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Shock Jocks...

S

Shredder

I saw on the other board, that one half of opie and anthony was fired. Alot of Jocktober victims are having a beer right now.

Now, I am the LAST person to defend shock jocks. I think they are pretty worthless in the world of entertainment. As someone forced to listen to Howard Stern, the self proclaimed king of all media, during a summer job in the 1990's era, I made it a point
to avoid them and their fart jokes and loud talking, like crazy.

Do you think Sirius was in the wrong here? I personally think opie and anthony are untalented assholes. I've made no secret of that fact. from his side of the story, he was simply taking pictures in NY, when some crazy woman he took a shot of (why would you be taking pictures of random people to begin with?) tried to punch him out like biff tannen and knock him unconscious. He then took to twitter in a supposedly racist rant.

I didn't see any of the tweets....but, isn't this what SIRIUS PAYS these guys to do? Act all Shocky with swear words and language to garner attention? What is so different from tweeting it than saying it on their show?
companies these days are so afraid of negative publicity or knee jerk reactions, that if you so much as say 'I hate dogs', boom, you get fired for fear of Peta coming at you in full force....Is this what we've come to?
How would Don Rickles have survived in our world? ;o)

there was another case in Animation recently as well. Nickelodeon hired, for some reason, Jason Biggs to be the voice of Leonardo in the new TMNT series. He's known for being raunchy and rude in real life as well as on twitter, yet they gave him a job on a kids show. well, one day, the official Nick twitter account made the mistake of linking to Jason's twitter account, so all the little 8 year olds could be introduced to his level of 'humor'. Not soon after, he made a few classess comments, fans went in up roar, and just recently, we found out they fired him for it and quietly replaced him. I may not be a fan of jason biggs, but he did a good voice job..is that really his fault that his level of 'trash humor' got linked, because the guy on the nick twitter account wasn't aware of his raunchy lifestyle?

curious what your thoughts are on this.
 
Call it what you will, this is supposed to be entertainment. THAT'S what Sirius pays these guys to do. Entertain. The minute entertainment becomes anger, racism, and hate, it's no longer entertainment. Understand? That's the line, and he crossed it. How would you like to be a black woman working in the same office with this guy after what he said. If he really believes what he posted, he has some emotional issues to deal with. And yes, Sirius is a public company, and it cares about negative publicity. Any employer would.
 
TheBigA said:
Call it what you will, this is supposed to be entertainment. THAT'S what Sirius pays these guys to do. Entertain. The minute entertainment becomes anger, racism, and hate, it's no longer entertainment. Understand? That's the line, and he crossed it. How would you like to be a black woman working in the same office with this guy after what he said. If he really believes what he posted, he has some emotional issues to deal with. And yes, Sirius is a public company, and it cares about negative publicity. Any employer would.
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that part of it I understand...but the part I was curious about.

On Sattellite, it's pretty much unlimited in what you can do, isn't it? In clips I've heard, apparently no swear word is off limits. I'm curious how far they do take things.
Again, I haven't seen the tweets in question, so I don't know what was said. I can only imagine that it was pretty bad and classless..And obviously every company has the right and responsibility to terminate someone who goes on a ranting rampage like that. .but if they do and say the exact same things on their show as they do on twitter..one would think sirius would expect behavior like this and not have such a knee jerk reaction..only difference is, they are not on the clock.
Do they go that far on their show? or is it basically limited to bad language and swear words?
 
Shredder said:
Do they go that far on their show? or is it basically limited to bad language and swear words?
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Personally, I don't listen. But from what I've seen, this Twitter rant is way beyond anything anyone would say in public. As we've seen with Charlie Sheen, if you have anger management problems, you may get fired.

As I said, he crossed a line. I know on-air folks who've been fired for being arrested for DUI. That's also off the clock. But when you get arrested, the mug shot goes everywhere. If you're on the air, you're a de facto celebrity. So you're always on the clock.
 
