The NAACP leader should be commended for looking at the facts and revising his opinion.
Via RadioEqualizer.blogspot.com:
>Equally constructive is Sylvester Brown Jr.'s latest Post-Dispatch column:
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Blacks aren't a monolithic group. I only speak for myself. But that doesn't stop readers from demanding that I investigate or elaborate on racially peppered local and national incidents.
Yet, when it came to Dave Lenihan, no one asked my opinion. Perhaps they thought I'd immediately defend the firing of the former KTRS radio host Wednesday after he used a racial slur in reference to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
If so, they'd be so wrong.
"What's the big deal?" I thought, after reading Lenihan's comments while he discussed Rice's qualifications for the job as NFL commissioner:
"I mean she's just got the patent resume of somebody that's got some serious skill. She loves football," Lenihan said during his morning broadcast. "She's African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. . . . A big coon? Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that. OK? I didn't mean that. That was just a slip of the tongue."
I totally, totally, totally, totally, totally agree. Lenihan suffered a slip of the tongue. Unless he was playing some psychotic mind game of compliment-to-destroy, the "coon" reference wasn't even consistent with his words.
Based on what I had read, I believed radio station CEO Tim Dorsey overreacted when he fired Lenihan.
I listened to the tape and still didn't hear it. No sarcasm. No pleasure. All I heard was a guy who seemed sincerely embarrassed by his ill-chosen words.