The radio in my car doesn’t work and I’m more inclined to listen to music than talk radio, so I don’t listen to The Opie and Anthony Show. I have heard the show, but probably not in the last decade. My impression was that they were knuckleheads kind of in the Howard Stern genre whose main appeal was to young males who have little maturity and no seriousness. I did notice that they had run into trouble once or twice, resulting in the cancellation of their program, but I didn’t remember any of the details.
It looks like they might have finally immolated themselves for good now that Anthony Cumia went on an epic racist tangent on Twitter and forced SiriusXM to terminate their program.
It’s a familiar thing. Mr. Cumia was taking pictures in and around Times Square late at night when a black woman objected to being photographed. When Mr. Cumia responded by calling her some kind of expletive, the woman got aggressive and began punching him. Then some black men got involved in some unspecified way and Mr. Cumia came away from the incident with a raging animus against all black people. You can read about the unsavory details here.
I don’t know if this will be another example where the right complains about the suppression of free speech or not, but what interests me is this tendency to blame an entire race for an unpleasant experience with a few individuals. It’s that old Irving Kristol saw about conservatives being liberals who have been mugged by reality. If being a victim of crime can change your entire political worldview, you must not have had strong reasons for your beliefs. And to blame millions of people for the crimes of a few is the sign of a weak mind.
In this case, too, the misogynistic language used by Mr. Cumia was equally offensive to his racist language but probably won’t elicit anywhere near the same amount of condemnation.
“…what interests me is this tendency to blame an entire race for an unpleasant experience with a few individuals.”
SO true. McVeigh murders hundreds, and the powerful in our culture did not/would never say “we have a problem with young white conservative men who join these crazy militias.” An African-American woman curses out a despicable racist shock jock on the street, and we have to deal with the joyous claim from much of white American culture that “blacks are inherently criminal and violent.”
“…the misogynistic language used by Mr. Cumia was equally offensive to his racist language but probably won’t elicit anywhere near the same amount of condemnation.”
True, and doubtless.
My impression was that they were knuckleheads kind of in the Howard Stern genre whose main appeal was to young males who have little maturity and no seriousness.
That’s a slight to Stern. Not saying Stern is any great shakes. But at least he was funny, even if it was long ago, and was interesting. Can’t say the same for Opie and Anthony. How they remained employed doing radio shows is a big mystery to me. Unless their audience was 100% frat types. But then they’ve always struck me as bigots.
Ahhhhh yes…..yes it is. But it is just so damn convenient, now isn’t it?
Somehow I expect the Republic will survive
I remember them. I also remember when Congressman Weiner got in trouble. They were talking to Breitbart and really wanted to see the pics on Breitbart’s phone. I thought it was odd that conservative men were proud of having those kind of pics(of course I do).
The left could use more people that fight dirty. MSNBC is not the answer. More enterprising types like Stiviano would be a welcome development. You can’t get as dirty as someone with nothing to lose. Conservatives have a million things they’re dependent on(mortgage, corporate endorsements, church image, etc). A Stiviano depends on the victims’ stupidity. It’s something to look into moving forward.