Carter declined to reveal the content of the conversation, saying only that the Hardline fellows were congenial and apologetic.
After that momentary bout with selective memory loss--give him a break, he is nearly 50--Rhyner did recall his co-worker's distaste for certain material and confirmed he had a talk with Carter, although he wouldn't volunteer the particulars of the discussion, either.
Alyssa Banta
The Hardline -- Rhyner, Coby, Greggo: We make fun of ourselves more than anybody.
Related Content
More About
Still, their co-workers may be cool with them, but there are others who aren't always pleased with the station's line of racial humor.
"They're trying to be funny, they're experimenting with humor, and sports talk radio is their laboratory," says one listener, a minority, who works in the media and asked not to be identified for that reason. "Sometimes it will be a work of genius, sometimes it will blow up in their faces. But no matter how they disguise it, what they're saying does offend some people. Some of what they're saying is mean-spirited. They may think it's funny, and maybe they regret it later, but it certainly bothers some people."
Easter, won't you please, sir, tell me what's the big deal /
The black men are dancin' and the women are prancin', a cookin' up the afternoon meal /
Grandma by the hand, you can drop that fryin' pan, and throw her into that big ol' Ford /
We're a headin' to the steeple, there's a lot of black people, shoutin' hallelujah praise the lord /
Hallelujah praise the Lord...
--lyrics from Corby Davidson's song "Easter Loves the Black Man," as heard on The Ticket
So what's the deal? Are these good ol' boys merely having a good ol' time poking fun at ethnic foibles? Are their off-the-cuff remarks as innocent as they'd have you believe?
Or are they socially remiss in their judgment? Are they passing off a form or racism under the guise of sports radio?
Again, there's no obvious answer here, although Rhyner says people have plenty of options, like turning the dial. But that's a cop-out, something that only addresses the question of what to do if you're offended. It doesn't address the bigger picture: Do they cross the line? It also doesn't answer the question: Does their comedy, which sometimes teeters dangerously between the insensitive--perhaps even the malicious--and the hilarious, cross the line?
"I think PC [political correctness] went overboard," Williams says. "When it came into vogue in our country, it was at a time when changes needed to be made. But now, I think people are fed up with it. You can't say anything without offending someone.
"When it comes down to it, we're just trying to make people laugh. That's all. I want to entertain people and make them laugh. I don't want to offend people. Our mission is certainly not to offend, but with the type of show we do, we make a choice. What we do, it's not brain surgery. We made a choice to go in this direction. We know what people like."
He's right. And he's wrong. Funny how that works.
