Primitive discourse

By MEDIA FARM

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THERE WAS THE New York Times Co.'s threat of filing a 60-day shutdown notice, settlements reached with most of the unions and the Boston Newspaper Guild stupidly holding out on the lifetime-employment guarantees that the NYT management stupidly agreed to when it stupidly spent too much money on the paper ... BUT the Boston Globe isn't dead (yet!)!! Now, instead of talking about how much we'd miss it in spite of its unmoving, whiny bitch union, we can expound upon something else. Like sweet, sweet ignorance.

Ah, Jay Severin, the raving racist shock jock from WTKK who offered up the following very important fun facts last week: The leading exports of Mexico are "venereal disease," "women with mustaches and VD" and swine flu; Mexicans are "the world's lowest of primitives"; and emergency rooms are "condos for Mexicans." Clearly, Severin just wants us to be educated about Mexican culture, so we don't come off as, you know, ignorant.

But OK, seriously, this is some pretty foul stuff. The argument is so fetid and stinking that we'd rather not touch it, but unpacking it is, unfortunately, our job, so you should probably go ahead and strap on your surgical mask and try not to inhale too deeply.

So, this whole rant was somehow tied (with the rhetorical equivalent of ratty shoelaces and chewing gum) to the Holy Fucking Shit It's Swine Flu story. The whole mess is already played out, from school closings to Joe Biden shocking the nation by making a huge gaffe when he told veteran media panicker Matt Lauer that everyone should hide inside to avoid contamination. That's a first clue—if you're blind to the raging stupidity of Severin's comments themselves—that this is a bunch of baseless blather to fill a time slot.

Also, really? It's a stretch to use swine flu as an excuse to talk about immigrants, or, we're sorry, "criminaliens," as they're called by "Jay Severin" (who's real name, incidentally, is Jimmy Severino—he changed it to something a little less "ethnic" when he became a Republican political strategist). You'll remember that "swine-aka-Janet Napolitano flu" (as Severin very scientifically classified it) was not smuggled across the border, but brought back here by New York prep school kids who'd gone to Mexico for vacation.

Also: Immigrants are responsible for all our societal ills, they killed off the unicorns and whenever they cross the border an angel goes to hell ... Is it even necessary to pull out our SOC 101 Cliff's Notes and say that these comments use the worst of old-school bigotry by race-baiting, otherizing, equating immigrants and female sexuality with disease, and creating a foreign scourge that threatens our strapping, healthy country? No? Good. Because no one has really pointed out that Severin's jokes just aren't that funny. They rely on old-man bigotry. They're too ... primitive, you might say.

And let's make this abundantly clear: This is not a free speech issue. Spewing ignorant bile on the radio is not a First Amendment right, especially since Severin is a performer, being paid by WTKK. If the station has somehow used advanced idiocy-measuring instruments to determine he tottered off the line of xenophobic and offensive speech that they usually play, that's their prerogative. They don't have to play him or PAY HIM anymore. Getting canned for your content is different from the government limiting your speech, by, say, threatening to remove your magazine because it has an adorable, limp cartoon penis on it.

What really doesn't make sense is WTKK's sudden lapse in promoting hateful bigotry. It's not like this is particularly new territory for Severin. He's always called illegal immigrants "criminaliens," and remember back in 2004 when he said to a caller, "I believe that Muslims in this country are a fifth column," and, "You think we should befriend them; I think we should kill them"?

Yeah, well, as the Herald pointed out, Severin's ratings have plummeted to 14th place in the first three months of 2009, and his salary's costing the station over $1 million a year. And we all know WTKK isn't above creating a controversy to boost ratings ... we seem to remember a little feud between Howie Carr and Tom Finneran, two of the station's old, farting blowhards. So don't believe the hype about the station growing a set of scruples. We smell a dead, rotting, swine flu-infested rat.