Gee, I thought we weren't supposed to confuse "respectable" conservatives and hatemongers:

IF Sean Hannity has his way, talk-radio titan Bob Grant will return from his WABC "exile" soon.

Grant, 76, was abruptly fired 10 years ago - right after Disney bought ABC - for making a wisecrack about the death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in a plane crash.

Now, WABC is awaiting the closing of a Disney deal to sell ABC's radio division to Citadel Broadcasting - which could open the door for Grant's return....

The Fox News Channel star pledged to have Grant "fill in on this program one day, [but] right now there's a bondage issue, if you know what I mean."

The reference was to an implied ban that had kept the station from rehiring Grant - a trailblazer of conservative talk radio in New York - since 1996.

Grant, who was usually WABC's highest-rated talker, shifted to WOR (710 AM) but has been off the air since last January, when he was replaced by less-costly personalities....

If WABC's new owner gives Grant his own show, it would most likely air before Rush Limbaugh or after Hannity...

Don't know about Bob Grant? A sampling of his work from the '90s:

Caller: "Well, like you say, we'll become a Third World--I think you know, in another 50 or 60 years where everybody is half-black, half-white, and the mentality has gone down around 10 IQ points."

Grant: "By the way, we're not supposed to talk about genetics in all of this. And I've been called a lot of names because I do believe in the science of genetics."

Grant's favorite words for blacks include "savages" and "subhumanoids." When black college students gathered at a New Jersey beach, Grant talked of "the savage mind, the primitive, primordial mentality.... As far as that stretch of beach there at Belmar, it's being written off by, shall we say, civilized people."

Referring to thousands of blacks who attended a celebrity basketball game involving rap stars, he spoke of "subhumanoids, savages, who would feel more at home careening along the sands of the Kalahari...people who, for whatever reason, have not become civilized."

The few blacks who call the show can expect to be insulted -- and perhaps derided as "shoeshine boys." In hanging up on a black caller, Grant said: "Get off my phone, you creep, we don't need the toilets cleaned right now." When he hangs up on black women, he yells: "I don't need the windows washed today."

When an African-American caller pointed out that the KKK was more violent than the Nation of Islam, Grant hung up on the "swine": "On the evolutionary scale, you're about 25 generations behind me."

More:

At least twice, a caller has given out contact information for the National Alliance....

The National Alliance is a neo-Nazi organization led by William Pierce, former secretary of the American Nazi Party under George Lincoln Rockwell. Pierce is the author (under a pseudonym) of The Turner Diaries...

When a recent caller to Grant's program (3/27/95) recommended the National Alliance (as a group "for support of European-American males"), Grant declared twice: "I don't have any problem with the National Alliance!"

The talkshow host has also allowed the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP)--the white supremacist group founded by David Duke--to recruit members through his program. One caller (8/12/93), after praising the group, asked Grant: "With your permission, I'd like to give out the address and the phone number."

"Go right ahead," Grant replied--and even helped the caller out when he stumbled over the address. On an earlier broadcast (7/5/93), after a caller gave out the NAAWP phone number, Grant encouraged him to "say it again."

More:

Bob Grant, the radio talk-show host, was booted off WABC-AM this week, apparently for telling his listeners that he hoped Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown had been killed in the crash of his plane in Croatia. "My hunch," Mr. Grant said, "is that he is one of the survivors ... maybe it's because at heart, I'm a pessimist." It was a cruel and hurtful comment, but far from the worst Mr. Grant has made about African-Americans. He has also expressed hope that Haitian immigrants would drown on their way to America, called blacks "screaming savages" and described former New York City Mayor David Dinkins as "a washroom attendant." He bemoaned the fact that the AIDS virus might take "a long time" to claim Magic Johnson's life....

None of which was enough to keep him off the dais at a Bush campaign appearance in 2000, alongside Rudy Giuliani.

(The campaign appearance was at a gathering of the one-time civil-rights organization CORE, which later became a wholly owned subsidiary of the far right.)

Bob Grant at his peak made Ann Coulter look like Mister Rogers. Yet he hasn't been shunned by civilized society, and Hannity digs him.

Anything's OK if you're a Republican.