What's the response been like from the public?

I got outraged e-mail from all over the country ... from L.A., from England.

Sympathetic e-mail?

Only one of them wasn't, kind of one of these ... [sotto voce, out of her daughter's earshot] "Bitch. Whore." Like it may have come from someone in prison...

But another was a dad who heard my commentary with his daughter, and didn't know why I couldn't take my firing with good grace. I wrote him a letter back, apologizing to his family, and explaining the situation. And then he wrote back an apologetic e-mail.

These were strangers. My address wasn't listed, and they Googled me off a 15-year-old jazz piano CD I did off a small piano label.

In a piece on you in the National Review, you quote KCRW's boss, Ruth Seymour, as saying, "Sandra, I know this comes at a hard time. I don't know what's going on with you. But please, Sandra, get help!"

[Pause] Well, she certainly did say that ... She's now said that she really didn't mean "emotional help." She just meant ... get a nanny.

So that parental stress wouldn't lead to more on-air profanity?

Yeah, something like that. It took her an awful long time though.

In a commentary for "Marketplace" after your firing, you accused public radio of becoming timid.

Why I think this case has gotten so much attention is that KCRW is known for the opposite. They're known for being free-speech advocates, independent-thinking ... a place where Dennis Hopper, Helmut Newton, could say the F-word, no problem.

But NPR, yes, it tends towards blandness. I always joke about NPR commentators, having been one myself. "Autumn leaves are falling ... my antique baseball card collection reminds me of my grandmother..."

There was one I heard recently by a guy who'd really been into R&B in the '60s. He'd been living up the street from Marvin Gaye, who'd always call out to the kids, "What's goin' on?" while mowing his lawn. Of course, then the song fades in.

Right, when you just go, "OH MY WORD." It's not that we don't all love chess, and crossword puzzles, and funny little news quizzes with puns, and discussions of cobbler we had in Alabama in the old days. It's not that there isn't a place for that. But perhaps NPR should just look and see if we can't change the ratio of pieces on antique baseball cards to cobbler ... [fuddy-duddy voice] crossword-puzzly puzzle ... lame humor. How many funny little news quizzes do we need over the week? It's just a little bit of a bowtie nation.

Anything else you'd like to say about your old bosses -- since the FCC can't yet touch the World Wide Web and Salon?

Today, they actually called to offer me a job back on their radio station. They waved the white flag. And I declined.

My show would have been back on the air, and back in drive time. My fabulous four minutes. And the station manager who called me said she hadn't been in full possession of the facts the first time. She wasn't aware that we had done this a few times before. That this really mitigated the circumstance for her. And that, in fact, I could continue, "if you agreed not to do any more bleeping."

And your response was no?

I would not feel comfortable going back to work there. How many times do you want to get shot through the cannon? I couldn't go back there. And the culture ... Within the building, that first week, of people I'd known for six years, walked by in the halls. But not one person from inside the Kremlin even sent a one-liner of "Jeez! Sorry!" Not one did, except for dear Harry [Shearer, of "Spinal Tap" and "The Simpsons," who has a long-running show on KCRW].

That was just a toxic, fear-based culture.

On his KCRW program "Le Show," Shearer has this parody of an NPR host, Ira Zipkin, who hosts fictitious shows called "Bookbag" and "Said and Done."

He did a skit [this last weekend about her dismissal]. It was about a "Bleepmation" device, made by a company in Canada. So KCRW is a once-great station that once had a sense of humor about itself.

But it really has gotten like that. The pledge gifts you can win are like, "The Jaguar. The Jag-u-ar." [Savoring the word.] But it's kind of a cool, retro Jaguar, of course. IMacs and iPods and vintage wines. Literally, this one time, that was the import of the thing: "If you have any wines in your cellars that you'd like to get rid of, please give them..."

The idea being that the listeners would tend to have actual wine cellars, with wine in them they'd like to donate.

We have wine cellars! And we have extra bottles in there that maybe we're bored with.

So what's next for you?

I'm going through some other offers. I'm still on "Marketplace." I stopped, but I'm back on there once a month. Not going on KCRW will help me. I think we have to take a stand against pompous gasbags.

Recent Stories