Quote:
LAWSUIT?
Parton "shocked" at Howard Stern radio segment
By Jonathan Cohen, Reuters
19 hours ago
NEW YORK — Country music star Dolly Parton has hit back against Howard Stern's satellite radio show, which last week manipulated recordings from one of her audio books into seemingly racist and sexually graphic sound bites.
"I have never been so shocked, hurt and humiliated in all my life," Parton said in a statement on Wednesday. "I cannot believe what Howard Stern has done to me. In a blue million years, I would never have such vulgar things come out of my mouth. They have done editing or some sort of trickery to make this horrible, horrible thing. Please accept my apology for them and certainly know I had nothing to do with this."
She concluded: "If there was ever going to be a lawsuit, it's going to be over this. Just wanted you to know that I am completely devastated by this."
"The Howard Stern Show" frequently utilizes audio book recordings in this fashion; altered clips from "Star Trek" actor George Takei became a staple of the program in recent years.
Entertainment - Parton "shocked" at Howard Stern radio segment
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The Stern show does this to all the audio books on tape. It's nothing new. They messed with Ed McMahon's book, Jay Leno's and others.
However, in this instance I don't blame Dolly for being upset and I think a really heartfelt public apology is owed her and her fans by the person who edited the tape.
For what it's worth the regular live Stern broadcast show was not aired today. They played a "Best of" show instead.
Being a Stern fan and being somewhat familiar with how things go on I would guess that it was the work of one of the more moronic and clueless show members. I'm thinking "Sal the Stockbroker."
And this is one of the lessons that ALL of America has to learn about attributing false motives to a person or a cause simply because we think we are licensed to do so under the banner of free speech.
There IS a line. And most of the time those of us who cross the line are never called for it because it is about a politician, our government or even the USA, itself, and so there is no price to pay.
But in this instance, because Dolly Parton is concerned about her public persona, and rightly so, it is altogether reasonable that she be sensitive to being painted as a racist. I have reason to know that she is not racist and is one of the sweetest people you'd want to know. And the seed of any false and malicious rumor or insinuation that she might be racist is certainly something worth suing over.
They crossed the line and I can understand that this would be something that was personally hurtful to Dolly and harmful to her career.
I love the Stern show but Dolly is different. Being a White woman from the South (Tennessee) it is easy for some shumb dit to just assume she is bigoted against Blacks but unless they know it to be true they should not make jokes alluding to that because the public at large assumes these 'show business insiders' have insider knowledge about other show biz people and they might believe these rumors.
Verdict?
Dolly was right to be pissed.