McGee Jr looking for revenge?

On his morning show on WNOV-AM, Milwaukee Alderman Michael McGee Jr called today for a demonstration at UW-Milwaukee to have Jessica McBride fired as a lecturer from the Mass Communications department for a radio bit on WTMJ-AM. You might recall, McGee Jr took over the WNOV-AM radio program after former alderman Michael McGee Sr used
the radio program to say he was glad the mother of another radio personality had died and suggested that the radio personality may have played a role in his mother's death.

McGee Jr is no stranger to controversy. During a hearing on a restraining order, McGee Jr threatened his ex-lover (who was seeking the restraining order) and arguably committed perjury. The woman McGee Jr threatened is also the mother of his child out of wedlock. McGee Jr was recently discovered to have two identities, and one identity was allegedly used to avoid financial responsibility in a car accident. McGee Jr also survived a recall effort led by ViAnna Jordan.

Probably not coincidentally, one of Jordan's attorneys was Paul Bucher, a former Waukesha District Attorney and Jessica McBride's husband. McGee Jr definitely has a revenge motive in trying to seek McBride's removal, both for his father's removal from WNOV-AM and for Bucher's role in the recall.

In the radio bit, McBride pretended to interview the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's in-house race-baiter Eugene Kane and substituted a chicken clucking noise instead of his answers because Kane had previously refused an invitation to appear on McBride's program.

One of the questions concerned the shooting of a four-year-old girl, and the question was siezed upon by liberal and leftist bloggers in the community to
demand an apology. One of the bloggers in question, Jim Rowen, is reported by real Debate Wisconsin to have been in competition with McBride for the UWM lecturer position she now holds.

McBride was subsequently let go by WTMJ-AM and replaced with a sydicated radio program hosted by comedian Dennis Miller. The move to Dennis Miller was planned, but the firing of McBride was hastened by the radio bit in question.

Oh good, the less rational McGee is getting airtime

Marquette Professor John McAdams has received a press release from Jerrel Jones of WNOV stating known misogynist and cancer on the community Alderman Michael McGee Jr will now be hosting the one hour of air time his father purchases while McGee Sr is suspended "indefinitely."

Oh yeah, there's a solution that will make everyone happy. This is the great moralist Tim Cuprisin described?

Contact numbers: Jerrel Jones 414/899-1719.
WNOV's fax number: 414-449-9945

Still missing from the press release, how long is "indefinitely?" Just until Jones thinks nobody cares? Until McGee Jr has his dad on as a guest? Until McGee Jr adopts another secret identity?

Update! 5/6/07 11:14 Oh look! Somebody finally asked Jerrel Jones how long is "indefinitely".

Jones would not say how long "indefinitely" might be.

"Forever is a long time, and I don't want to say something that I may not be able to deal with," he said Saturday. "But I do want to make it clear that he won't be on anytime soon."

I'm guessing two weeks

From today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

McGee and Sykes have clashed on their respective programs, and the elder McGee has accused the WTMJ radio host of attacking his alderman son and the black community.

Jones referred to the long-time rivalry while discussing the situation Friday.

"I'm saying, if you keep punching a guy's kid, and you keep punching a guy's kid, when he gets a chance, he's going to throw a blow," Jones said. "He threw a low blow."

Jones said he believes McGee's remarks were meant to hurt Charlie Sykes and not meant to demean his mother.

Jones is excusing the inexcusable. He must get paid a lot for that hour.

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Premature congratulations

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial was less than desired but more than expected. Rather than try to rationalize McGee's statements, the editors praised WNOV's owner Jerrel Jones for suspending Michael McGee Sr.'s radio program "indefinitely." But what is indefinitely? Tuesday? Wednesday?

Will the son fill in for the father as he did on Friday? Can we expect a younger, more audible and somewhat intelligible version of the same hateful speech?

Jones has made it clear that the final decision has not been made. The editors missed an opportunity to encourage Jones to sever his relationship with the McGee family permanently.

But that would have required a spine.

Meanwhile, the TV/Radio columnist Tim Cuprisin echoes the sentiments of the editors, and then adds Jones' decision to suspend McGee Sr was a "moral" choice rather than an economic choice.

But Jones didn't have to take action. Unlike big corporate media, it's easier for independent stations like WNOV to get through these kinds of messes. They're not subject to the same kinds of pressure as, say, Clear Channel Communications, when it suspended Mark Belling a few years back after his slur on Mexican immigrants. Clear Channel had just flipped a bunch of its stations to a Spanish language format, and thus found itself faced with a protest by the very group it was trying to reach.

Likewise, NBC and CBS had to bow to big advertisers who didn't want to be associated with the derogatory comments Don Imus made about the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Jerrel Jones has a freedom that corporate broadcasting doesn't. The decision that he made was less of a business decision than a moral one.

Give me a break. We'll never know what finally made Jones make the move he did, or what will motivate his final decision, but Cuprisin has no business pretending he knows Jones did it out of some sense of morality.

Let's look at the track record. McGee has certainly provided plenty of excuses before to yank him off the air, yet Jones has never before demonstrated the sense of morality Cuprisin is seeing now.

What Cuprisin should be noting is that Jones faces a possible defamation lawsuit, a series of new complaints to the FCC, and yes, a possible threat to Jones' advertising base.

And unlike what Cuprisin asserts, Jones' operations are far more vulnerable to local advertising pressure than a big corporation with extensive national pressure. It's just silly to assert otherwise, and makes me wonder how Cuprisin has the job he holds if he doesn't even understand basic economics.

That being said, one wonders if anyone at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel knows anything about the word "indefinite" other than it passed their spell check.

