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Article: D.C. radio shock jock crosses the line
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- February 28, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1999 Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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Ethnic jokes. We've all heard them. We may have even laughed at
some of them. But when a radio personality in Washington, D.C., made
a crude comment that referred to an African-American man who had been
dragged to his death, he was fired.
Sure, Doug "Greaseman" Tracht was a shock jock. And to
paraphrase Howard Stern, shock jocks often say things on the air that
the rest of us may be thinking but would never say out loud.
But not even Stern had the nerve to play a snippet of a song by
Lauryn Hill - an African-American woman - and quip, "No wonder people
drag them behind trucks." The comment was a reference to the death
of James Byrd Jr. of Jasper, Texas.
"People make mistakes, but it was ...