quote:A popular radio personality was fired yesterday after making a series of shockingly ugly, racist and violent on-air remarks - including a threat to sexually molest the young daughter of a rival deejay.
The comments by Troi Torain - better known to his listeners on top-rated hip-hop station Power 105 (WWPR-FM) as DJ Star - were so over the top that he could be in hot water with the FCC and the Manhattan district attorney's office.
Torain offered listeners $500 to tell him where the daughter of nemesis DJ Envy, of Hot 97, went to school.
"Yes, I disrespect your seed," Torain ranted. "If you didn't hear me, I said I would like to do an R. Kelly on your seed. On your little baby girl."
Torain, 42, described in graphic detail what he meant by the reference to the R&B singer Kelly, who allegedly committed an unnatural act on an underage girl, a stunt captured on a widely circulated video.
Torain, who warned in his diatribe that he carries a gun, also called the wife of DJ Envy, whose real name is Rashawn Casey, a "whore," a "lo mein eater" and far worse anti-Asian slurs.
Casey could not be reached for comment. But his wife, Gia Casey, who appeared at a news conference with several City Council members yesterday, said she's now afraid that her kids could fall prey, if not to Torain, then to a crazed listener.
"I want his job to be yanked from him, and I want Clear Channel to have to be responsible on some level for allowing this to happen," she said. "Because not only have they condoned it, but by condoning it they have promoted it."
Yesterday afternoon, the station suspended him. Hours later, they fired him.
And it turns out that later he was arrested and released on bail.
This is of course way over the line, but it's unfortunate that Star (and why does a man call himself Star?) had to go this way. I listened to his show from time to time and he was really outrageous, for instance, saying to a religion professor he had as a guest, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, we all know that the Bible is like 10 percent love and 90 percent hate." You'd listen to him and constantly think, Did he really say that? He could have been what Sarah Silverman should be. And then he'd break up his outrageousness with talk about his six chihuahuas ("Oh yes ... this is how The Hater spends his glamorous weekends."), asking if any of his listeners would sell him a female chihuahua because his chihuahua Pancho was getting rather frisky. It was just a great juxtaposition.
quote:Does the man have some sort of mental disease? Why did he think he could get away with this?
In my experience, those with power are more prone to thinking that they can get away with anything.
It seems to happen a lot with radio personalities, too. Anyone else remember when NY's Hot 97 did a parody of "We Are the World" mocking the tsunami victims?
quote: There was a time, when the sun was shining bright So I went down to the beach to catch me a tan. Then the next thing I knew, a wave 20 feet high Came and washed your whole country away. And all at once, you can hear the screaming chinks. And no one was saved from the wave. There were Africans drowning, little Chinamen swept away. You can hear God laughing, 'Swim you bitches swim.'
So now you're screwed. It's the tsunami, You better run and kiss your ass away. Go find your mommy. I just saw her float by, a tree went through her head. And now your children will be sold. Child slavery.
It also included lines with brutally racist comments like "you could hear the screaming chinks" and references to child slavery.
When one of the DJs, who didn't know the song had been recorded, objected to their playing it repeatedly on the air, the other DJs got pissed at her and started accusing her of reverse-racism in favor of asians. Her co-host then said "I'm gonna start shooting asians."
At least this moron (Star) is being punished. The extent of the punishment for the Hot 97 DJs was, uh, a suspension without pay for...2 weeks, I think it was?
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quote:Why did he think he could get away with this?
Did you miss the 'shock' part of his job title? These guys have made a successful living by continuously pushing the line.
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Yeah, but if they want to keep their living, you'd think that they'd know exactly how far they can push, and that this was so far over the line that... the line is a dot to him.
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Here's another way of looking at it: maybe DJ Star views "DJ Star" and his victim as fictional personalities. TV personalities do and say things like this (and/or much worse) all the time, and no one associates the actor with the character.
I'm not saying that that's a valid or healthy way of looking at it, I'm trying to imagine what might have been going through his mind.
