970s.”
The paper added:
He also became less constrained in talking about race.
“You can talk all you want about ‘minorities’ rights,’ but heaven forbid you talk about white rights,” he said on WABC in 1989. “I see a very bleak future for this country, simply because the quality of the citizenry seems to be heading down.”
The country was being overrun, he said in 1991, by “millions of subhumanoids, savages, who really would feel more at home careening along the sands of the Kalahari or the dry deserts of eastern Kenya.”
In a May 1993 broadcast, Mr. Grant referred to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as “that slimeball” and “this bum, this womanizer, this liar, this fake, this phony.”
Those are the words of a racist–not someone “less constrained in talking about race.” But the Times seems unwilling to go that far–preferring instead to write, “Accusations of racism dogged Mr. Grant for years.” Woof!
The obituary also mischaracterizes the history of telecommunications policy:
Mr. Grant was among the first radio hosts to take full advantage of the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987; as part of the Reagan administration’s drive for large-scale federal deregulation, the repeal essentially freed broadcasters to vent political views without having to present opposing perspectives.
This is a long-standing claim, especially popular among right-wing talkshow hosts: Free of the government meddling, their brand of speech thrived. But the Fairness Doctrine was no barrier to opinionated talk radio; it explicitly required stations to air programming on controversial matters, and in practice, it was a rather subtle instrument that allowed the public to challenge media outlets to offer substantive programming with a minimal amount of viewpoint diversity, of the sort talkshows are designed to showcase. (Wikipedia credits the Fairness Doctrine with helping Grant get a job at WMCA in 1970, which broke him into the New York City market.) As FAIR’s Steve Rendall wrote (Extra!, 1/05), “Not one Fairness Doctrine decision issued by the FCC had ever concerned itself with talkshows. Indeed, the talkshow format was born and flourished while the doctrine was in operation.”
Indeed, it’s hard to figure out how one would credit the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine as a career boost for someone who’d been doing the same schtick on the air for decades. But it’s equally puzzling why the paper finds so many ways to describe Grant’s racism instead of simply calling it what it was.
The Times’s misunderstanding of the Fairness Doctrine is a good illustration of the success right-wing propaganda has had in creating supposedly unbiased media consensus that is actually based on fiction.
I think that should have been the main topic of this blog post. On Grant’s racism, FAIR’s only complaint seems to be that, while the Times obit amply depicted and named his racism, it didn’t include the precise sentence, “Bob Grant was a racist”.
That seems like a pointless hoop to ask them to jump through. There’s plenty of real obfuscation and bias in the Times. I’ll take a story with good substance (which FAIR seems to be conceding this obit is) any day, and won’t mind the little stylistic gestures toward Grey Lady aloofness.
Funny, I read the obit too and found it extremely odd, pre-wrote and vetted no doubt months ago, which is all the more alarming. A human being or agglomeration of them wrote this, byline: PAUL VITELLO.
I recall being young and calling in and being high and cranking him very often with my friends for his ludicrous comments, he never ever ever had a substantive rebuttal to any smart inquiry or remark that alluded to his myopic utterances. Just a performer like the rest of the cattle out there now, so called left and right alike, from war monger maddow to establishmentarians par excellence jon colbert an stephen stewart.
Automatic “privileging powers” of White Supremacy Racism, allow social institutions that inform public conscience, to protect and promote racist members amongst them, who daily feel free to insult the collective black psychic, while those same protective institutions, are quick to proclaim, when blacks respond negatively to constant white supremacy provocation “why can’t blacks forget and move on like all others who too were oppressed”.
The part they conveniently choose to leave out of their narrative in those situations however, is that only blacks had the oppression of slavery institutionalized to be synonymous with black skin. And while others whose oppression was legally ended, find that it was for the most part ended, for them to move on. Not so with blacks, who’ve been subjected to Slavery By New Names, and New Jim Crow ways.
I’m glad he’s dead. One less racist is always good for the world.
