Right-wing shock jocks: Now attacking children

57 thoughts on Right-wing shock jocks: Now attacking children

1. Oh my God.

2. I wrote emails to the advertisers. God, what heinous fucks.

3. According to Amptoons, Snapple and Chipotle have already pulled their ads (not listed above probably because of this). Just figured I’d bring a little credit to the companies who have so far done the right thing in this situation

4. mods, when you get a chance would you mind pulling a comment of mine out of the ether? I linked to amptoons where they list a couple company’s who have already pulled their ads and I probably got counted as spam.

5. Ach, never mind! looks like my 1st comment just didn’t pop up for me when the page refreshed. Sorry for any confusion.

6. What’s disgusting was how proud he was of his determination to beat up a child. Words fail . . .

7. This sort of behavior shows such incredible insensitivity to how vulnerable children, especially, can be to negative external feedback — particularly if they have no or very little positive feedback to buffer them from it.

   Re: “I can’t think of a better way to word this,” you could say “being teased/bullied/harassed at school for being percieved as gay/nonstraight” which might be more specific — but I think the way you have it works.

8. Like you, Jill, I just want to ask: why?? Intellectually I know why – to preserve the “right” gender expression and gender roles at all costs – but I have a hard time wrapping my brain around telling people, especially little kids, that they can’t express themselves in this completely non-harmful manner.

   I cringed reading this. Ugh.

9. Just when i think that these Howard Stern/Tom Leykis/Rush Limbaugh-type radio blowhards can’t get any more offensive, they set new world records for offensiveness.

   Patriarchal masculinity just can’t stand any challenge to its hegemony, and just has to react in a violent way. it would be nice if we could just ignore these macho jerks, but unfortunately too many people still believe in their hateful narrowmindedness, and all too often feel the need to act violently.

10. No words. Can’t talk about it. Hurts.

11. “I always have a hard time with stories like this one, because I just can’t understand why. What’s the point of terrorizing children?”

    I think it goes back to the “someone you raise” vs. “something you have” attitudes people have towards children. If you’re raising your kids with the idea that your job is to bring up a happy, healthy person capable of independent functioning and a successful life of their own with as little unnecessary baggage as possible, there’s pretty much zero point to engaging in abusive behavior toward them.

    If you’re raising your kids with the idea that they exist for your benefit, they’re your property, and/or their primary function is to act as a status symbol for you, you’re probably going to feel entitled to act against their best interests to a much greater degree. If you see them as a reflection or extension of yourself, and you’re deeply invested in gender roles, you’re more likely to take it personally if your children fail to be sufficiently masculine or feminine, especially if they do it in public.

12. This is bigoted and disgusting. Why do these hosts have so much hatred for transgender and gender non-conforming kids? What did those kids ever do to THEM!? We need to speak up and let the station know that these comments are unacceptable.

13. Bank of America pulled their advertising as well.

14. Ugh, how disgusting. My three year old loves to have his nails painted and he plays dress up with his big sister- I think it’s cute and it makes me so sad that there are people out there who would want to see him punished for that.

15. I think it goes back to the “someone you raise” vs. “something you have” attitudes people have towards children.

    @preying mantis: I just wanted to say I think that’s a lovely way of articulating the essential difference.

16. Okay, I definitely feel sick about this, because I live in the area and definitely have heard the Rob, Arnie and Dawn show. Unfortunately, the guys on the show think they know everything and mock people who disagree with them. They’re also very popular. However, I am glad that Chipotle and Snapple have pulled their advertisements, so I’m definitely going to send as many emails as I can.

17. I’ve read some of the transcript, and I am furious at the hate speech of these heartless hacks. They’re openly advocating child abuse. And until it becomes unprofitable to underwrite the salaries of these conscienceless, dangerous “entertainers” networks will continue to employ them. Hitting the sponsors in the pocketbook HARD is a lawful, effective, and fully commendable way to get these founts of prejudice off the air. I find myself frustrated that I can’t find language strong enough to express what I’m feeling about this atrocity.

18. Following up on KJ’s comment #13, here’s the message I got from Bank of America. hooray!

    In response to your inquiry, I would like to express our thoughts to you regarding Bank of America’s decision to discontinue advertising on the station and show in question.

