Sometimes the Grassroots Wins: KRXQ Hosts Apologize for Defaming Transgendered Children

What a couple of weeks it’s been for Sacramento radio station KRXQ and its wacky morning show hosts Rob, Arnie & Dawn. Their travails in meeting the wrath of outraged supporters of transgendered adults and children ended this morning when the hosts apologized on air and engaged in an open conversation with transgendered people and advocates. But it took quite a bit of pressure to get them to see the light.

Last week I told you about their May 28 broadcast wherein Arnie States talked about how he would hit his son with a shoe if he found him crossdressing, as part of a half-hour discussion generally defaming transgendered children. When word of this disgusting broadcast started to get around folks like myself who found good reason to be outraged at the broadcast took aim at the station.

Of course, as I noted, there was nothing particularly illegal about the broadcast, failing to meet the standard of being indecent. So FCC action was out of the question. Instead folks took aim at KRXQ’s advertisers, asking them to listen to archives of the May 28 program and judge for themselves if that’s the sort of intolerant rhetoric they want to sponsor.

For a large portion of the station’s national sponsors, the answer was a resounding “no.” By June 4, about 4 days into national publicity of the program, major advertisers Chipotle Grill, Snapple and Sonic Drive-In pulled their accounts from the station in response to it. The count was up to ten lost accounts by the next day following a wholly unrepentant broadcast on June 4 when Rob and Arnie attempted to defend themselves by explaining that the May 28 broadcast was just a joke.

Not long thereafter KRXQ pulled its list of advertisers from the station’s website as more local and national sponsors got wind of not only how awful the May 28 broadcast was but how boneheaded Arnie and Rob were in defending themselves on air rather than thoughtfully considering the concerns of listeners, transgendered people and their supporters. Just like the June 4 show where the hosts were supposed to be seriously taking up the ramifications of their May 28 broadcast, pulling the advertiser list was another example of too-little, too-late, since lists of the station’s advertisers had been circulating freely across twitter, facebook and blogs for days.

Pressure got high enough that by Friday June 5 station management reached out to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to try and find a resolution to the situation. On the following Monday, June 7, the Rob, Arnie and Dawn show didn’t air in its usual timeslot. Instead, Rob Williams, who actually owns and produces the show, posted a statement on the show’s and on the station’s website saying the program would be off air until today, June 11. In his statement Williams acknowledged, (in original all caps):

WE HAVE FAILED YOU. AS A SHOW, AS PEOPLE, AS BROADCASTERS, WE HAVE SIMPLY FAILED ON ALMOST EVERY LEVEL.

WE PRESENTED OUR OPINIONS ON A VERY SENSITIVE SUBJECT IN A HATEFUL, CHILDISH AND CRUDE FASHION; AND THEN, GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO RETRACT THOSE REMARKS, WE DEFENDED THEM. …

By the time Rob Williams and Arnie States publicly apologized on their show this morning, their dehumanizing statements and arrogant and ignorant attempts to defend themselves had cost the biggest station carrying their program over thirteen local and national advertisers. Their co-host Dawn Rossi owed no personal apology for the broadcast because she actively tried to both defend transgendered people during the May 28 show and made other reasonable on air arguments against Arnie and Rob’s defaming tirade and ignorant defense.

I’d like to hope that both Arnie States and Rob Williams have truly acknowledged the damage that their words inflicted, I also have no doubt that the financial strike of so many advertisers pulling their accounts did much to change their attitudes. In an era when the public service obligations of broadcasters is a lip-service joke rather than a real an enforceable requirement, hitting stations in the pocketbook is a very effective tool for making them acknowledge the rights of minorities of all stripes.

In the corporate radio world Rob Williams and Arnie States are tiny players. And while their forced about-face on the issue of transgendered children is a victory, it’s still a small one. Unfortunately other radio hosts who deal in hatred towards minorities like Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh have a much stronger base of support both in terms of advertisers, listeners and mainstream credibility. But I don’t think they’re immune either.

