In case you missed it, Tim Wolfe resigned as president of the University of Missouri system in the face of widespread student protests over school officials’ lackadaisical response to racist incidents at the main campus in Columbia. The sight of students daring to speak out sent the wingnut fringe into full meltdown. But believe it or not, the most outrageous response on right-wing talk radio didn’t come from Rush Limbaugh. Nope, it came from a radio host in Houston who engaged in an ugly and blatantly racist attack on the football team for threatening to stay on the sidelines until Wolfe was gone.
Michael Berry hosts two shows on KTRH in Houston–one in the morning, the other in the afternoon. His afternoon show is syndicated to several other talk stations that, like KTRH, are owned by iHeartMedia (the former Clear Channel). On Monday, just hours after Wolfe resigned, Berry declared that this was a case of “the tail wagging the dog.” After ticking off the numerous research projects underway at MU, Berry asked the school’s leadership, “You’re letting a few thugs decide who your president will be?”
As Berry saw it, the University of Missouri’s Board of Curators has “a major problem with (its) priorities” if it couldn’t tell the players to “shut their mouth and play football.” Wolfe’s forced ouster amounted to an act of “pandering.” He also had a warning for the board:
“This will not be the last time this group of thugs flexes their muscles. You can rest assured on that. When you pander to a bully, you empower that bully.”
Notice the term Berry used–“thugs.” It’s the same term that the right used for the protesters in Ferguson, New York City, and Baltimore–in effect, saying that peaceful protesters are no different from the knuckleheads who engaged in violent behavior. Let’s not sugarcoat this–this right-wing host was blowing a racist dog whistle into a megaphone.
Apparently, Berry doesn’t want his listeners to know that it wasn’t just the black players who were in on this boycott. A little over 12 hours after 30 players declared they would not practice or play until Wolfe was gone, head coach Gary Pinkel threw his support behind them in dramatic fashion. He tweeted a picture of himself sitting with most of his players, black and white, declaring that they were “united” behind the boycott.
Pinkel later said that several of his players came to him during the week–some of them visibly crying–out of concern for the welfare of Jonathan Butler, a graduate student who went on a hunger strike in protest of school and system officials’ inadequate response to several instances of racial intimidation. Pinkel didn’t give a second thought to backing his players. As he saw it, all that mattered was that “a young man’s life was on the line”–and he’d do the same thing all over again.
So riddle me this, Michael–is Pinkel a thug? Are his coaches thugs? Are the white players thugs? And if the answer to either of those questions is “yes,” would you have the guts to say that to the faces of Pinkel, his staff, and his players?
What these players did is really no different in spirit from Rosa Parks refusing to go to the back of the bus. It’s hard not to notice the irony. During the civil rights era, segregationists were calling Parks and other civil rights protesters “dangerous agitators” and “Communist sympathizers”–terms that have the same connotation as a right wing host calling the current generation of protesters “thugs.”
It’s not the first time that Berry has stooped to this level. In June, when black students at UCLA called for greater diversity in Westwood, Berry called them “pack animals.” He called the kids who were held by police breaking up a pool party in McKinney Texas “jungle animals.” I know not to expect much from a company with Limbaugh on its payroll. But there is no place for this kind of racism in civilized discourse. Period, full stop.
You know what to do, Liberal America. Pester KTRH on Facebook and Twitter. Also, be sure to pester iHeartMedia on Facebook and Twitter. But be civil, folks–let’s show them that we’re of better stuff than Berry.
