Save the F man
: I am glad to see a movement swelling to save Arthur Chi’en, the hapless WCBS reporter who, not knowing he was on the air, asked a couple of bozos shilling for the Opie & Anthony show who were trying to mess up his report, “What’s your fucking problem, man.” Everyone writing about this, including Chi’en himself, first falls down saying that was stupid and regretable and wrong. But was it worth firing the man?
All he did was say fucking.
Have we come to the point in this country when we honestly think that a word that has lost all meaning, just a word, is going to cause the downfall of the nation and is worth a man’s career?
Perspective, people!
What’s offensive is that we let the offended run the world.
Well, now I’m offended. WCBS should not have buckled under to pressure — anticipated pressure at that — just because of one stupid word.
It is time to send a message back to the fringies and tell them that they have their priorities all out of wack.
A blogger named Sergio D. Caplan started a site to Save Arthur Chi’en with instructions for calling WCBS or just using this form; that’s what I’m doing (though, amazingly, they don’t have a link to send a message to the news department — the one department that should be listening to the public!).
This week, Clyde Haberman wrote a column in The Times drawing attention to the issue this week and reporting that fellow reporters are dismayed and that the communications director of the transportion authority complained to the station. It’s a cause.
So join me in writing to WCBS and defending not just Arthur Chi’en but sanity.
It is insane that you fire Arthur Chi’en for one simple, fucking word. It’s just a word, people. You throw out a man’s career. You buckle under to the fringe. You embarrass yourself. You insult your audience (what, you think we can’t take care of ourselves?). Because of one fucking word. For shame. Bring back Arthur Chi’en!
: I STAND CORRECTED: He actually said, “What the fuck’s your problem, man?” The stories about this were so coy, it was impossible to tell and I parsed it wrongly. For grammar, give me an F.