    Bank of America is proud to be a leader in supporting diversity and continues to be widely recognized for our progressive workplace practices and initiatives to promote inclusion. This commitment to equality and diversity informs every aspect of our enterprise, including our approach to advertising. As a result, we adhere to a set of media buying guidelines for syndicated programming and for local stations that promote inclusion and help our company reach a broad range of diverse customers.

    Bank of America prides itself on fostering a corporate culture that is inclusive of all the communities we serve. Our customers, clients and associates speak different languages; support different family structures and life situations; and have unique and personal financial requirements. In order to meet the diverse needs of our customers, we require a variety of products and services, marketing and a diverse workforce that demonstrate and reflect our awareness and appreciation of who our clients and customers are.

    We hope the immediate actions that we have taken demonstrate our longstanding support of diversity, and we hope you inform members of your organization of the steps that we have taken to address your concerns.

    Thank you for your inquiry and bringing this to our attention.

    Joseph L. Goode, SVP

19. The Snapple I just drank was especially sweet.

20. Sonic Drive-In restaurants have pulled their advertising as well.

21. Also, I’ve been looking for an audio file for the segment, but it seems to have disappeared from the radio website, and links from blogs writing about the segment doesn’t lead to the segment anymore. Which is funny, because Rob and Arnie’s non-apology is based on how people shouldn’t try to censor the stuff on the show, and is based on how people who don’t listen to the show and didn’t listen to the segment are pulling quotes out of context. However, how is anyone supposed listen to the segment to get a full view of the controversy and supposedly understand that they “didn’t mean” to say what they said if they pulled the segment off? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. It’s all stupid!

22. This story makes me sick! Though of course gay and transgendered children are the most likely to be hurt by such talk, all children are potentially put at risk with such cruel talk. That kind of rigid policing of gender potentially destroys the joy and creativity of all children. A little boy who wants to wear his mom’s high-heeled shoes might be doing it because he wants to be a girl, but he might also be doing it because he likes the sound the shoes make when he walks around in them.

23. Julie, my son is the same way. He loves to put hair clips in his hair, likes to have his nails painted, has several baby dolls, etc. My daughter has rejected almost all things considered “girly”. She is far more interested in changing the oil in the car than princesses or dressing up. To me, these are just some of the things that make my kids special. It’s a part of who they are, and it breaks my heart to think that there are parents out there who would take the advise to beat their children into being something they are not. It’s just evil.

24. “I always have a hard time with stories like this one, because I just can’t understand why. What’s the point of terrorizing children? ”
    Shock jocks are the radio version of trolls, and trolls exist pretty much for the sole purpose of pissing people off (and since it’s clearly working, they succeeded)…

25. Horrible. Sickening. Heartbreaking. I’m a substitute teacher who frequently works in pre-k and kindergarten classrooms, and it’s totally normal for little boys to want to wear skirts and heels, and for little girls to don plastic construction helmets and play with dump trucks. Without experimenting, how is a child supposed to formulate an identity for him- or herself?

    I just sent an email to all advertisers listed (who haven’t already pulled their ads) asking them to pull ads from KRXQ. Hopefully the message gets across that violent hate speech against anyone, but especially innocent children, should and will not be tolerated.

26. Carl’s Jr. says they’ve pulled advertising too:

    Thank you for your email. We have pulled all of our ads from KXRQ. We did this as soon as the matter was brought to our attention.

27. I know it’s unbelievably horrible and damaging (from personal experience) and I’m really glad that pressure on advertisers has already gotten a couple large companies to pull out of supporting this kind of totally clueless, totally irresponsible macho yammering about how to raise kids who want to color outside the lines when it comes to gender. But are you guys really THAT surprised?

    Until relatively recently, it seems to me like this was pretty much the status quo, common sense method of dealing with gender non-conformity in kids, or at least kids put in the “boy” category. Hitting a kid with a shoe is pretty light compared to what happens to a whole lot of gender non-conforming kids. It’s good to be outraged even over stupid yammering from a talk show host, but the real problem is so much bigger; this is only a pinky pointing in the direction of the larger cultural problem, the very well-ingrained idea that you have to beat the femininity out of a kid in order to “make him a man.” That’s our construct of masculinity. But then, I already wrote about how I used to get sissy-whupped.

