BOB GRANT IS BACK ON WABC RADIO

[mord]

8-10 PM    




http://www.wabcradio.com/Article.asp?id=462130&spid=


 

[Dan]

I remember Chaim speaking about him... Is he really a conservative, right wing guy? or something like Michael Savage?
 

[mord]

NO HE IS THE ORIGINAL

[Dan]

It's impressive to get someone that has conservative views on ABC nowadays...

[mord]

It's impressive to get someone that has conservative views on ABC nowadays...

HERES WHAT LEFTISTS SAY ABOUT BOB GRANT       



http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1343   

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Extra! Update June 1996

FAIR's Bob Grant Success




Thanks in part to activists from all over the country who contacted ABC and Disney, FAIR's campaign against the bigotry of talkshow host Bob Grant has been a success.

The success was not in Grant's firing from New York's WABC, the flagship of Disney/ABC's radio empire. FAIR, in fact, never called for Grant to be taken off the air--we called on Disney to publish its policy regarding on-air racial slurs, and to add anti-racist counterweights to Grant--and in any case, Grant was back on the air in little more than a week, on New York's WOR.

The success, rather, has been in reaffirming the values that FAIR has insisted on from the beginning: that racial slurs and calls for violence are not a healthy part of public discourse. Our reestablishment of these standards is demonstrated by the lies Grant now feels compelled to tell about his past statements.

The last straw for Disney/ABC was Grant's comment after Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's plane went down in Bosnia (4/3/96): "My hunch is [Brown] is the one survivor. I just have that hunch. Maybe it's because at heart I'm a pessimist." Grant tried to portray this remark as a momentary lapse of taste. "I never wished Ron Brown dead," Grant told Newsday (4/19/96). "The only people I've ever wished dead were Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein."

But Bob Grant has long wished for--or gloated over--the deaths of his (disproportionately non-white) enemies. He prayed for Magic Johnson to "go into full-blown AIDS" (10/1/92); he commented that the black victim killed by a white mob in Howard Beach, Brooklyn "got what was coming to him." (12/9/92) His solution to a gay pride march (6/29/94): "Ideally, it would have been nice to have a few phalanxes of policemen with machine guns and mow them down."

Bob Grant has frequently called African-Americans names like "savages." He's used the slur to refer to everyone from black fraternities (who, because they left a mess on a New Jersey beach, represent "the savage mind, the primitive, primordial mentality"-- 7/15/93) to black churchgoers ("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).

Grant now puts a different spin on the word. "'Savage' has nothing to do with race," Grant told Larry King (Larry King Live, 4/30/96). "I was talking about people who were burning, robbing, looting in the wake of the Rodney King verdict, the first Simi Valley verdict. I was talking about people and their conduct, not people and their race."

Grant has long referred to whites as being "higher on the evolutionary scale" (12/13/93); he bemoaned the non-white majority in New York City (Newsday, 6/2/92): "To me, that's a bad thing. I'm a white person." Dismissing an African-American caller, he once snorted that "his kind...weren't intended to speak a civilized language." (9/16/93) Now Grant plays down his frequently expressed eugenicist views: "Can anybody really find somewhere where I made a statement in which I put down an entire race of people?" he asked (WPIX-TV, 4/29/96).

Grant's revisionist take on his own career is accompanied by a great deal of complaining about the unfairness of FAIR. But every time he (and his fans) insist that he would never make the kind of statements he used to regularly make, he reinforces our point that such language has no part in responsible radio speech.

Sidebar:
Won't Share Air with Bigot

After being fired by Disney/ABC's WABC, Grant quickly found a new home at WOR, owned by the far smaller Buckley Broadcasting Corp., which has announced his attention to nationally syndicate Grant. Ironically, Grant had worked for WOR back in the '70s, and had been suspended there for referring to black heavyweight fighters as "baboons."

But in 1996, WOR has no compunction about capitalizing on WABC's decision. "We're in the business of improving ratings," a station spokesperson explained (Daily News, 4/28/96). "We're in the business of improving revenues."

One member of the WOR family who didn't subscribe to that logic was Arthur Frommer, the publisher of the popular travel guides who hosted a weekly show on the station. After Grant's hiring was announced, Frommer quit his show and issued this statement:


The decision by WOR to fan the flames of racial conflict in New York, in order to earn additional millions in advertising revenue, is utterly irresponsible and abhorrent, and should be condemned by every New Yorker.... If the object of Bob Grant's vile filth had been Jews, or Italians, or Irish-Americans, it is inconceivable that WOR would have taken this step.... I can no more present my program on a WOR devoted to broadcasting what I regard as claims of a master race than I could have appeared with Joseph Goebbels on a radio station in Berlin devoted to the same end.


If you'd like to send a statement of your own to WOR--which is hoping to syndicate Grant to a station near you--write to station manager Bob Bruno at 1440 Broadway, New York, NY (phone: 212 642 4500; fax: 212 642 4486).



See FAIR's Archives for more on:
Talk Radio
Disney/ABC Radio Networks
Race and Racism

[Dan]

Thanks Mord... I now have a better understanding of what going on!

[cjd]

In his day Bob Grant was the big cheese of talk radio. I have always listened to Grant right from his start in New York. If I remember correctly he started at 66 am wmca or some other station however when 77Am wabc went to talk format he moved there. He was a ball of fire in his early days telling people he argued with to meet him outside the station so he could knock their teeth out. The PC bunch slow but surely muzzled him up to the point that in the end he was not the same and I could no longer listen to the entire show each day as I always did it was to disappointing. I heard him a few times in the past few weeks and he sounded like his old self so at two hours a night  it might be worth tuning in to see what he has to say. I asked Chaim about what he thought of Grant and what he said about him sounded about right. My parents went on a two week trip with him some years ago and they sort of had the same impression of him that Chaim expressed. Grant is for Grant. I have a feeling that Chaim would not do it if he could but this is the show that I would want to see Chaim do an interview on. If he did Grants show the other hosts would be knocking on Chaim's door also.

[mord]

In his day Bob Grant was the big cheese of talk radio. I have always listened to Grant right from his start in New York. If I remember correctly he started at 66 am wmca or some other station however when 77Am wabc went to talk format he moved there. He was a ball of fire in his early days telling people he argued with to meet him outside the station so he could knock their teeth out. The PC bunch slow but surely muzzled him up to the point that in the end he was not the same and I could no longer listen to the entire show each day as I always did it was to disappointing. I heard him a few times in the past few weeks and he sounded like his old self so at two hours a night  it might be worth tuning in to see what he has to say. I asked Chaim about what he thought of Grant and what he said about him sounded about right. My parents went on a two week trip with him some years ago and they sort of had the same impression of him that Chaim expressed. Grant is for Grant. I have a feeling that Chaim would not do it if he could but this is the show that I would want to see Chaim do an interview on. If he did Grants show the other hosts would be knocking on Chaim's door also.

I meet Grant twice he seemed like a great guy

[cjd]

Don't get me wrong my parents had a great time with him but he was at the peak of his career and he let everyone know it.

[mord]

Don't get me wrong my parents had a great time with him but he was at the peak of his career and he let everyone know it.

[Joe Gutfeld]

If Bob Grant can come back, so can Imus.

[cjd]

If Bob Grant can come back, so can Imus.

Grants transgressions were not as blatant as Imus's were also his last show was basically just canceled he was not fired.

[cjd]

Grant is on now and he actually sounds great. He is talking about illegals and he  isn't holding back he's speaking very freely.