Yet a new low for morning radio

Update: I've added their response to the growing scandal as an addendum.

I know this story is a few days old by now, but I still thought I'd comment on it. First, let it be clear that I am no fan of morning radio shows. I find that for every one of them that has some genuinely entertaining or humorous value, there are dozens of others that are so simple-minded, so over-the-top, or just overall pathetic, that they seem to degrade the very quality of the radios through which they're heard (or rather, endured). Childish humor that would shame a 13-year-old, vileness on par with the KKK that's supposed to pass as humor (though what doesn't these days?), and of course the sort of generalized stupidity that's so affluent in this modern society. Is it any wonder most of these shows don't last more than a few weeks – a few months, tops?

Here's one particularly trashy example of a shitty morning show – from what one can tell for now, at least. Sacramento's Rob, Arnie & Dawn in the Morning seemed to blur the line and confuse the limits between even the crudest of humor, and downright vileness, when they broached the delicate subject of LGBT, particularly transgenderism, in children. If what they said constitutes humor, please let me know so I can write up a playbook full of nigger, gook and frog jokes for people to laugh over. Because it's what sells, apparently, if this is anything to judge by.

Even by the flexible moral, ethical, and professional standards of American talk radio, the May 28th segment of KRXQ 98.5 FM Sacramento's Rob, Arnie, & Dawn in the Morning radio talk show makes for a sickening half-hour of ugliness and cruelty. For once, the focus was not LGBT adults, but minors. The hosts, Rob Williams and Arnie States, devoted the segment in question to a vicious diatribe against transgender children, some as young as five, focusing in particular on the case of one Omaha family raising a gender dysphoric child, and their decision to support her transition from male to female.

Williams and States took turns referring to gender dysphoric children as "idiots" and "freaks," who were just out "for attention" and had "a mental disorder that just needs to somehow be gotten out of them," either by verbal abuse on the part of the parents, or even shock therapy.

"Allowing transgenders to exist, pretty soon it becomes normal to fall in love with the animals," they said.

For his part, States bragged that if his own son were to ever dare put on a pair of high heels, States would beat his son with one of his own shoes. He urged parents whose own little boys expressed a desire to wear a dress to verbally abuse and degrade them as a viable response. "Because you know what? Boys don't wear high heel shoes. And in my house, they definitely don't wear high heels.

"I'm going to go, 'You know what? You're a little idiot! You little dumbass!'" States sneered, adding later, "I look forward to when [the transgender children] go out into society and society beats them down. And they wind up in therapy."

Or dead.

[...]

"I'm not open-minded once I look into sumpin'" one of the two men grunted at the beginning of the segment, their voices interchangeable. "I have every right to call you a freak and judge you on that. It makes me sick. 'Mommy, I'm a girl trapped in a boy's body,'" he simpered, mimicking an effeminate little boy. "I want to wear a dwess."

They berated co-host Dawn Rossi, who seemed genuinely horrified by the rising crescendo of ugliness towards the children and their parents from States and Williams.

"You're actually defending allowing people to become freaks?" they seethed. "A boy who wants to wear a dress is a freak. A nut." Comparing transgender children to "fat bastard kids on Maury," States and Williams urged advocates of transgender children to "stop hiding behind research and laws," whose authority they wholeheartedly reject. Braying with the certitude of the jubilantly ignorant, States and Williams revealed to listeners that "transgenders [sic] did not exist four decades ago," apparently unaware of the historical fact that transgender individuals have existed in every culture throughout recorded history, including in native American cultures where the "two spirited" were revered as teachers, healers, and shamans.

[...]

"If the kid ever gets to be eighteen," States snarled, "and says 'I still feel like a woman!' you say, 'Get out! Go be a freak! And understand, SON, that society will never accept you because we still have some moral judgment."

The author of the article for The Huffington Post, Michael Rowe, voices the exact sharp words and thoughts that I think anyone with a conscience and the ability to be disgusted by such unbelievably intolerant behavior on the air would be dying to shout at these two imbeciles.

By no objective standard are dumbed-down, Wal-Mart versions of O'Reilly like States and Williams journalists. Nor are they really experts on anything other than plunging the overflowing toilets of their listeners' psyches and selling the sewage back to them, repackaged as "insight," "common sense" and "plain talk" from fake-macho blowhards hiding behind radio microphones.

One doesn't need a primer on transgender or transsexual history in order to appreciate the awesome brutality of the KRXQ shock-jocks' diatribe. All one needs is to know a child, any child. They're small, they're vulnerable, and their world is populated with gods whose divinity is derived solely from their adulthood and perceived authority.

States and Williams chose to use that authority to attack a segment of the childhood population who are more vulnerable than almost any other. Transgender children are at a point in their lives when they feel their own bodies are the enemy, and alien to them. Many of them go to bed praying that when they wake up their bodies and their inner gender will be aligned.

And his finishing paragraph is one we should all heed:

I know which end of the shoe I would be on if I ever met another adult who took the official Rob, Arnie & Dawn in the Morning child-rearing advice to heart after hearing it on KRXQ 98.5 FM Sacramento.

Let it go without saying that those words apply to me as well. Only I probably wouldn't take the shoe off as I beat the bigot over the head with it, if you get the idea.

So, my suggestion: Dawn, seeing as you seemed to be the only person on that show who actually has a heart and a conscience, I suggest you get the hell out of there and find a new home before these two cavemen start to rub off on you. Lord knows that does happen. And as for Rob Williams and Arnie States: you may never know, hear or care about me, but nonetheless, let it be said that you disgust me.

---

Turns out that after their subsequent non-apology, they've posted a groveling "we're sorry" on their website. Guess they kinda had to once advertisers (and their wads of money) started leaving in droves, eh?

TO OUR LOYAL ROB, ARNIE AND DAWN FOLLOWERS,

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.

SINCE THEN, YOU, OUR LOYAL LISTENERS, HAVE MADE IT CLEAR TO US THAT WE WENT TOO FAR. THE RESPONSE HAS BEEN OVERWHELMING. NONE OF YOU SAID THAT WE COULDN’T HAVE OPINIONS, YET SO MANY OF YOU SAID THAT THE WAY WE GAVE THEM CROSSED THE LINE. FURTHER, YOU SAID THAT OUR ATTEMPT TO MASK OUR COMMENTS AS “JOKES THAT WOULD BE UNDERSTOOD BY OUR AUDIENCE,” WAS UNACCEPTABLE. I WOULD SAY NOW THAT IT WAS WORSE THAN THAT, IT WAS COWARDLY. YOU HAVE MADE THAT CLEAR.

WHY THE CAPS, MAN? *rubs eyes*

He (Rob, who wrote the note) then goes on to say they will present a formal, public apology, live on the air Thursday, June 11th, at 7:30 AM, local time. Be sure to catch it. I'd better sense the genuineness and sincerity seeping from their pores. (Well, except for Dawn, that is.)