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This Bostonist would be the first to admit to chiding Green/Rainbow gubenatorial candidate Grace Ross for her earth-mother fashion sense and her mullet. But how a person's appearance should have absolutely no connection to how a person does her job.
John DePetro of WRKO clearly did not get that memo. DePetro got fired for calling Grace Ross a "fat lesbian" on the air after the last debate. He said, "Will somebody tell that fat lesbian to shut up?" Given the context, he basically said she wasn't fit to speak and run for governor precisely because she was a "fat lesbian." By that logic, does DePetro support Healey for governor because she's a skinny straight?
Now, Ross isn't svelte, and she's out of the closet. In that sense, DePetro didn't say anything wrong. But being a large lesbian doesn't mean she couldn't be governor. (This Bostonist isn't endorsing anyone, but Ross would at least be around the state more often than ne'er-do-well Mitt Romney.)
And it stinks to have to bring it up yet again, but it must be done. Would the WRKO jock have made such comments about the appearances of the male candidates? DePetro knew he'd be fired and would risk a butt-whooping if he dared say anything about what Deval Patrick looks like. He wouldn't have said Christy Mihos was unfit to be governor because Mihos is almost as tan as George Hamilton. But he clearly thought it was okay to call Grace Ross a "fat lesbian." He must have thought she was an easy target.
He was wrong. WRKO should be commended for firing him. Oh, there'll be whining about how it's just political correctness and Massachusetts squelched a conservative voice. DePetro is also painting himself as a victim. An unrepentant DePetro wished he called Ross "obese" when Fox 25 interviewed him. It's as if he blames Ross's size for his firing instead of his own blabby mouth.
DePetro has no right to say those things about Grace Ross unless he's willing to say those kinds of things about all the other candidates or chooses to take the scrutiny by running for governor himself. And then he'd find out how it feels if someone says he can't run the state just because he's a pasty-faced, beady-eyed unemployed shock jock.
Screengrabs of DePetro and Ross taken from Fox 25.
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He said it because he knew he could get away with it. Glad he got fired.
He shouldn't have just called her OBESE, but should have mentioned her anti Israel stand and her support for terriots organizations.
Does she know (I really doubt it) that the terriots and their backers in Afganistan would bury homosexuals up to the waist and then run bulldozers over them to cut them in half, because they are only half of one sex. Well that takes care of that problem.
Oh yes, let's embrace the new world order!
He called her a "fat lesbian" because he wanted to be a wise ass about it, not because he thinks she is unfit because she fat and gay. Besides, there really is nothing untrue about the comments, it was just rude. Is she not a lesbian and is she not obese? And since you ask "Would the WRKO jock have made such comments about the appearances of the male candidates?" Well in fact he did a similar thing in the past about former Massachusetts Turnpike chief Matt Amorello, so I think he probably doesn't care about gender. My question is: Would a radio show host be fired for saying a straight or heterosexual person is fat? I think not. Its clearly a double standard.
John could have easily gotten away with a comment like this if he had the ratings. The reality is that he was on the verge of being fired anyway for low ratings, so management took the easy way out.
So the double standard is just an illusion. The real standard in talk radio is ratings.