    Sorry, maybe I sound jaded and bitter on this subject.

    Update: looks like four companies have pulled advertising now, including Bank of America, Quiznos, Snapple, and Chipotle.

28. Holly, I’m not exactly surprised. Horrified and triggered, but the only surprise was their open boasting that they’d batter their children. How could I be? I grew up in Texas. (And later transitioned here, but that was much easier somehow.)

29. I got an email back from Alicia Rockwell, the contact listed here for Albertson’s. She works for Save Mart and says they’re not affiliated with the Albertson’s listed on the station’s advertisers page. They already don’t advertise on KRXQ because it’s not their target demographic. So there’s one less person to contact.

30. When this story first came up in my rss feed (I think Andrew Sullivan deserves the hat tip, but I’m not 100% sure) I made the mistake of tracking down the audio. Somehow it was even worse. As bad as the words were, it was the tone, the hatred, the rage in their voices that turned my stomach. I think Preying Mantis hit the nail on the head with the “someone you raise vs. something you own” comment.

    I also think that a lot of the hate directed at transgendered kids comes down to a simple understanding: transgendered kids become transgendered adults, and more transgendered kids will be more open about it if they grow up knowing its OK. Ultimately animals like these radio hosts are horrified by the idea of transgendered children because the fact that someone isn’t beating them into submission means that society is changing. They realize that in two decades when they hit on a waitress a third of their age she might be one of these kids, and they just can’t handle the thought. It goes beyond simply a belief that one owns children and extends right on to a belief that one owns everyone else, that sexuality is something that exists to service them, that others have a responsibility to conform to their expectations so they can figure out how to abuse them.

    Also, its great to see advertisers pulling their ads.

31. Snapple, Chipotle, Bank of America, and Carl’s Junior have ALL dropped their ads.

    mcDonalds and Wells Fargo Bank……please step up and join other national sponsors telling these two hate jock clods, NO CHILD will face being demeaned or abused to boost your lousy radio ratings.
    also covered here
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rowe/krxq-sacramento-radio-hos_b_210637.html?page=2&show_comment_id=25207401#postComment
    here
    http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/11310/snapple-sonic-chipotle-pull-advertising-from-krxq

    and a Daily Kos diary, and Sacramenmto Press

32. Thanks for bringing attention to this dispicable show of hate speech. But in the process of discussing it, could we please dispense with the term “gender non-conforming” to describe trans persons? It is a term of oppositional sexism that normalizes the fallacy of a male-female dichotomy, demeans other experiences and expressions along the continuum, and privileges cis-gendered bodies over trans bodies. A more appropriate term would be “gender variant.”

33. Bank of America, Carl Jr.’s and Verison have also pulled their ads.
    http://glaadblog.org/2009/06/05/verizoncarl/

34. I just want to add that some “respectable doctors” recommend forcing children to fit gender stereotypes (i.e., remove/destroy gender inappropriate clothes or toys). Once you pair this crazy idea up to the other crazy idea that the proper way to educate a child is violence, you have the result.
    When I was in my early teens my parents both hit me with shoes and insisted that I dress and behave in a gender-conforming way. They now have a 40-yr old butch-looking straight daughter who refuses to talk to them.

35. David, point taken. I used “gender non-conforming” because I was describing behavior, not people. The shock-jocks went after trans kids, but they were also attacking kids who exhibited any behavior that doesn’t fit into the gender binary. In other words, not all the kids they were attacking were trans; they were specifically targeting any behavior from kids that was outside of their narrow definitions of male and female. Hope that clarifies what I meant.

36. @ Jill: I appreciate where you are coming from. Perhaps I could have been more clear had I not been afraid of going off topic from the post and if I had taken a little more time to refine my statment. The term gender refers primarily to behavior (feelings, thoughts, expression, etc.) and less to bodies. The analogy is that of software to hardware. The term “gender variant” is a more respectful term to describe the children and behaviors that Rob, Arnie and Dawn were attacking.

    Also, I apologize for the threadjack. It’s just something I’ve been feeling sensitive to lately.

