Mothafuggas!

Bruce Anderson on the departure of Johanna Schultz from KZYX, from this week's Off the Record...

JOHANNA SCHULTZ plays hip-hop on KZYX late at night when the children are asleep. (Or out of crank and can't find their Oxycontin to propel them into dreamland.) The late hours on your FM dial are the “adult hours,” not that you don't search far and wide for either children or adults anymore but that's the theory of our audio guardians anyway – when it gets late the kids are supposed to be asleep. Ms. Schultz's program is called “The Word.” Which well it might since the word is mostly mothafugga this, mothafugga that, and mothafug the Easter Bunny and every other muthafugging thing. But Ms. Schultz has been mothafuggin' on the air for years now without anybody complaining. And now she's not on the air. Apparently, someone in the station's perennially cringing hierarchy was up late enough to hear some of the lyrics, specifically the lyrics of a song called, “Freedom of Speech” by a guy calling himself Immortal Technique. I chased it down on the internet and found it not only hilarious, but I agreed entirely with the political sentiments expressed. K-FEEB was less amused. A member of the board of directors heard it and, being a Nice Person, if not a fully nice person, objected to the lyrics which basically denunciated Fox News and other political figures as mothafuggas. Dance music, in other words. A lot of young white mothafuggas get big vicarious thrills from mothafugga tunes, all of it simply more evidence that we're deep in The End Times. But lots of rural white mothafuggas apparently tuned in to Ms. Schultz's show, and on it went without objection for seven or eight years, mothafuggin' merrily along, until Ms. Schultz was, in the usual peremptory manner of “free speech public radio,” summarily mothafugged off the air. Ms. Schultz rightly thinks Mendocino County Public Radio has censored her, that since she's been playing the kind of music for years that the nambos wouldn't pambo to even if they'd ever heard it, why now? We'll never know. KZYX has always maintained a Kremlin-quality secrecy which, every year or so, requires human sacrifice, typically female sacrifice. Christina Aanestad was served up to the Gods of Wine and Cheese last year, Ms. Schultz this year.

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