We live in a society where speaking about “white racism” is still forbidden and if spoken can cause people to lose their jobs, life and liberty in most cases.
How did a douche bag like this end up a sacred cow of the NYT?
If you don’t actually say the word N GG R you are not a racist!
Speaking ill of the dead is an obituary writer’s no-no. Don’t offend the bereaved for some reason or other. I’m reminded of when Charlton Heston died. Peons to America’s leading gun nut, who waved his gun at Columbine, site of our deadliest high school mass murder so far, were all over the media.
Long story short: 1965 – 1967 I was the Program Director at the country’s first 24/7 telephone call-in radio station, KLAC in Los Angeles. It was a double barreled hoot.
The dreaded Fairness Doctrine was in full force. Results? Right wing talk was crushed? Noooo. We had Bob Grant spewing the precursor mud of Michael Savage and Sean Hannity. We had Joe Pyne, doing confrontational blitzing that makes Rush Limbaugh look like a wimp. We had Ray Briem, a calm, hard-right, all-night talker. These guys were tough, uncompromising Righties, and nothing in the Fairness Doctrine shut them up or even inhibited them.
AND we had left-wing talkers, including the hilarious Arbogast (Bob) and Margolis (Jack) and the stunning Jill (daughter of Dore) Schary Robinson doing passionate left wing and feminist talk on the weekends. We even had genius comic Mort Sahl whamming away at the Kennedy assassination investigation and other conspiracies he suspected. We had several apolitical talk jockies Danny Dark among them.
In other words, KLAC had balance. We were never concerned about being completely 50/50, we just made sure all sides had a voice. Horrors! Un-American!
KLAC was #1 with lots of important demographics. Didn’t suffer a whit from actual fairness and balance.
The only real threat to KLAC was the John Birch Society. These intolerant Righties launched boycotts against our sponsors because the JBS wanted all-Righty stations only. Just like they finally got all over the AM band. Goodbye Fairness Doctrine.
So don’t listen to the fear mongers of Righty radio who dread the return of the F.D. and the very thought of genuine fairness and balance. Don’t listen to the Evangelical religious broadcasters who fear it. Listen to Chuck Schumer, a very fair and balanced man. Support the return of the Fairness Doctrine. It’s only fair.
Wow, so in 1991, this Bob guy referred to black people as “Millions of sunhumanoids…” I guess he was sort of right because there are a lot of” subhumonoids” in Congress now, but they are the white guys and they are cutting unemployment benefits, food stamps, and trying to start a lot of wars. i think the Bob guy had his colors mixed up. : )
S’CUSE CAPS. BAD EYES. IT’S EASY TO BE CALLED A RACIST AS LONG AS YOU LIVE SOUTH OF THE MASON DIXIE LINE. THE SAME VOTING RIGHTS BILL IN SC OR GA, “JIM CROW AND RACIST”. IN WISCONSIN, NEITHER WORD. I DON’T RECALL THE TIMES USING “RACIST” IN REFERENCE TO GIULIANI’S WELL NAMED “STREET CRIMES UNIT” KILLING AN UNARMED BLACK MAN EVERY FEW WEEKS. NOR NIXON BEING CALLED RACIST, IF THE STORY WAS COVERED AT ALL, WHEN A NIXON TAPE WAS RELEASED A YEAR OR SO AGO, IN WHICH HE GROWLS, “I’M AGAINST ABORTION UNLESS IT INVOLVES A BLACK MAN AND A WHITE WOMAN.” OOPS! THERE GOES OUR PRESIDENT.