37. David, no need to apologize — it’s not a threadjack. I hadn’t realized that my terminology was off, so I apologize. I’ll use “gender-variant” from now on, since you’re right that it’s more accurate and respectful.

38. Done! I got replies from Verizon and Carl’s Junior saying they were pulling the advertising.

39. Actually, if I am remembering history correctly, the term gender non-conforming was coined because a lot of trans & various other folks felt that “gender-variant” was a little too clinical and lab-rat sounding. It’s actually a term that (in one instance, at least — the formation of the Trans Day of Action in NYC) came out of a coalition and community of trans & gender non-conforming people, and I’m proud to continue using it, since I think it’s actually a pretty apt description, moreso than “variant.”

    So David, I have to disagree with you quite a bit. “Variant” is just as normalizing of what you’re talking about as “non-conforming,” because what are you “varying” from? Some kind of norm, and any word that implies departure from a norm can be read to imply a hierarchy. “Variant” just has different overtones, and ones that I find more problematic; it’s a word that sounds like it has more basis in science than “non-conformism,” which has a history of social and religious resistance. A “variant” is a naturalized (essentialized, possibly) departure from some kind of norm in nature or biology, usually. So that word, to me at least, posits the existence of some part of gender as a norm that some people fall away from.

    I actually agree that “gender” is a term referring to social behaviors (even if someone were to argue that there’s a biological substrate) and not bodies, which is why “variant” makes even less sense as an attached term. Again, this is why “gender non-conforming” was put together in the first place, at least in the spot I witnessed that happening. Non-conformism also refers to departure from a norm, in a way that can be very deeply rooted in someone’s being, but it can also be an act of empowerment, or even a conscious decision (for instance, this is how I experience a lot of my own gender non-conformity). So I like the word just fine, and unless I see some more convincing arguments as to why it’s awful, I will be continuing to use it in posts on Feministe.

    And for the record, gender-variant does make me somewhat uncomfortable, probably because of the concerns I’ve heard raised with it repeatedly over the last three or four years. I’ve been part of several processes in various organizations, websites, etc. where those words have been weighed and language has been switched away from words like “variant” or “deviant” (argh, what?) or “genderqueer” (too specific of certain populations…) to “gender non-conforming.” So it’s a little eyebrow-raising to watch this turn into a seesaw of some sort. Chalk it up to differences of opinion and different processes happening around problematizing language in different places, which is actually a good thing. I’m not going to ask Jill or anyone else not to use it, because I think this kind of discussion over words and what they mean can actually be productive, and that it’s all right for people to have likes and dislikes when it comes to words. The intentions behind those words, when we get to that level of hair-splitting, may be more important. But as someone who IS trans and gender non-conforming, you can have those words when you pry them out of my cold dead hands. 🙂

40. You may also like to know that they were fined a while back for describing in great detail the way they would like to have violent sexual acts with women.
    I wont go into too much detail, but, “From behind while holding her head in the toilet and flushing…”
    http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2004/FCC-04-224A1.html

    ANYWAY! (shivers)

    “Nissan does not support the views expressed during the May 28th broadcast on the Rob, Arnie and Dawn in the Morning show on KRXQ.”
    http://glaadblog.org/2009/06/05/update-nissan-wont-renew-krxq-advertising-contract/

    8 sponsors gone thanks to our campaign and counting:
    Chipotle
    Snapple
    Sonic
    Bank of America
    Verizon
    Carl’s Jr (CKE Restaurants)
    Wells Fargo
    Nissan

41. I sent emails to those who haven’t responded (per comments made here).  I don’t think they’ll respond now, as it’s already 16:40 PDT, but hopefully I’ll hear back soon.

42. Ah!  And then two were made irrelevant by my not refreshing first!  *pleased*

43. Actually, if I am remembering history correctly, the term gender non-conforming was coined because a lot of trans & various other folks felt that “gender-variant” was a little too clinical and lab-rat sounding.

    I like “gender non-conforming” because its a wonderfully subversive little piece of language. It sets the terms right off the bat, putting trans* people not in opposition to a norm but in opposition to a social perception.