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Those guys routinely say things that make me think that the time before they crossed the line permanently is a pale and distant memory to them.
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quote:erosomniac, what tv characters-- on broadcast tv, during the morning-- say things like that?
On broadcast TV, in the morning, none that I can think of - which I'm seeing is an important distinction. Still, if DJ Star can't distinguish between one side of the line and the other, I'm not inclined to believe he understands the difference between daytime public broadcasting and nighttime cable TV.
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The problem with most radio show hosts and even political pundits on radio and TV is they spend so much time talking just to be heard that they tend to turn off their brains and let their mouth run rampant.
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I'm trying to imagine how repugnant someone would have to become before that kind of thing would spill out of their mouths even if their brains were turned off.
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He's gotten in trouble before; here you can listen to his famous "rat eater" bit, in which he tells off an Indian customer service representative for trying to sell quick beads (the sort of beads you see Venus and Serena Williams wear). Since when is "rat eater" a known insult?
I probably shouldn't find this funny---maybe I'm just finding it funny how Star keeps destroying his career--but really, who hasn't wanted to scream when they've found out that their call has been outsourced to India, especially when the representative can't be bothered to conceal the fact that he/she's from India?
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I am considerably more annoyed when a representative unsuccessfully tries to conceal the fact that he or she is from a remote call center than when they make no effort to fool me and simply admit that fact up front.
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Because shock jock fans regularly cheer them on and love to see the envelope pushed, ripped, thrown away. Most of the hardcore fans don't see a problem with this kind of thing, but the hardcore fans aren't the ones calling for the shock jock's punishment.
Something like Ann Coulter saying whatever foul, hateful thing sells more books. Although in her case I suspect she knows exactly what she's doing.
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Actually in places like India when they get a new wave of people being hired for call services- they have large classes to teach them American or British accents (depending on where the calls are coming from).
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Yes, that's why it annoys me if you can tell that a representative is Indian; it feels like the outsourcing company just didn't try very hard to fool me.
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I'm rather annoyed that the outsourcing company feels it's necessary to try to fool me at all. I don't CARE if the person I'm talking to is in India, provided they understand what I'm saying and have enough of a technical understanding of the topic to realize after the first few seconds that merely reading from the script isn't going to resolve my problem, or else I'd've solved the problem already by working through the same script.
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quote:who hasn't wanted to scream when they've found out that their call has been outsourced to India
Me. I can't say I've noticed a difference in quality based on the person being in India or not.
quote:Yes, that's why it annoys me if you can tell that a representative is Indian; it feels like the outsourcing company just didn't try very hard to fool me.
The accent isn't about fooling people - it's about making the representatives more understandable.
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I'd say there's a chance it might be somewhat abouut fooling people, given how upset some Americans are about outsourcing such jobs.
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Except in the situations we're talking about, "the outsourcing company just didn't try very hard to fool me."
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My only requirement for outsourcing is that the person speak English well enough to understand me when I do things like spell my name for them. Calling another CSR claiming that I don't speak English is RIGHT. OUT.
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My experience is that when the called is outsourced, they can do nothing. I can figure out the obvious things on my own - if I'm calling, I need to talk to someone who can actually do something. They can't do anything - I might as well be on hold.
After a particular dreadful three hours on the phone with India after travelocity issued a ticket in the wrong name and everyone I talked said to just lump it, that's too bad, I called my bank. Who told me to call India. I went through it all again, and at this point I was sobbing with anger and frustration and being out the price of a last-minute plane ticket for travel the next week.
Matt took the phone and managed to find someone at my bank that made things better, but it was such a dreadful experience that I wince now if I hear an Indian accent on the other end of the line. For all the good it will do, they might as well send customers straight to Muzak for three hours.
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Hey, I know this is a late update, but if you go to YouTube and search for Star and Bucwild you can find a video that, at the very end, has Star saying one of the lines that got him fired---as well as other Star videos.
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