Sandra Tsing Loh says that Monday's Marketplace plans a commentary by her on her firing, but the question is whether KCRW will air it.  

The only person from KCRW (other than the deeply apologetic engineer who accidentally forgot to bleep that infamous "fuck") brave enough to even offer Sandra the professional courtesy of a sympatheic note after her firing was Harry Shearer. I guess everyone else was too afraid of Ruth Seymour and her winged monkeys, to use one of  Sandra's favorite phrases. We were wondering if he'd dare mention the incident on his KCRW program this morning; it would have been un-Harry Shearer-like not to, but lately the place seems to be a carnival of quislings. However, I'm happy to report that he did open up "Le Show" today with pointed allusions to "Bleep Nation." (Cue disappointed monkeys flapping back to the castle...)

Matt Welch has some good posts today. One excerpt:

There are people who have reacted to this by saying "oh, well, Sandra Tsing Loh is annoying anyway," or "what does she expect! You can't be too careful nowadays." To which I say: Check what remains of your dried-out soul, robot. No, this isn't a Major Pressing Issue in the grand scheme of things. But free expression is something I'd hope that journalists, at minimum, would be keen on expanding, not contracting.

An excerpt from Sandra's Sunday L.A. Times op-ed piece,The Bleep That Never Was:

On the KCRW website, there's no record there that my show ever existed. Not even a vaguely worded "Technical Difficulties/Away on Assignment/Cosmic Gone Fishing" sign. At KCRW.com, it's eerie how quickly the Internet hole has closed over "The Loh Life," its glassy surface scattered with a cheerful potpourri of fresh music picks. And I was on for six years! Isn't it a marvel what they can do with the touch of a computer button nowadays? Sometimes?...

Quite frankly, I think it's public radio that's in danger, because public-radio-land is riven. On one side you have Joe Frank in the bathtub. (If this means nothing to you, you don't madly love KCRW the way I used to.) On the other is, sadly, more and more frantic breaking news — Bush! Anthrax! Suicide bombs in Jerusalem! Or hushed-voice cultural temple-building. (I for one am sick of the Booker Prize. See you in the bar if you want to discuss that one.) It's a seeping beigeness, a grim, endless, drumbeat of "responsibility" that all the groovy Argentine trance-hop music in the world can't make up for.

Meanwhile, I've introduced her to the wonderful world of bitter, anonymous commenters....or the dried-up soul brigade, as Matt might put it. She imagines one as "like a dainty Belgian man of about 83, with a lot of long-haired cats, and what my old gay writer friend Bob Smith would call 'Big Queen Anne' furniture. I think if he were ever to see our dear Amy Alkon in a strapless dress at a party his head would explode."

I like squeezing every bit of juice out of a given media turnip. Reminds me of how in the early '80s the late, great L.A. Herald-Examiner spun the Bubbles the Hippo saga out for weeks.  

Return...