44. Amazing work, Manda! 8 sponsors is really something.

45. This is great news re: sponsors leaving. Michael Rowe, by the way, is a dear friend of mine and has been a wonderful addition to Huffpo. ‘Twas a great piece.

46. uh, i’d like to point out that some of these gender non-conforming “boys” we’re talking about here are trans girls, and some of these gender non-conforming “girls” we’re talking about here are trans boys.

    funny how on an article calling out these shitheads on their transphobia, that everybody (OP and the commenters) forgets that some of the kids ARE ACTUALLY TRANS, rather than (just) gender non-conforming kids of the sex that was assigned to them by others.

    christ on a cracker, folks.

47. It’s interesting to watch how the meanings of words continuously evolve politically in time and place. I was certainly not aware of the history you describe, Holly, behind the coining of “gender non-conforming,” or that it came about as part of a dialogue in a larger community. I guess news of this discussion has yet to filter down to the small, fractionalized world in which I live. So I will defer to you on that. I will also say that I like the feelings of social and religious resistance and empowerment implied by your favored term. I can see wanting to own that, though I don’t see that it sets the tone right off the bat, as William suggests (more on this below). And I agree with your suggestion that biology — bodies — and gender are interrelated and cannot truly be separated. Indeed, that metaphorical software mentioned in my earlier comment could not function independently of the hardware platform upon which it runs, and vice-versa.

    I see your point on the synonymy of variant and deviant. Ugh. And I share the view of moving away from clinical-sounding terms which so often give way to pathologizing differences. I hadn’t heard gender-variant being thought of in that sense. But for me, conforming and non-conforming are also problematic. One speaks of being “right” while the other is “wrong.” Applying those terms to gender makes me — as a person who is also gender non-conforming (to use your favored term) — “wrong.” By contrast, variation seems equalizing and inclusive, even of those on the extreme “ends” of the gender continuum. The cis-gendered, hyper-feminine female and cis-gendered hyper-masculine male are simply points of variation on the continuum — variations of color in a rainbow — equal to those of us who occupy different spaces. We don’t think of green or blue as “color non-conforming” to the ends of red or indigo. Red and indigo are not right; green and blue are not wrong. (As an aside, I’m also not much happier with the idea of a gender continuum than I am with that of a gender binary. Both carry hierarchies. I’d rather think of sex and gender more as points on a circle or something three-dimensional or even beyond dimensional.)

    I found much to agree with in your comment, Holly, to the extent that I’m not satisfied with either term right now. Gender non-conforming and gender-variant both have uncomfortable connotations. Neither feels entirely positive. With respect to William, I don’t think gender non-conforming immediately communicates opposition to a societal perception. Maybe it’s that the identification of any difference always seems to imply a relationship of subordination to some superordinate norm. The norm is always the default for what is “right” and “better” rather than an equal point of difference.

    In any event, thank you for your thoughtful perspective. I will think about this and carry it on for further discussion in my circles. I admit to jumping on this defensively at first, without thinking that the choice of terminology here has already been so carefully considered. On that point, I believe we do share the same intentions behind our choice of words.

48. AT&T and Mc Donalds just pulled their ads

49. The show’s response? “I think it’s ridiculous to even think that I’m advocating some violence against kids there,” States said on the air.

    “I know a lot of people don’t understand this,” he said a moment later. “That’s a joke.

    […]

    KRXQ’s station manager defended the DJs.

    “The show is filled with hyperbole and they use exaggerations to make a point,” Jim Fox said.

    Well, we’re not joking. I hope they find the drop in station revenue a sign of how not-funny it was. They can ether fire those waste of air creeps, or go out of business. I don’t care which.

50. “The show is filled with hyperbole and they use exaggerations to make a point,” Jim Fox said.

    I read this also and my first thought was…

    So what exactly was their point of not to say that trans kids, and kids perceived as queer don’t need support. Rather, they require ridicule and “consequences.

    Shitty hyperbole to make an equally shitty point.

51. My son is another one who played dressup with his sister when he was 3. Drove my husband nuts, but I kept telling him that it’s normal at that age.

    It’s certainly not something to punish a child for, even when they’re older. You’re not going to really change who your child is, just make them ashamed.