Demonstrating just how vulnerable they might be, Rockstar energy drink has threatened Alternet with a defamation lawsuit for publicizing the hard-to-deny connection between right-wing insane hate-spewing radio host Michael Savage and his son, Russell Weiner, who is the founder and CEO of the company. It’s not just a father-son connection, however. According to Alternet, “Savage’s wife serves as director of energy drink company, and Savage Productions shares an address with Rockstar(!).”

Apparently at the behest of Rockstar, facebook took down a group encouraging a boycott of Rockstar, which recently established a lucrative distribution deal with Pepsi.

Seems like even Savage’s own son’s company is a little nervous about its connection to the right-wing violent hate spewed on the Michael Savage show. I wonder how nervous Pepsi might be with the connection, too?

KRXQ Loses National Advertisers For Broadcast Defaming Transgendered Children

Two days of contacting Sacramento rock station KRXQ’s advertisers regarding the station’s May 28 broadcast defaming and advocating abuse of transgendered children has gotten results. Chipotle Grill, Snapple and Sonic Drive-In have all pulled their ads from the station in response to the broadcast.

KRXQ general manager Jim Fox acknowledged to the Sacramento Bee that there have been some ad accounts canceled, but he wouldn’t say what the station would be doing in response. Well, one thing the station did was pull the list of advertisers that was on their website just a day ago. In this case, it’s Google Cache to the rescue (in case the cache expires, see the list after the jump).

I do have to thank Chipotle, Snapple and Sonic for doing the right thing by not ignoring this disgusting example of homophobia. But there are more advertisers who are still bankrolling this kind of defamation on KRXQ and elsewhere. And while these three companies decided to do the right thing, there is an economic element, too. My guess is that these three companies wisely realized that they would benefit by doing the right thing, earning or retaining more loyal customers. Perhaps more companies can be made to realize that continuing to fund hateful racist, misogynistic and homophobic programming on the radio will lose them customers and money.

While this broadcast of the Rob, Arnie & Dawn in the Morning stands out as particularly egregious because the target for the abuse was children, how many of the same advertisers sponsor Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Glenn Beck, to name just a few? How uncomfortable can their advertisers be made?

It’s fundamentally a commercial system. But when we demonstrate that we won’t buy what the commercials are selling when they sponsor the continuation of on-air bigotry, maybe it won’t be so profitable.

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The Empty Hypocrisy of Protecting Children

You might have heard that the Supreme Court recently made a very narrow decision refusing to strike down the FCC’s enforcement of fleeting expletives on TV, such as when U2’s Bono dropped an f-bomb on a live Golden Globes broadcast a few years back. The justification always given for prohibiting so-called indecent words like “fuck” and “shit” on the broadcast airwaves between 6 AM and 10 PM is that we must protect the children from these horrible, brain-altering, growth-stunting, cancer-causing dirty words.

So what about the children who might have been listening to Sacramento, CA station KRXQ on May 28 when morning show hosts Rob Williams and Arnie States went on a hate-filled bigoted tirade against children who question their gender? Anyone, including children, tuning in would have heard that if States’ son ever put on high heels, he would beat him, saying

“If my son, God forbid, if my son put on a pair of high heels, I would probably hit him with one of my shoes. I would throw a shoe at him. Because you know what? Boys don’t wear high heels. And in my house, they definitely don’t wear high heels.”

States went on to advocate and encourage the humiliation and abuse that transgendered young people experience:

“You got a boy saying, ‘I wanna wear dresses.’ I’m going to look at him and go, ‘You know what? You’re a little idiot! You little dumbass! Look, you are a boy! Boys don’t wear dresses.’…

“You know, my favorite part about hearing these stories about the kids in high school, who the entire high school caters around, lets the boy wear the dress. I look forward to when they go out into society and society beats them down. And they end up in therapy.”