A normal person would simply ask to be removed from the picture. This woman however assaulted him throwing 15 punches to his face while calling him a "white mother f**er". If you behave like a savage animal you should be called out like one regardless of skin color. There is racism in this case and that is black on white. He did not defend himself from the attack and rather vented about it on twitter. That is admirable and not surprising for someone that took such a beating that it effected his eye sight.

I find it disgusting that Sirius XM is rewarding racists and black on white violence by firing Cumia. That company will not get one more dime from me unless they issue an apology and reinstate Cumia. What really scares me is a corporation like Sirius saying if you attack our white employees and they vent about it, we will fire them. What kind of message is that.

I believe many of those posting their outrage against Cumia on the net have not bothered to read his twitter comments closely or are racist themselves. From reading his twitter posts I do not believe them to be a reflection on the black race as a whole but rather the violent segment that the media ignores. He even went so far as to post African American rallies standing against violence within their communities and saying because he as a white man is saying the same thing that some how makes him a racist.
 
Anthony Culmia

He was fired because a woman attacked him while he was doing a remote in Times Square? He tweeted an emotionally charged rant about this attacker and was fired from his job? Wow... no second chances, no chance to apologize and mend his ways, just "outahere"?

I see a wrongful termination lawsuit in the works. He is expected to be edgy...he was just doing his job. The woman who attacked him was not arrested? So, the victim suffers and the violent attacker gets away with it.

Who would even want to work for a company like that?
 
Doesn't matter. This isn't about the incident, it's about the reaction by a public person.

Rule #1: If you're a public person, and you want to vent about something, do it in private.
 
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TheBigA said:
Doesn't matter. This isn't about the incident, it's about the reaction by a public person.

Rule #1: If you're a public person, and you want to vent about something, do it in private.
Click to expand...

In most cases I would agree with you. He is however not a politician but someone whom is paid to be shocking and has a history of doing so on the air. His style of commenting on twitter was no different than I would expect from listening to him on the air.

The other thing is, do you really expect even a public person to act rational towards his attacker after being punched in the face 15 times that went so far as to effect his eye sight?

edit: posted this and the last message thinking I had read all the tweets.
 
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mikerock said:
In most cases I would agree with you. He is however not a politician but someone whom is paid to be shocking and has a history of doing so on the air. His style of commenting on twitter was no different than I would expect from listening to him on the air.

The other thing is, do you really expect even a public person to act rational towards his attacker after being punched in the face 15 times that went so far as to effect his eye sight?
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that's the thing I find curious though. I don't listen to the show, because shock jocks are not my style of entertainment. I've only heard jocktober segments, that my friends who ARE O and A fans send me, because they think I'd find them funny (which I didn't). But from what I gather, he is like this both on and off the air on twitter all the time. why is now any different? maybe he just never went so far as to wish death on someone or to call for a group of people to go out and do it.

Maybe they are afraid of a lawsuit or something?

And a post on the other board said that Sirius is finally seeing the light, and looking to cut these high priced jocks. Maybe this was just an easy excuse to can one more?
 
mikerock said:
In most cases I would agree with you. He is however not a politician but someone whom is paid to be shocking and has a history of doing so on the air.
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Doesn't matter. He crossed the line beyond what he would be allowed to do on the air. A few years ago, a DJ on a NYC urban station made verbal threats on the air and was also fired. You make a public verbal threat, and that's crossing the line.

mikerock said:
The other thing is, do you really expect even a public person to act rational towards his attacker after being punched in the face 15 times that went so far as to effect his eye sight?
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It's not about acting rational. The issue is doing it publicly. Sure he's going to be angry. Lots of ways to be upset that don't involve Twitter.
 
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Shredder said:
And a post on the other board said that Sirius is finally seeing the light, and looking to cut these high priced jocks. Maybe this was just an easy excuse to can one more?
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Sirius has a new owner, a very large cable TV company. It's a very different company than it used to be. I don't think it's as much about the cost as it is about the behavior.
 
