The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same 2.0

That's Gerry Callahan on the left, next to John Dennis. What do these five have in common? Hmmm.
The local Boston talk radio station that carried Don Imus's radio show, 96.9 WTTK, is looking for another show for the Imus time slot.

And what new voice are they considering? Of course they're not considering a new voice. They're not considering a woman's voice. They're not considering a black voice. They're looking backwards to an old voice, an old pair of voices with their own long, sad history of racist and sexist comments.

BostonHerald: 96.9 eyes ‘Dennis & Callahan’ for Imus slot

"Dennis and Callahan" is a local sports radio station which is most famous for a September, 2003 bit in which they compared an escaped gorilla to a poor black kid bussed out to suburban schools. Classy:

METCO Controversy

On September 29, 2003, during a segment called 'headlines', where they read and comment about current news stories, Callahan and his morning co-host John Dennis made what were taken to be racially insensitive remarks while discussing a story about an escaped gorilla.[3] The gorilla had escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo and had been recaptured at a bus stop. According to newspaper articles, the exchange allegedly was: [4]

Callahan: "They caught him at a bus stop, right -- he was like waiting to catch a bus out of town."

Dennis: "Yeah, yeah -- he's a METCO gorilla."

Callahan: "Heading out to Lexington."

Dennis: "Exactly."

METCO is a state program that buses inner-city Boston students to nearby suburban schools. Many perceived the comments to be comparing poor, mostly African-American children to gorillas. WEEI general manager Tom Baker suspended both hosts for two days, then extended the suspension to two weeks after the Blue Cross-Blue Shield (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts) pulled $27,000 in ads and in turn donated that money to METCO (another report alleged that Blue Cross increased its advertising by $27,000 one week later [5]). Dunkin' Donuts responded by ceasing all advertising that involved the voices of John Dennis or Gerry Callahan. [6] Both hosts apologized and were sent to sensitivity training.

Are they sexist? I've certainly always thought so, from the fact that they very rarely have women on their program and never cover women's sports. According to the blog 'The Starting Five', during the Imus controversy (I didn't hear it myself) Dennis and Callahan claimed the Rutgers women's basketball team were guilty of extortion, and that they were anything but victims because they certainly had hip hop songs like 50 Cent on their iPods. Well, thousands of iPod owners probably have offensive lyrics on their iPods. Does that mean national TV/radio hosts can attack them with impunity, with racist and sexist taunts? Apparently Dennis and Callahan think so. And they're in line to get the Imus slot.

We may be having a national conversation on racism and sexism, but the guys in the suits filling the airwaves aren't listening.