“You Look Great.” That’s what longtime St. Louis Public Radio host Don Marsh said to guest Karen Foss Tuesday. Marsh says as a result of that remark he was called into a managers office and told that what he said was “on the edge.” Marsh said, “That’s it, I’m done.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting that the station is saying that remark was not the purpose of the meeting but would not specify what was. Foss, who is 75, wrote on Facebook that she accepted the greeting from Marsh, who is 80, as a “common way for those of us who are aged to greet each other. As a woman who has long argued for the equitable treatment of women, I am highly alert to sexism and discrimination and I sensed absolutely none of that in his greeting.”
Marsh is quoted in the paper says that the culture of over-sensitivty is out of control. He said he felt “humiliated that people think that I’m a sexist creep for this.”
And where, I wonder, does this leave radio performers whose goal it is contains a desire to get on the “edgy” side?
Seems that, like what happens to the thousands of mice when a 4×8 piece of plywood is lifted off the barn floor, the default position is to panic and stampede away from the vicinity.
It’s one thing to maintain a certain diligence in our own on-air behaviours – an ongoing process.
It is another matter altogether when we are expected to accept responsibility for someone else’s feelings. That is a description of The Abyss.
And it is on the agenda.