Update: March 24 – After some hunting, I tracked down a clip of the actual radio program. It’s part of a longer piece, but it includes Lenihan’s gaffe. After listening to it, I am even more convinced that it was not intentional. Unfortunately, this guy has now lost his other job, too, which strikes me as some pretty radical overkill.
Polimom’s been following this story much of the day, so I’d be remiss in not sharing it with you:
Talk show host fired after on-air racial slur
Lenihan’s comment was made during a discussion about Rice’s credentials to become commissioner of the National Football League, a topic that has been fodder for sports talk radio since the current commissioner announced he would retire later this year.
Lenihan was listing what assets Rice could bring to the league, including her tenure as a top academic officer at Stanford University and the fact that she is African-American.
“She’s just got a patent resume, of somebody that’s got such serious skill,” Linehan [sic] said on the air. “She loves football, she’s African-American, which would kind of be a big coon, a big coon – oh my God, I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that, OK? I didn’t mean that. That was just a slip of the tongue.” Lenihan later said he meant to use the word “coup.”
I first came across this at Terrence’s blog, where we’ve agreed to disagree. For the record, Polimom thinks Lenihan experienced a classic Freudian slip, particularly when one considers the context of what was said. From a comment I made:
But I also don’t think I agree that the announcer was being deliberate. I suspect he’s appalled by this abrupt confrontation with a hitherto unknown facet of his worldview.
None of us knows, really, what was in this man’s heart and mind. You could be totally right, Terrence, that he was being deliberate. But if he wasn’t – if instead he’s had an epiphany and can confront some internal baggage as a result, then good! great! for all of us. Because it’s the subtle and innocuous that bite us unexpectedly.
There is a raging debate in the blogosphere, as you might expect, and that’s a good thing (imho). The more people talk about how they see this, and what it means to them, the more likely we are to increase our understanding of this difficult aspect of society.
But who says “coon”, anyway? For it to be a Freudian slip, we would have to see that he associates Rice with “coon” in his head. I just don’t buy it – it’s not a common enough slur anymore. It had to be a mistake.
Wulf –
The problem there is that I don’t know the answer to your first question. Certainly I don’t, but then, I never did.
A number of blogs (mine included) have touched on this subject and depending on the “slant” of the blog you will get various replies. I’m more in the camp of it was a slip of the tongue (I don’t know enough Freud to claim that is was a Freudian slip). I hope he get’s his job back.
SOOOOO WWWHHHHAAAATTTT, he said it was a slip, he’s sorry, end of story. But because he is not a member of the elite protected race, he’s fired. But you have a city commisioner in florida, who is black ad a member of the elite protected class refer to police stopping her drunk son as nto wantin some ” white boy with a gun shootin my boy”, and she finds nothing wrong with her statement, and basically tells people to go to hell, she’s not apoligizing for callin a white boy a white boy. Somethhing tells me if the white officer had made a comment about her son as some black boy he arrested for doing what black boys do drivec drunk, that would be different.