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Dan Deibert the psychic

Pretty bad when the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is this predictable.

Still…. as of 4:15pm …. no mention by the news department at the Journal. If they ever do cover it, I’ll bet you it shows up on Daywatch after 5pm, in a classic “we have to cover it but we don’t want to ” document dump.

Daywatch:

FRIDAY, May 4, 2007, 5:10 p.m.
By Tom Held

McGee Sr. pulled off the air

Thanks for even bothering to cover it, guys. Perhaps they'll surprise us tomorrow with a decent editorial. This is the what they're reporting:

Jones said he would meet with McGee Saturday morning to discuss the former Milwaukee alderman's offensive comments and the prospects of his return to the air.

McGee buys his time on the station that Jones has owned since 1972.

Jones took McGee's show off the air for a short period in 2004 after he used an obscenity during the "Word Warriors" show.

In this instance, Jones has not determined whether he will allow McGee back on the air.

"I am going to make sure that never happens again," Jones said. "I will guarantee myself that.

"I don't know just what course of action that I will have to take."

Of course, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, over 24 hours behind everyone else, doesn't mention that the story broke on the blogs. Maybe someday.

As for Jones, might I suggest that for the sake of what is left of his reputation and the reputation of his radio station and newspaper he sever all ties with McGee?

Update! 8:27PM If this interview with Channel 6, complete with threats of violence, doesn't pull McGee Sr off the air permanently, I guess nothing ever will. (ht: Ask Me Later)

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Lets see if they can find a spine

An e-mail sent earlier to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

To: mkaiser@journalsentinel.com, rpimentel@journalsentinel.com, jresler@journalsentinel.com, gstanford@journalsentinel.com

I understand you will have an editorial appearing
tomorrow concerning what Michael McGee Sr said about
the death of WTMJ radio personality Charlie Sykes'
mother. I'm not sure you're also aware that Marquette
Professor John McAdams has been in contact with WNOV
owner Jerrel Jones and that Jones has indicated McGee
Sr will not be on the air Monday, and that the fate of
his program is being decided by Jones on Saturday.

To steal a line from Margaret Thatcher, now is not the
time for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to go all
wobbly.

Please add your voice to those of us who are outraged
that Michael McGee Sr has consitently gotten away with
behavior like this for years without any consquences.
This time he and WNOV must be held accountable for
McGee's continued irresponsible behavior, and the best
way for that to happen would be if WNOV severed it's
relationship with Michael McGee Sr.

This is not a free speech issue. Nobody is stopping
McGee from saying anything on any street corner in the
city, or at any press conference, or at any gathering
of his supporters.

This is a request by the community at large that WNOV
hold itself to some standard of decency. And if it
cannot, then the challenge must be made to WNOV's
advertisers and the advertisers in the Milwaukee
Courier (Jerrel Jones' newspaper) whether they will
continue to associate themselves with Jerrel Jones and
Michael McGee Sr.

James Wigderson
Wigderson Library & Pub
http://wigdersonlibrarypub.blogspot.com/

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Cuprisin calls it "a new low"

Tim Cuprisin of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes on his blog,

Mike McGee aired another one of his disgusting rants today on his WNOV-AM (860) radio show..

At a time when even folks who have political disagreements with Charlie Sykes are offering condolences on the death of his mother, McGee the elder is slamming a guy when he's down.

Thanks to obsessive McGee listeners out there, like Real Debate Wisconsin, you can hear McGee's vile comments, such as "a woman that had a fool like that deserves whatever's comin' to her, 'cause she raised a sure enough idiot."

It got worse, when he said, ""My instincts say Charlie Sykes killed his mommy.... He got tired a waitin' for that money."

Bob Walker, program director of WKTI, also condemns McGee's remarks,

How can any reasonable person not compare McGee's rant with Imus'? I read Al Sharpton's critique of Imus' bit and it applies to McGee 100%.

McGee doesn't have the national platform of Imus so I do not expect Al Sharpton to fly into Mitchell anytime soon. But I sure hope everyone in Wisconsin who was asking for Imus' head is up in arms about this. I will be checking the JS in a minute to see if that is the case.

It's so tough to support offensive free speech from McGee or anyone else. Be assured: I would also support WNOV's right to can McGee if they don't want that kind of editorial spewing from their frequency.

Oddly enough - McGee's comments were slanderous. Even Imus didn't go there. I say let the lawyers go after him. Then he'll know the meaning of vengeance.

And Professor John McAdams caught the news at 10:00 last night on WTMJ-TV who reported McGee Sr will not be on the air Friday. Unfortunately there is nothing on their site.



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McGee should be isolated

Michael McGee Sr proves what a low animal he is with his rant about the death of Charlie Sykes' mother (audio recorded by Patrick at Badger Blogger) on WNOV-AM today.

There is no pressure that can be put on either McGee Jr or McGee Sr. They have no sense of shame. They believe themselves immune to public opinion at large. The poorly run recall effort of McGee Junior has only reinforced this belief.

However, pressure can be applied on those around McGee.

WNOV-AM is owned by Jerrel Jones. The general manager is Sandra Robinson. The program director is Homer Blow whose biography indicates he dislikes "haters." (By the way, I loooove his shirt.)

Then there's frequent McGee defender Mikel Holt of the Milwaukee Community Journal. We can ask Holt what role McGee Sr was fulfilling in the African American community today.

Of course, there's advertisers and the like, as well. Not to mention whatever group is underwriting McGee's show. It's time to get them all on record to see if this is what they want to support on the airwaves.

Update! 5/3/07 9:56pm
Channel 12 in Milwaukee has coverage from their 6:00pm broadcast.

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