> As far as Grant calling blacks "savages" et al, in his
> defense, he had referred to CRIMINALS and "society's
> predators" as animals, maggots and savages throughout his
> career. One cannot truthfully say Grant only referred to
> black people in those terms -- he did not use those words
> as racial epithets. That was a common misrepresentation by
> his ennemies (those opponents of Grant seemed to be the only
> ones referring to blacks as "savages" and "animals" -- That
> is, unfortunately typical of those who oppose Grant's point
> of view.
Well, I don't deny he may have said those things as well, but it turns out to be untrue that he didn't use the words as racial epithats. Here are some delightful samples:
"The U.S. has millions of sub-humanoids, savages, who really would feel more at home careening along the sands of the Kalahari or the dry deserts of eastern Kenya--people who, for whatever reason, have not become civilized." (1/6/92) He declared (10/15/93) that "if they didn't observe Martin King Day, there would be trouble from the savages."
Grant has referred to black churchgoers as "screaming savages" (4/30/93); he's said (7/15/93) that black fraternity members represent "the savage mind, the primitive, primordial mentality." After overcrowding at a charity event led to deaths, Grant referred to the crowd (1/6/92) as "the 3,000 to 5,000 savages who showed up for the rap stars' basketball game."
Haitian refugees are "swine" and "sub-human infiltrators" who multiply "like maggots on a hot day" (3/20/92). AIDS in Haiti, according to Grant (6/28/94), is "not prevalent enough; there's too many of them."
African-Americans are not the only target of Grant's bile: He remarked after a gay pride parade (6/29/94), "Ideally, it would have been nice to have a few phalanxes of policemen with machine guns and mow them down."
"I can't take these screaming savages, whether they're in that A.M.E. Church, the African Methodist church, or in the street, burning, robbing, looting" 4/30/93.
Then, on the Larry King Show of 4/30/96, Grant pulled a Pat Robertson first claiming to be misquoted and then had the nerve to claim that he'd never put down an entire race and was only talking about rioters in the post Rodney King verdict LA teardown. Of course, many of his rants came well before Rodney King was even an issue, and most of the ones noted above had nothing to do with the LA incident in any event.
Just as Robertson has learned, your own mouth can do a lot of damage when you forget people actually listen and can take down what you say. Limbaugh is learning that about his Cindy Sheehan "faked it" comments which he later denied making, despite there being a tape of it.
In the case of Bob Grant, it's like giving Verne "Oz" Schillinger his own talk show.