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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
After firing humorist Sandra Tsing Loh for letting the F-word slip onto the airwaves, a public radio station offered her job back. But Loh said no, and tells Salon why.
Mar 16, 2004 | Janet Jackson, Bubba the Love Sponge, Howard Stern and ... Sandra Tsing Loh? The latest victim of the FCC's new game of fear factor is a humorist whose recent "Loh Life" commentary for NPR affiliate KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., was a series devoted to knitting. But when she used the F-word in a pre-recorded commentary last week that an engineer forgot to bleep, her NPR bosses pulled the plug.
Loh had been riffing on domestic life and her husband's stint playing guitar for Bette Midler, when this thought aired, uncensored: "He does play guitar for Bette Midler on her massive new stage show, so I guess I have to fuck him."
The piece aired twice before the management noticed. And when it did, the station went into overdrive. Station manager Ruth Seymour told the Los Angeles Times: "We really are serious with her, that with such a trivial, self-serving piece, she put us all in danger." A page devoted to Loh's commentary was deleted from the KCRW Web site and with it links to such potentially inflammatory "Loh Life" features as "I'm Knit-Crazy, Pt. 1" and "Season of Good Will." Loh faxed a letter of apology to Seymour taking blame for the "disaster," but of course, she was fired, her weekly commentary canceled.
Finally, on Monday, cooler heads seemed to prevail, and KCRW management called Loh to see if she wanted to resume her column. But Loh, 42, declined to go back. She talked about the decision, and the whole imbroglio, to Salon by phone:
How did this all happen?
For six years I've been doing weekly commentaries at KCRW. They used to be four-minute segments; now, three. It's a pre-taped situation: The computer runs, and we record about three takes. They edit for pick-ups, for length and little sound effects. And in my case we had agreed on a bleep.
It was a piece about Bette Midler's recent concert in Los Angeles. My husband plays guitar with her on this tour. Miss Midler, if you've seen any of her live shows: she's just a little bit blue. It's hilarious; it's political. One of the jokes is, "What's the generic name for Viagra? Mycocksafloppin." It's in that bawdy, vaudeville rhythm. It's all about a certain rhythmic timing.
I was just alluding to my husband playing in connection with that band. I said, blahblahblahblah -- and then, "So I guess I have to BLEEP him." It was always meant to be bleeped. This engineer and I had done this maybe a dozen times over the last few years. I'm not like the guy in the Federal Express commercials, but I have a fast rhythm. It works better to say the word and then bleep it.
It's not anything that I would ever do again, now that I'd had this experience.
And the engineer, he's still at KCRW?
He is. He was given some probation. It was a simple, honest mistake. He's a father with two small kids. I'd brought my children into the studio -- we'd exchanged Pampers. He's young -- I think he's in his 20s. He'll never do that again. It's a mistake. You can get warned and reprimanded. He owned up to it. He's a pretty stand-up guy.
Is that standard policy, to warn hosts first -- like the yellow card in soccer?
Yeah. I would have to think it's just the times that we live in -- the post-Janet-Jackson's-breast age. The bigger picture is that the FCC's raising the fines from $27,500 to $500,000 [for obscenity]. That is great. Even though the FCC hasn't warned KCRW, which is a local public-radio station.
NPR hadn't been warned before. There was an episode that was in the L.A. Times this morning as a factoid ... [On May 29, 2002, according to the Los Angeles Times, current station boss Seymour was interviewing Dennis Hopper, when the famously reckless actor uttered the F-word in a discussion of Andy Warhol.]
But because he's Dennis Hopper -- nothing. No bleep. But he's cool.
And you could say you were using the F-word to describe a wholesome, pro-marriage sentiment.
Yes. Totally within the bounds of marriage. A 15-year marriage -- in the Bush years!
What would you say to critics who'd say you'd crossed the "Bono line" -- of using the F-word literally, as opposed to as an expression, or an exclamation.
Technically I did. Because the Bono is the transitive form ... he's using it as an adjective. I was using it in verb form, which is classified as strong.
[She discusses how Howard Stern ridiculed this distinction while coming to her defense on "The Howard Stern Show."]
Are you skeptical of Stern's claims that Clear Channel fired him for attacking Bush?
It's ... hard to say, and I don't want to say anything about Howard Stern, because in the first week he was the first vocal supporter of mine.
Did you feel isolated?
Yes. I went on the NPR official Web site, and front and center was the NPR ombudsman...
Yeah, writing about your case, NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin said the rules about on-air obscenity are clear in FCC regulations. He concludes: "Too late for Loh, perhaps, but a cautionary tale for the rest of us."
Oh my Lord. That's their official take? Let's see ... I was just going to say something unprintable. He's a pompous gasbag. If that's what they think, they're out of touch, head in the sand, thesaurus-suffocated, timid antiquarians. I think his essay delineated the very definition of pompous gasbag, and I'm sending you a draft of what I've written to him ... about his timidity, taking this case and mentioning me by name, and then deliberately leaving out a few facts. He made it more like, "This is a gal who talked blue into the mic..." It was listed as the editor's pick. They were really proud of it, like, "Hey, this is great."
My daughter has just pooped in the toilet. I'm going to take a break to wipe my daughter's bottom ... getting really scatological here!
[Loh leaves for a moment. Her letter in progress to Jeffrey Dvorkin reads, in part: "While ... details were documented as early as March 5th in news outlets ranging from the Los Angeles Times to Reuters to the BBC, your own reportage dated March 10th is surprisingly vague on what happened ... so vague it seems intentional. I can only surmise that you willfully sacrificed the actual facts of my story to creative a convenient 'news' or at least 'news-like' housing for a personal agenda of your own fancy. I think what you were attempting -- over the body of my case -- was a witty little feuilleton subtly bemoaning, between yourself and complicit readers, the lapsed values of a sloppy, loose-talking younger generation. And I must say, your misleading essay is indeed a fine example of this hoary old literary chestnut: it pumps fresh new vigor into the phrase 'pompous gasbag.' ... My case is not about the right to say 'fuck' on public radio airwaves. The question is: Is it gross overreaction, on the part of a public radio station, to fire -- rather than warn, reprimand, suspend or even fine -- a commentator of six years for their own young station engineer's honest -- and fully admitted -- mistake?"]
