Strap yourselves in because we have one hell of a doozy here. There was a bit of controversy on Howard Stern’s radio show recently when a staffer, Salvatore “Sal” Governale, went on a racist rant linking BTS with the coronavirus after the boy band visited their radio station in New York.
During the February 24 episode of The Howard Stern Show (as per Variety), the long-time radio host called Sal out on his racism, saying “BTS is from Korea and Sal was freaking out. BTS was here at Sirius on Friday and Sal was saying, ‘There’s no way those guys don’t have the coronavirus.’ He was like every asshole.”
Speaking of BTS, the GOAT team talk about the group’s global domination on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
After Howard Stern and other staffers blasted Sal for his comments by pointing out things like how BTS are Korean and not from China, which is where the coronavirus outbreak first occurred, and how there are plenty of non-Asian celebrities travelling around the world have visited their radio station, Sal doubled down on his comments by saying:
“I walked into the lobby and it was like Chinatown, out of control, there were so many Asian people. These people are traveling, they’re not locals, they’re going from country to country to country. It’s a dangerous situation. You got to look at it that way — they’re on airplanes; they’re in hotels.”
Needless to say that listeners weren’t too happy with Sal and his racist coronavirus slurs about BTS and Asians, and many inundated The Howard Stern Show with comments about it.
Howard addressed the BTS coronavirus racism controversy on the February 25 episode of his show and took Sal to town, saying how he “got so many emails about what an idiot you are for avoiding a Korean boy band.” The radio host then defended BTS by telling Sal, “I’m super paranoid about diseases and germs, but you came off as racist.”
It’s great that Howard Stern had no hesitation in calling out his own long-time staffer for their racist coronavirus comments about BTS as that sort of behaviour is simply not on, let alone on live radio. But before we start praising Howard, his defence of BTS certainly doesn’t excuse his own racism from yesteryear.
The week prior to BTS’ appearance at the Sirius studios, Howard talked about the Oscar-winning South Korean film, Parasite, and his thoughts were pretty damn offensive.
This is not a one-off moment of racism from Howard Stern either as he’s done it in the past, most notably about TV host Julie Chen. It’s not just Asians either as Howard also has a history of donning blackface for, ahem, comedy. At least he isn’t racist to just one group.
If anything, Howard has just gotten better at hiding his racism over the years as a lot of his offensive antics have mysteriously gone missing or been scrubbed from official audio replays of his radio shows. However, the facade is starting to slip.
Following Howard’s racist Parasite comments, a listener called up the Howard Stern Wrap Up Show and immediately took Howard to task for his offensive antics, only for the radio hosts to deflect the question repeatedly and make fun of the caller. This call was conveniently scrubbed from the official replay but some legend managed to record the exchange and shared it to YouTube.
There’s no denying that Howard Stern is a great radio host whose defence of BTS from Sal’s racist coronavirus comments is commendable. However, there’s also no denying that Howard is a racist himself and his staunch BTS defence doesn’t excuse his own xenophobia, no matter how hard he tries to control the narrative.
If anything, all this shows is that Howard Stern is more concern about incurring the wrath of BTS fans than actually calling out a racist for their offensive comments.
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