BEYOND THE PALE

You know what? I'm sick of this crap. I want these guys the hell out of radio, permanently -- terrestial and satellite:

Bad-boy radio hosts Opie and Anthony yesterday topped even their infamous 2002 "Sex in St. Pat's" stunt, serving up a homeless man's profane declaration that he'd like to rape Condoleezza Rice, Laura Bush and Queen Elizabeth.

The graphic sequence on their XM Satellite Radio program showed that even in a medium with no restrictions on content, Opie and Anthony found a way to cross the line.

The actual comments were made by a guest the shock jocks call Homeless Charlie. As each woman's name came up, he said, "I'd love to f--- that b----."

They laughed as they imagined "the horror" in Rice's face and what it would be like to hold her down and punch her in the face....

I'm not calling for censorship, or even regulation of content on satellite radio. But just as with Imus, I think it's high time that general public disgust makes these people as unwelcome as toxic waste. If I had a show on XM, I'd threaten to quit if they weren't fired for this. If I were a subscriber, I'd cancel if they kept their jobs. If I sponsored their terrestrial show, I'd drop my sponsorship.

I don't like Condoleezza Rice or Laura Bush. I'm indifferent to the Queen. That doesn't matter. Rape is not funny.

Read what Melissa says at Shakesville. She starts with the clip and a partial transcript -- then goes on to describe her own rape at 16. It's not pleasant reading.

If these guys were advocating, say, the extermination of all Jews, or the legalization of child prostitution, they'd be pariahs and it wouldn't matter what the hell their ratings were -- there'd be subscription cancellations and other forms societal pressure to get them off the air. Freedom of speech has a flip side, which is freedom to denounce speech and to choose not to pay for speech that you find repulsive.

They have to go.

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Oh, and by the way, I love the way the folks who broadcast O&A's terrestrial radio show try to wriggle out of any responsibility for what these guys say:

CBS Radio, where Opie and Anthony are heard earlier each morning over WFNY (92.3 FM) on a different show with much stricter content guidelines, breathed an almost audible sigh of relief.

"Fortunately, we have standards that did not, and would not, ever let something like this make our air," it said.

This despite the fact that

Opie and Anthony had "Homeless Charlie" on their WFNY show earlier yesterday. While many of his comments were bleeped out, he talked about how he "punches old b----es in the head" to steal their money.

Oh yeah, that's much better.

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By the way, this story is being spread on the Internet mostly by right-wingers -- Breitbart, Instapundit, and so on. The spin on the right is that this was specifically an attack on Condi; you have to go to the clip, or read a transcript (or, say, the Daily News story quoted above) to know that Laura Bush and the Queen were named. The imagined violence against Condi is more extreme -- but this isn't a case of just a black Republican woman being targeted, as Breitbart and Instapundit imply. But their spin will become conventional wisdom on the right, more evidence for the bizarre theory, almost universally accepted by righties, that racism in America is exclusively a left-wing phenomenon.