52. With respect to William, I don’t think gender non-conforming immediately communicates opposition to a societal perception. Maybe it’s that the identification of any difference always seems to imply a relationship of subordination to some superordinate norm. The norm is always the default for what is “right” and “better” rather than an equal point of difference.

    I threw that post off while I was taking a break from writing, and looking back I wasn’t as precise as I should have been and I was definitely unclear.

    I agree that any identification of difference is going to have an implication of being lesser and that any difference displayed on a valued label is likely to be seen only as deviance. The reason I like “gender non-conforming” is because, given those inevitabilities, its one of the more aggressive and challenging terms we can use in the discussion. It takes a step away from the clinical, recognizes not only the social part of gender but also the valuation, and immediately implies a challenge. Conforming implies a certain social interaction, a sacrifice of identity to a valued and socially enforced norm. Being non-conforming, then, is to recognize the social expectations and deliberately transgress against them by refusing to sacrifice identity for social gains.

    People are cognitively lazy creatures. When faced with something which does not fit our heuristic we first try to shoehorn it in anyway (you’re a boy in a dress, boys don’t wear dresses, you must be gay/confused/crazy/acting/looking for attention), then we try to deny that it exists or find some reason that the difference isn’t really there (maybe you’re really a girl, but for whatever reason you have the body of a boy). If both of those fail we try to alter our stereotypes just enough to fit in this new category we see and still maintain our world view (you’re one of those deviant trans people I’ve heard so much about). Each of these reactions allow us to approach a novel situation without doing more than the minimum work and without every challenging our stereotypes (perhaps this gender thing is bullshit…).

53. GallingGalla: what part are you talking about? I didn’t see anything in the original post referring only to boys, or referring to trans girls as “boys” either…

54. Yeah, sure, they pulled their ads.

    For now.

    Check again next month and see how many of those advertisers returned. It’s all part of the shock-jock business model.

55. “You may also like to know that they were fined a while back …”

    I worked for a federal regulator most of my career. For many companies, fines are just part of the overhead.

56. The RAD surrendered
    Monday the station will call GLAAD, no new shows are being made from RAD, and they air a show on Thursday to apologise, maybe say goodbye
    http://glaadblog.org/2009/06/07/update-krxq-radio-host-rob-williams-declares-failure/

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rowe/on-air-abuse-of-transgede_b_212121.html

57. um…

    hitting a child with a shoe – hitting a child at *all* – is child abuse. where are the prosecuters? “conspiracy to endanger a child”, or “incitement of child abuse”, not to mention extreme mental and emotional abuse for *any* child, parent, or person who cares about children and had to listen to any part of that (because it takes a minute to change the station, ya know? and it may not be your car, and you may not be *able* to change the station or turn it off). advocating hate crimes, and committing them by calling people horrible fucking names ON THE AIR, which brings in the FCC and may make them federal hate crimes (i’m not sure there… any lawyers around who would know?), bullying and verbal abuse that are *more* hates crimes (because they are attacking these children for perceived gender behavior, for perceived sexual orientation, both of which i think are covered under CA hate-crime bills?) and i am sure there are more actual fucking crimes that these two committed in just this segment

    they need to be in JAIL.
    cuz, fucked up as it is, it’s one thing to say shit like this about adults – one can presume that an adult is capable of realizing that, ugly as this shit it, it doesn’t *have* to affect you uf you don’t let it.
    Children? children have no FILTERS. they hear something, it’s true! they believe that there is a monster under the bed, they believe their face will get stuck like that, they believe if they are Bad the Goblins will come and take them away

    the two fucktard shock-jocks are the Goblins. and any child that heard that segment, even the most masculine of 5-year-old-boys or most feminine of 5-year-old-girls, probably tried to hide in the cloest so that the mean fucking monsters in the radio (because most little kids? think that the people talking in the radio, or the people who are shown on the TV, are IN THE RADIO RIGHT THERE, in the TV RIGHT THERE) are going to come out and beat them.

    also, total aside. High-heel-shoes were invented for MEN. they were all the rage in the court of (i believe) Louis the XVI, Sun-King of France.
    yep. high heels were made for men, because tall = masculine. and it showed their legs in a better way. and etc.

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