Death threats between DJs

DJs, especially the pseudo-christian ulta-conservative kind are frequenty on the receiving end of death threats. You group fecalfiliacs, gays and pedophiles in the basket all three tend fto get a smidge offended. Veiling fascist tendencies in well-meant moralism can do that. [of course so does beligerantly syndicating Air America programming south of the Mason Dixon Line] But all politics aside, death threats are illegal. You can't do that on the radio. ...But it's happened oh-so-many times.

Take for example the relatively recent incident on 106.9 KIFR San Francisco's "Free FM" that reminded me of this in the first place.

DJ John London got on the air and [ironicly] offered $5,000 to anyone who would will Penn Jillette another CBS DJ. Before I tell you What Penn did, let me tell you this was not a joke. It wasn't even in the heat-of-the-moment. The next day he upped the bounty to $7,000... if he suffers.

So what did Penn do? Well Penn is more of a flaming Libertarian than myself so I'm sure that you are imagining something pretty bad. the truth is that he critisized Mother Theresa. Yep. Well wait a sec. It sounds bad at first, but until I heard a tape of what he said I withheld judgement.

Here are the basics. Penn called Mother Theresa a fraud. He claimed that Mother Teresa had set up refuges for dying people for her own peronal"sexual kicks.'' He followed that with the moral assessment that Paris Hilton was morally superior to the nun.

Apparently Penn had done a little reading on Ms. Theresa and found humor in the ironly of her squeaky clean image and her immoral and unrepentant actual self. I wont rehash it, there's plenty of reading out there. It should also be pointed out that at the time, Indian director T. Rajeevnath was actively courting Ms. Hilton to play Mother Theresa in a Bollywood flick. So in actuality very little of the offensive content originates in Penns balding head. But 100% of the death threats come from Mr. London.

But let me add that The World Famous Midget Master Blaster Television Spectacular managed to mock Ms. Theresa without either death threats or Paris Hilton: here