TheBigA said:
Doesn't matter. He crossed the line beyond what he would be allowed to do on the air. A few years ago, a DJ on a NYC urban station made verbal threats on the air and was also fired. You make a public verbal threat, and that's crossing the line.



It's not about acting rational. The issue is doing it publicly. Sure he's going to be angry. Lots of ways to be upset that don't involve Twitter.
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There are allot of his tweets to sift through and I really thought I read all of them. I went back to see exactly what you and a few others here pointed out, found the "hoping" thing a few times. As a regular person outraged after an attack that is still taking it too far and as public person it is way beyond.

You take that out of the equation and a retraction for taking it too far out of anger maybe he would still have his job.
 
mikerock said:
You take that out of the equation and a retraction for taking it too far out of anger maybe he would still have his job.
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Probably. Except he's now lashing out against his former employer.

We also don't know the context from the employer's POV. Were there other situations we don't know about?
 
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mikerock said:
A normal person would simply ask to be removed from the picture. This woman however assaulted him throwing 15 punches to his face while calling him a "white mother f**er". If you behave like a savage animal you should be called out like one regardless of skin color. There is racism in this case and that is black on white. He did not defend himself from the attack and rather vented about it on twitter. That is admirable and not surprising for someone that took such a beating that it effected his eye sight.

I find it disgusting that Sirius XM is rewarding racists and black on white violence by firing Cumia. That company will not get one more dime from me unless they issue an apology and reinstate Cumia. What really scares me is a corporation like Sirius saying if you attack our white employees and they vent about it, we will fire them. What kind of message is that.

I believe many of those posting their outrage against Cumia on the net have not bothered to read his twitter comments closely or are racist themselves. From reading his twitter posts I do not believe them to be a reflection on the black race as a whole but rather the violent segment that the media ignores. He even went so far as to post African American rallies standing against violence within their communities and saying because he as a white man is saying the same thing that some how makes him a racist.
Click to expand...

There are two sides to every story. There's no video of the incident. So there's no way for you to know exactly what happened out there. I do believe that a woman over reacted. I also believe that Ant over reacted. It wouldn't be him if he didn't. I'm not shocked by anyone's actions in this whole situation, and I think that's what's most sad.
 
1. Shock jock gets ASSAULTED by woman in public.

2. Shock jock rants about it in graphic but not "racist" terms. On his PERSONAL Twitter account on his OWN time.

3. Gawker and other click farm bloggers attack shock jock because he's a Fox News contributor.

4. Shock jock gets fired.

5. Jealous and petty radio people don't stick up for shock jock, despite the fact that they could be next to be targets of the outrage machine.

There. Summed up the entire situation. I'm ashamed that some of you are or were ever a part of my industry. Pathetic.
 
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Jocks have been getting fired for saying stupid stuff (on air and in "real life") for decades.

Hell, Ant has been getting fired for saying and doing stupid stuff for decades.

It's a part of doing business. Freedom of speech is a two-way street. Ant is free to say whatever he wants, and his employer is free to disagree. The Supreme Court keeps telling us that corporations are people, and that dude SiriusXM expressed his opinion by firing Anthony Cumia because we live in America.

Two-way street.

What a country!
 
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Small Market Guy said:
There. Summed up the entire situation. I'm ashamed that some of you are or were ever a part of my industry. Pathetic.
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That summed up the situation from his perspective. Assuming it went down exactly as he said. You know what they say about assume.

My first question when I saw this story is: Was there a police report filed? I've been in Times Square many times, and there are lots of police around, and a portable police station, manned 24/7, in the center of the square. If I had been beat up, that's the first place I would have gone. Not Twitter.

Then again, if he feels he was unjustly fired, he has recourse. Lots of people who have the same experience take their former employers to court. Some win large settlements.
 
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I just saw this on People.com:

Asked by one Twitter poster if he had reported the attack to authorities, Cumia responded that he could take punches without wasting the police's time.

----

That sounds suspicious to me, considering how easy it would have been. So instead, he goes on a Twitter rampage. Very responsible.
 
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