BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Thursday, February 05, 2004
Jay Severin's rotten mouth.
I can't imagine there are many Media Log readers who take
Jay
Severin seriously. But I've
been thinking about how and when I wanted to give the trash-talking
WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) host a whack for his frequent use of the racist
- yes, racist - word "wetback." Today he gave me what I'd been
looking for.
I was in my car. I wasn't rolling
tape, and I wasn't taking notes, so pardon the lack of quotation
marks. But, essentially, when I tuned in, he was berating a woman
who'd called to complain about his offensive invocation of "wetback"
and "wetback welcome wagon" in criticizing US immigration
policy.
Severin's angry response (and he
was angry; in 20 years of listening to talk radio, I have
never heard a host get as hostile to those with whom he
disagrees as Severin does) was mainly based on what he called her
ignorance of the term. "Wetback" is simply a word for illegal
immigrant, he told her. Look it up in the dictionary. It's got
nothing to do with Hispanics or Hispanic-Americans, as she had
claimed.
The poor woman. She didn't have a
dictionary in front of her. Severin had his producer cut her off so
that he could spout at length before letting her get back up off the
floor. All she could do was mutter that he must know he was being
offensive, and that he was relying on a "technicality." Smugly, he
replied that the "technicality" she was referring to was the English
language.
What arrogant bullshit.
Here
is the definition of "wetback" from the American Heritage Dictionary
(fourth edition, 2000):
Offensive Slang
Used as a disparaging term for a Mexican, especially a laborer who
crosses the U.S. border illegally.
This
is what Merriam-Webster Online has to say:
usually offensive:
a Mexican who enters the U.S. illegally
MSN Encarta - which threw up a
warning screen telling me that I was about to access offensive
material - says:
a taboo term for a Mexican
person recently arrived in the United States, especially somebody
who has entered the country illegally to work as a laborer
The Cambridge Dictionary of
American English puts it this
way:
a Mexican worker who
illegally crosses the border to get work in the US. This is an
offensive word.
"Offensive." "Taboo." Get the
picture, Jay?
If you follow the links, you will
note that virtually every entry for "wetback" traces the origins of
the word back to the practice of Mexicans' swimming across the Rio
Grande to get into the US. So much for "wetback" having nothing to do
with Hispanics.
For a while, Severin got a lot of
scrutiny. But it seems like in the past year or so, he's gotten a
free pass. WEEI Radio (AM 850) suspended John Dennis and Gerry
Callahan for a bit that compared black school children to an escaped
gorilla. WRKO Radio (AM 680) fired John "Ozone" Osterlind for
suggesting that Israel should "eradicate" the Palestinian people.
(Osterlind has denied it, and I've never heard the tape.) Sadly, 'RKO
(which pays me to blab about the media on Pat Whitley's show once a
week) continues to let Howie Carr denigrate gays and welfare
mothers.
But Severin goes about his merry
way, making fun of "wetbacks" and "towelheads," and no one says a
word. Well, it's offensive and degrading, and WTKK management
shouldn't put up with it.
And, no, his knowledge of the
English language is not nearly as impressive as he claims. In this
one instance, at least, he's dead wrong. He should apologize to that
woman.
posted at 8:06 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
