Beau don't know baseball.
This shouldn't really be news to many, since the only thing shock jocks really know is how to push people's buttons and squeeze in a fart joke before the commercial break. And that's exactly what KUPD's Beau Duran was trying to do last Friday when he made an appalling joke so you would stay tuned-in through the commercials.
Everybody likes widow jokes, right?
The morning after the Diamondbacks lost Game 2 of the division series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Duran made a prank phone call on the air to Flynn Kile, the widow of Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile. Flynn was in Phoenix for the game cheering on a team that has shown much compassion for her since the tragic passing of her husband.
This apparently struck Beau's funny bone.
During the aptly named "Morning Sickness" show, Beau called Flynn's hotel room to essentially say, "Hey baby, how you doin' eh?"
Flynn was not amused.
In fact, not many people were amused by Beau's insensitivity. Darryl Kile's death was a tragic loss for the St. Louis Cardinals and for all of baseball and here was some idiot morning DJ hitting on his wife to boost ratings.
Since the skit, thousands of people from around the country have been calling for Beau's head. The Cardinals Fan message boards have been packed with hate mail. Tony La Russa, the Cardinals manager, told reporters, "If we [the Cardinals] could get our hands on them, we would deal with them physically…I hope whoever was responsible will get nailed."
This has been more than just bad publicity for KUPD. They've lost two advertisers as a result of Beau's brilliance, including the St. Louis based Anheuser Busch Company. As if Beau's prank wasn't enough of a campaign against alcohol.
But don't you worry. Beau's been a bad boy and KUPD isn't going to let him get away with it. At first he was suspended for a week and now he has been fired.
Surprised? Well, you should be. Beau's (former) job is to beat people senseless and make them come back for more. Hell, typically this would have gotten him a promotion.
In the world of morning radio disc jockeys, Beau was just one crass fish in a crude sea. Firing him for doing what he gets paid for is practically unheard of and perhaps hypocritical.
I don't need to write about how distasteful morning radio DJs can be. Their entire existence is centered on coining a clever phrase about fags and ho's, then seeing how they can work in a kazoo-playing midget into a dick and fart segment. We've heard it all before.
And that's just the thing. We have heard it all before, which means they've got to stoop lower by the day, just to keep us listening. Maybe the midget will play the kazoo while eating his own feces.
Beau was just giving his depraved listeners what he thought they wanted. A ballsy, dickhead joke that they could talk about around the trough.
And look! We're talking! We're bitching and moaning and shaking our fists.
Most of all, we'll be listening to see what they say. What happens when Beau gets hired again (as someone is always in the market for a good scandal) and comes back from time out? People all over the Valley will probably tune in to find out how things go when Beau, once again, inadvertently raises ratings and affirms that the shock jocks still have our attention.
That'll learn 'em.
Mark Broeske is an English education junior. Reach him at mark.broeske@asu.edu.
