Worst Talk Show Hosts of the Week

Week Ending: May 4, 2007

Our worse talk host of the week is Barb Stanton, who formerly did a noon to 3 pm talk show on KIXW/960 in Victorville, CA. We say formerly, because Stanton was immediately suspended from the Clear Channel station, which serves this small market northeast of Los Angeles, when she urged her listeners to withdraw their money from a local bank following the announcement of a merger with Pasadena-based East West Bank.

According to the Victorville Daily Press, Stanton said that customers would "see more Chinese faces in the bank than ever before." She also called East West President Dominic Eng, a "Chinese-looking guy," and "a foreigner." (Ng is an American citizen.)

Clear Channel, which is involved in multi-billion dollar effort to take the company private, did not waste any time in suspending Stanton. It’s one thing to attack Asians, it’s another thing to attack Asian bankers.

Our worser talk host this week is Glenn Beck, who shamelessly played the Hitler card in an attempt to criticize Al Gore’s campaign to heighten public awareness of global warming.

On the April 30 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Beck likened the former Vice President’s fight against global warming to Adolf Hitler's use of eugenics as justification for exterminating 6 million European Jews. Beck said:

"Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is a global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world. That is the goal. Back in the 1930s, the goal was to get rid of all of the Jews and have one global government."

He continued: "You got to have an enemy to fight. And when you have an enemy to fight, then you can unite the entire world behind you, and you seize power. That was Hitler's plan. His enemy: the Jew. Al Gore's enemy, the U.N.'s enemy is global warming."

Talk show hosts are known to make unkind comments about each other, but I can’t recall when a host has spoken out unkindly about another host's mother. (Especially when that mother was recently deceased.) This is exactly what Mike McGee Sr. did on his weekday talk show on May 3, when he expressed some disparaging and disgusting comments about the mother of WTMJ/620 talk host Charlie Sykes.

Two days after Katherine Sykes died in house fire, McGee, who did a weekday talk show on WNOV/860, told his radio audience that he “ain’t got no tears” about her tragic death." He continued, “matter of fact, a woman that would have a fool like that deserves whatever is coming her. She raised a sure enough idiot.”

McGee even went so far as to suggest that Charlie Sykes was responsible for his mother’s death.

“My instincts say Charlie Sykes killed his momma, cuz she live out in this big palace in Mequon all isolated. He got tired of waiting for her money,” he said.

McGee was immediately suspended.

Sykes' boss, WTMJ general manager Jon Schweitzer, kept his cool when asked for a comment on McGee's monologue: "I won't dignify it with a comment, especially out of respect for Charlie at this time."

Sykes and McGee have maintained an on-going feud over the airwaves for several years.

WNOV CEO/President Jerrel Jones said that McGee’s comments were “absolutely across the line” and said “it would be a long time before McGee returns - if ever.”

We say that McGee’s outrageous comments wins him the title of the worst talk host of the week.