Guest Post by Morbo
Recently a flap erupted over a plan by Radio & Records magazine to give an award to right-wing radio blowhard Bob Grant.
The trade journal had second thoughts after a Grant critic named Scott Pelligrino pointed out the inconvenient fact that Grant seems to be a racist.
This isn’t just Pelligrino’s opinion. As The Washington Post reported:
Grant, whose radio career spans 60 years, has stoked outrage and generated spasms of publicity by making derogatory comments about Latinos, gays and African Americans. He has called blacks “screaming savages” and “sub-humanoids,” and denigrated then-New York Mayor David Dinkins, an African American, by saying he looked like “the men’s room attendant at the 21 Club.” Grant was fired by WABC in 1996 for saying that he had a hunch that then-Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, also an African American, had survived a plane crash, adding “because at heart, I’m a pessimist.” Brown was later found dead.
Despite this, Radio & Records was prepared to present Grant with a lifetime achievement award.
Grant’s defense was the ever-popular, “Those statements were taken out of context.” Sorry, dude. That only works when the statements have another context.
For example, Barack Obama’s recent comments about Ronald Reagan are being taken out of context by the Clintons. The crap Grant said is just plain racist.
But let’s pretend for a moment that Grant’s not a racist. Is what he has achieved in any way deserving of an award? As The Post noted, Grant “helped pioneer the outrageous, combative style that has dominated talk radio for decades.”
In other words, Grant is responsible for the fact that a huge portion of the public airwaves is now dominated by hyperventilating hate-mongers who spend hours every day spewing bile. These are people who just turn on the microphone and start ranting. God forbid that they should ever actually check some facts. They aren’t interested in airing different perspectives. Their main goal is to stir up the worst passions of an unlettered mob so that the most extreme conservatives imaginable can retain their grip on power. Targets of their wrath include progressives, secularists, feminists, multi-culturalists, public school teachers, civil libertarians, pro-choice advocates, gay people, etc.
There are people who spend their lives in ways that are meaningful and important. A researcher who dedicates her professional career to finding a cure for a sickness or alleviating people’s suffering deserves a lifetime achievement award. A social worker who spends 40 years working for modest wages to help kids in need should get an award.
And sure, some entertainers qualify. There are actors, singers, film directors, writers and so on who provide entertainment that is enjoyed by millions over the span of several decades. They deserve a lifetime achievement award.
But if your “achievement” is that you’ve spent many years broadcasting hate and rage and that you oversimplified issues and divided the American people, you haven’t done anything that deserves recognition. Indeed, though you may have been well paid for it, your life was in fact squandered.
Grant’s career should be an occasion for shame, not awards.