Things get worse for radio host who used racial epithet on air

ST. LOUIS -- If Wednesday was rough for fired talk show host David Lenihan, Thursday didn't get much better. He was awakened at 5:30 a.m. by shock jock Howard Stern, who informed him he was on the air.

Stern wanted Lenihan to discuss his firing Wednesday for using a racial epithet in describing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Lenihan had the morning show on St. Louis radio station KTRS.

"Howard Stern was most upset about it," Lenihan said. "He told me to ... sue these people. He said this is moronic."

To top it off, Lenihan was suspended Thursday from his job at Logan College of Chiropractic, where he's taught anatomy and neuroanatomy since September 2004.

Most of the day, Lenihan took calls from the media. A few white supremacists called him, too.

Lenihan also got a call from associates of Larry Elder, a nationally syndicated, black conservative talk show host, who invited him for an interview.

Elder said he suspects Lenihan morphed the words "coup" and "boon" to come up with "coon." He said prominent blacks have made disparaging remarks about Rice and gotten away with it, and feels Lenihan's firing was unfounded.

Former KMOX announcer Frank Absher, who founded the St. Louis Radio Hall of Fame and teaches journalism at Saint Louis University, said broadcasters and all media "assume the responsibility for speaking appropriately and for thinking before speaking."

Before the 1980s, an announcer could lose a license for saying something inappropriate or offensive, he said. "Those standards are gone now," he said. "It's that simple. But they still have a responsibility to think before they speak."

Station management also must be careful to hire appropriate people, he said.

Lenihan, who'd been in radio only three years, has chiropractic degrees and had moved to St. Louis for postdoctoral work on spinal cord injury at Washington University. He became a frequent listener of WGNU radio. One afternoon, he heard a talk show host make a remark about former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, whom Lenihan said he had met in Europe.

Lenihan said he wrote WGNU a letter, took up an argument, and the next thing he knew he was offered a job. He worked there for three years before starting two weeks ago at KTRS as a morning show host.

He said he has loved talk radio, but both careers are up in the air. Logan suspended him Thursday pending an internal investigation.

KTRS president and general manager Tim Dorsey fired Lenihan on Wednesday, 20 minutes after he twice used the word "coon," a racial slur. Both Dorsey and Lenihan have maintained that Lenihan was trying to say "coup" in describing Rice's attributes for the commissioner's job.

Dorsey reiterated Thursday that use of the word was "completely uncalled for and grounds for dismissal.

"We listened to the tape, listened again, and the word came out a second time," he said.

He said the dismissal was "absolutely not" done for political reasons.

Before saying the word, Lenihan had high praise for Rice, a football aficionado who has said she aspires to someday run the NFL. Rice has ruled out trying to replace retiring commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

After several calls from listeners on the subject, Lenihan said this on the air:

"She's been chancellor of Stanford. She's got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football. 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.

"I didn't mean that. It was just a slip of the tongue. She's definitely got all the attributes to be commissioner. I'm really sorry about that."

Calls poured into the station, and about 20 minutes later, Dorsey made an on-air apology to Rice and KTRS listeners.

Dorsey and Lenihan both called the use of the word a "slip of the tongue," but Dorsey said that wouldn't excuse him.