Mayhem in the AM Shut Down by the PC Police

Hola all you politically correct folks out there! Well, the PC Police got ‘em another one, or uh, three on Monday as the three DJ’s from the “Mayhem in the AM” show on 790 the Zone in Atlanta got canned for their “insensitive” and “offensive” remarks on the air. What did they say? Well, they mocked former New Orleans Saints player Steve Gleason who is suffering from ALS. If you would like to hear the 2 minute segment you can RIGHT HERE.

I don’t know anything about the history of these guys so I don’t know if this is more or less offensive than their usual shtick. I also don’t know if it rises to level of deserving to be fired over. It was certainly lame, and completely unfunny, and I can see how people found it insensitive and even OUTRAGEOUS.

This comes on the heels of my spending some time reading and digesting Patton Oswalt’s “A Closed Letter to Myself About Thievery, Heckling and Rape Jokes” If you haven’t read it, I do recommend that you set aside a free afternoon and do so if you’re a fan of comedy. (It’s kind of long.)

Although I do love and follow comedy very much, I’m not a comedian. I’m not a stand-up comic and I’m not a professional humorist. I occasionally say or write something that is funny, but that’s usually by accident. But, I am the cohost of the (usually) number one rated comedy show on BlogTalkRadio. This doesn’t make me any kind of big expert on comedy or anything like that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions on comedy either. (BTW, a big pet-peeve of mine is all these people who just up and call themselves comedians and suddenly declaring themselves the equal to people like George Carlin, Bill Hicks and Chris Rock.)

These radio hosts who did the lame bit on Steve Gleason aren’t comedians either though. They’re shock jocks who are hired to … well … shock people! You know, all these “morning zoo” shows are pretty much the same. And most radio station and network owners are basically like sports team owners when it comes to steroids. They’re fine with it as long as it doesn’t cause TOO much controversy or cost them money.

For a country full of people who love to brag about how “politically incorrect” we all are, we sure do demand the complete and total destruction of someone’s entire livelihood when we decide they’ve said something mean or offensive, don’t we? We are all about wagging our finger at folks who get out of line or go too far. Good thing we’re all so pure and perfect in our own lives and none of us ever tell any off-color or race or gender joke ourselves or we would look like a bunch of hypocrites, huh?

The problem with amateurs such as these guys on 790 the Zone is that after the “shock joke” there usually isn’t anything else. We’re not professional comedians so the “shock joke” isn’t usually part of a bigger picture or a deeper critique of society or culture or whatever. That’s why people like Carlin and Chris Rock are so great. There’s subtlety to their jokes or stories about black people, white people, stupid people, fat people etc that is actually saying more about society and our culture than the people they’re supposedly mocking. I don’t know about “rape jokes” though. Those are kind of hard to do.

Generally I don’t care about what comedians decide to joke about. I feel like they should feel safe and free to bring up any subject up there on stage. They certainly aren’t free from the consequences of what they say, or above being criticized though. Radio hosts on the other hand have to worry about bosses and advertisers and if they go too far and damage the show and kill the revenue then they’re goners.

That’s what’s so awesome about blogs and podcasts like I’m With Stupid. We are free to say or write whatever we want. People might disagree, quit reading or listening and maybe even let us know we suck, but at least we can’t get fired from it.

And, thank God we can’t get fired otherwise we would have been sent packing a looooooooong time ago!

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