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Did former KNTF air a racist song?

3

30james

Banned
The song in question was rodney crowell"s shes crazy for leaving
One of the lyrics goes
You add insult to injury and what do you get you get a bus full of honkies that don't ever forget.

To me it's racist KNTF should had banned the song from airplay. Just sayin
 
I would assume that a country station would have played the #1 hit from the hottest country artist of the late 1980s. I played that record numerous times in my career as a country DJ, as a gold. This is the first time I've heard someone describe it as potentially "racist."

Having been a small child at the time, I have no actual information on whether this station played this song 36 years ago.
 
30james said:
The song in question was rodney crowell"s shes crazy for leaving
One of the lyrics goes
You add insult to injury and what do you get you get a bus full of honkies that don't ever forget.

To me it's racist KNTF should had banned the song from airplay. Just sayin
Click to expand...

Okay...hang on.

I have questions.

1). What the hell was KNTF? Dial position? City of license?

2). Was this, as PTBoardOp93 says, 36 years ago?
 
michael hagerty said:
Okay...hang on.

I have questions.

1). What the hell was KNTF? Dial position? City of license?

2). Was this, as PTBoardOp93 says, 36 years ago?
Click to expand...

It's the current KDEY Ontario, and yes, all this happened a long time ago.
en.wikipedia.org

KDEY-FM - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Waiting for 30james to call for retroactive sanctions/cancellation for any station that ever played Elton John's "Honky Cat" next.
 
CTListener said:
It's the current KDEY Ontario, and yes, all this happened a long time ago.
en.wikipedia.org

KDEY-FM - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Waiting for 30james to call for retroactive sanctions/cancellation for any station that ever played Elton John's "Honky Cat" next.
Click to expand...

Hell, the entire "Honky Chateau" album is endangered under that logic.

I mean....really?

Even if we (somehow) consider "honky" to be the equivalent of vile names used against other races, we didn't then, which is when it (allegedly) happened.

Mirriam-Webster defines "honky" as a word:

used as an insulting and contemptuous term for a white person
Click to expand...

Rodney's white.

So if we're gonna say that, then is every "n"-word in every song by a black artist also racist?

And how'd this come up, 30james---did you hear an aircheck or did you suddenly remember one radio station playing one song with one word in it 36 years later?
 
CTListener said:
Waiting for 30james to call for retroactive sanctions/cancellation for any station that ever played Elton John's "Honky Cat" next.
Click to expand...

Or Honky Tonk Woman.

The way I was raised, derogatory terms were permissible when used by the people being derided. Polish people can tell Polish jokes about themselves. The rap band NWA (which is the N word With Attitude) is permissible when used by black people. White people calling each other honkies is fine. When Richard Pryor used it, it was an insult, but done as part of his comedy routine.
 
TheBigA said:
The way I was raised, derogatory terms were permissible when used by the people being derided. Polish people can tell Polish jokes about themselves.
Click to expand...

Yep.

TheBigA said:
The rap band NWA (which is the N word With Attitude) is permissible when used by black people. White people calling each other honkies is fine. When Richard Pryor used it, it was an insult, but done as part of his comedy routine.
Click to expand...

Pryor was in a first-season SNL skit with Chevy Chase in which all the various black/white insults got used. Devastatingly funny (because of the payoff), but I'm not gonna be the one to link to it, even though it aired on network TV.

Times have changed.
 
There are several theories on the etymology of "honky tonk," but none trace to the racial slur "honky." As Michael says, "honky" meaning "white person" has only been around since the '60s.
 
TheBigA said:
Who are they insulting? It's like calling someone a good ole boy.
Click to expand...
It's a common form of self-deprecation among whites, comparing their stereotypical shortcomings to the stereotypical strengths of blacks. Brad Paisley's "Alcohol" comes to mind. Brad is singing about booze in the first person:
And since the day I left Milwaukee
Lynchburg and Bordeaux France
Been makin' the bars lots of big money
And helpin' white people dance.
 
30james said:
Ok you guys I get your point hagerty but still they should had edited out that slang
Click to expand...

Why? If you got the point, you got that "honky", when said by a white person, isn't racist.

It's not a term ANYONE uses today, that I'm aware of. And however long ago (36 years?) it was, it wasn't offensive to the audience it was being played for.

The subject of your post is "Did former KNTF air a racist song?"

The answer is no.
 
Context is important. Here's the definition:

characterized by or showing prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
Click to expand...

So using it in a negative way is racist. This song is a romp. If it's anything, it's sexist to women. The line is done as the punchline of a joke. When Rodney sings it, people laugh.
 
What really worries me here is that James actually dredged up a song that played without incident, three decades ago, on a station that has changed formats multiple times since, and started a thread about it.
 
TheBigA said:
So using it in a negative way is racist. This song is a romp. If it's anything, it's sexist to women.
Click to expand...
It's not even that. He says she's crazy for leaving him, but he crashed his truck into a telephone pole and broke his nose, threw rocks at the truck, and made a fool of himself in front of a crowd of people at a bus stop... so it sure seems like he's the crazy one.
 
kevtronics said:
It's not even that. He says she's crazy for leaving him, but he crashed his truck into a telephone pole and broke his nose, threw rocks at the truck, and made a fool of himself in front of a crowd of people at a bus stop... so it sure seems like he's the crazy one.
Click to expand...

In interviews, that's what Rodney says about the song. It's self depreciating. Her leaving drove him crazy.
 
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