DAVID DUKE WAS HEAD OF THE KKK, BY THE WAY, IN MY HOME STATE OF N.C. WHAT IS UNDER COVERED IN EVERY MEDIUM IS WHITE SOUTHERNERS WHO WERE IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. I KNEW WHITES FROM ALABAMA AND MISSISSIPPI WHO PICKETED, MARCHED, SANG, SAT IN, FOR INTEGRATED SCHOOLS AND BUSINESSES. IN SPITE OF IT BEING A LIBERAL COLLEGE TOWN, WITH A POLICE CHIEF WHO READ GANDHI SO GAVE PERMITS FOR ALL MARCHES ETC. BUT ARRESTED US FOR SITTING IN, MOST BUSINESS WAS SEGREGATED. BLACKS DIDN’T WALK ON SIDEWALKS WITH WHITES. NOW THERE HAVE BEEN AT LEAST TWO BLACK MAYORS OF A MAJORITY WHITE TOWN. TWO BOOKS SHOULD BE COVERED AND A DOCUMENTARY SHOT. PERHAPS BY AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. THE FREE MEN, ABOUT THE CRM IN CHAPEL HILL WAS PUBLISHED IN ’65, AGAIN IN ’07. EHLE IS STILL ALIVE AND WELL. I HAVE HIS PHONE NUMBER. MY EMAIL IS sofarso.april@gmail.com. ANOTHER, RECENT, BOOK IS “LIBERATION IN BLACK AND WHITE: STUDENT ACTIVISM IN THE 1960’S SOUTH. BY A PROF AT NYU AND ANOTHER AT SCU. SOUTH CAROLINA. ONE COMMENT ON ITS BACK SUGGESTS THE LEFT IN THE SOUTH PREDATED THAT IN THE NORTH. I PROTESTED MAINLY IN ’63 AND 4 BEFORE GOING TO EUROPE FOR ONE OF MY JUNIOR YEARS DURING THAT TUMULTUOUS TIME. CORDELL BLACK, WHO WAS BLACK AND I, MY NAME APRIL WHITE, WOULD LINK ARMS AND SING “BLACK AND WHITE TOGETHER”. IT DRIVES ME BONKERS WHEN PEOPLE SAY, USUALLY IN REFERENCE TO TEXAS, “THEY SHOULD JUST SECEDE”. DIDN’T WE TRY THAT? NEW YORKERS ARE SLOWLY ACCEPTING THEIR RACISM, A GUY WHO LIKE LAURA DEEN USED THE N WORD AFTER HE WAS MUGGED WAS FROM BROOKLYN. THE DONALD, BIRTHER. MICHELLE BACHMAN’S THEORY THAT BLACK FAMILIES DID BETTER UNDER SLAVERY… LEAVE ME SPEECHLESS…. TRY READING THOSE BOOKS ,OR AT LEAST LOOK AT THE PHOTO OF WHITE PROTESTERS BEING BEATEN IN ALABAMA. NO BLACKS AROUND.
To answer the question posed in the post heading
Short of sporting a swastika … ?
A sidebar to the reference above to the disgusting things Grant said about Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1993 (and that wasn’t the only time he did.) —
The once honorable civil rights organization Congress on Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) was unfortunately taken over in 1968 by Roy Innis, who became ever more a charlatan and a wacko as the years went on. He established an annual MLK dinner in 1984, and in 1998, 5 years after Grant uttered those disgusting words about King, hardly the only time he did, Innis invited Grant to be his guest of honor at the dinner.
Grant was supported and embraced by millions who like Grant were racist as well…
At least Bob went to heaven.That’s something impossible to achieve for a leftist.
BTW-An Obama voter CANNOT go to heaven.
Bob never cut off the heads of 10 children while they were asleep-as did your hero,Nat Turner,for whom Cory Booker dedicated a park in 2009.
Proving once again that the market for racist hatred in America has not much diminished since we spent 600,000 American lives to abolish the slave trade that made racism even more profitable than it is today, except for one-note broadcasters like Bob Grant
Bob Grant was a political shock jock.He insulted everyone as a Howard Stern dos ,or Don Rickles did.He was an equal opportunity attack dog against anyone he thought stupid ,hypocritical ,lazy and anything else you could name.Lots of times he went to far.He lived the credo that sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt you.It seems by this article that he was wrong on that one.Mostly he was a no harm no fowl radio loud mouth.