If you happened to be a young person or teenager hearing this, you might actually laugh, given the degree of uncertainty most young people feel about their sexuality and gender identity. It might also contribute to feeling justified in having disdain for other children who are gay or transgendered. And, unfortunately, it might also make you feel entitled to act violently towards someone whose sexual identity differs from yours, to hit a person with a shoe, or worse.

And what of the child who is questioning his or her own sexuality or gender who hears this? The message she or he will receive is that according to the show’s two most prominent hosts that child is a “freak” or “abnormal,” worthy of ridicule and deserving of violence. Given that suicide is a real pervasive problem amongst transgendered teens, this is a truly destructive message to broadcast at 9 AM in the morning.

In the reaction to this story I’ve read many people on social networks questioning how this station can keep its license. Of course the answer is simple: nothing legally qualifying as indecent was said on the program. Now, if Arnie States had said that he’d “throw a fucking shoe” at his son, or called transgendered children “fucking freaks,” well then a $15,000 fine would be on its way to KRXQ right now. That’s because that “fuck” would have destroyed the children listening in ways that the advocacy of violence and ridicule could never do, at least in the eyes of the FCC.

In the usual lame defense that comes from talentless, ignorant morning DJs, Arnie States said on air that “I know a lot of people don’t understand this…. That’s a joke.”

In the comment sections of Sacramento news sites the debate over this incident generally devolves into a shallow debate over supposed calls for free speech. Defenders of KRXQ and the hosts call detractors “politically correct” and lament that there’s no tolerance for free speech. Myself, I’m leery of having the FCC step in to regulate speech, also. Yet, the Commission already does step in to protect children from speech, but only if the speech is about fucking or shitting. Speech about beating up people who are different than you is A-OK, even if the people being rhetorically beat up are children.

The real issue is not free speech but the responsibility broadcasters have to local communities as the quid pro quo for having a monopoly over a particular frequency of the airwaves. Not everyone can have an FM station in Sacramento, and therefore KRXQ and Arnie States have a bully pulpit that still outclasses most people in Sac, even in this age of blogs, Twitter and podcasts. The real question is: is this the kind of broadcast the people of Sacramento would want if they actually had a choice or any control over what is broadcast over their airwaves?

As of now KRXQ only has to appeal to narrow demographic of white men 18-35 in order to satisfy its advertisers. So it panders to what it perceives that audience wants, regardless of what the rest of the community might want. It can continue to do this, and will suffer very little for these sorts of incidents because the station actually has nearly zero accountability to the people of Sacramento, due to the wholesale gutting of public service requirements for broadcast stations, combined with thirteen years of industry consolidation.

The likelihood of the FCC taking any sort of effective action against KRXQ for advocating violence against transgendered children is next to zero. I won’t be surprised if one or more commissioners chooses to speak out on the subject if the outrage reaches a louder volume. But don’t expect fines or any real jeopardy to the station’s license to be forthcoming. No, that jeopardy would require an assload of shits and fucks; nothing else will do.

However, because KRXQ panders to a particularly narrow audience in order to satisfy its advertisers, that’s where the station is most vulnerable, especially in this rotten ad climate. KRXQ boasts a large slate of both local and national advertisers, including such well known brands as Sonic Drive-Ins, Snapple, State Farm Insurance, Albertson’s, Carl’s Jr, Nissan, McDonalds and Wells Fargo. I wonder what they’re ad buyers would think about the station’s advocacy of violence towards children?

Sure, it’s not as effective as real local accountability. But hitting KRXQ and its owner Entercom in the pocketbook by haranguing their sponsors is at least one tactic that has a little promise. Another is to stop listening to KRXQ and all of Entercom’s stations in 23 different markets. And, then, let local advertisers know that you’re not listening, and why you’re not listening.

Such a boycott may or may not work, though I think it’s worth trying. However, this won’t be the last incident of this type so long as commercial radio continues its sprint to the bottom, both financially and ethically. The root cause of the promotion of this sort of ignorant, homophobic bigoted advocacy is greed, pure and simple, and the selective regulations that promote this kind of reductive, destructive greed.