Luis Jimenez is back in town

With posters announcing "The Second Coming" plastering the city (almost as many posters if not more than for the movie "Cloverfield"), Spanish language radio shock-jock Luis Jimenez finally ended his contract-mandated exile and was back on the New York City radio airwaves yesterday morning with his "Luis Jimenez Show" on La Kalle.

Unrepentant for past on air transgressions - or the homophobic skit that got him suspended for a couple of months last year in a version of the show that was being broadcast by Univision Radio in markets outside New York - the debut of the show was preceded by a number of interviews with the press which were striking for the animosity he expressed towards his former colleagues at "El Vacilon de la Mañana" on La Mega. So much so that when he continued to slime La Mega on the air it seemed more like an act to paint himself as the wronged underdog back in town to take them down than anything else (this "underdog," of course, is the man who signed with Univision for $5 million, making him the top paid Hispanic radio personality in the United States).

In a pre-show interview that appeared yesterday in the Daily News, Jimenez addressed his suspension for the first time in public and said: “That happened right after [Don] Imus’ problems and I think the suspension was less about me than about delivering a message."

In the show aired yesterday, which was set up as an on-air "press conference" instead of a proper show, Jimenez told listeners that he had nothing for which to apologize and said that he'd felt personally hurt about being tagged as anti-gay. He said that he knew it wasn't even the gay community that called him homophobic but one or two people at a small organization (alluding, we assume, to GLAAD, which released a statement denouncing his on air banter before the suspension).

He said that it was a sad day when radio personalities didn't have to fear the FCC but, instead, a small organization. "That's not a democracy," he said, "It's a dictatorship."

He also told the Daily News that “rules for content have definitely changed, black comedians have said ‘ho’ for years and now it’s bad. You used to hear ‘bitch’ all the time and now it’s ‘the b-word.’ I think it’s a problem, but I can adjust. You find other ways to say things. I make up words.”

He added that, despite how he felt, he wasn't about to do anything to get his new employer in trouble and that he was grateful to Univision for bringing him back to New York.

The press conference as an on-air show drew mostly online Latino website reporters with most "reporters" congratulating Jimenez on his return to the air and a female reporter actually gushing over Jimenez and how great he looked. One of the exceptions was the well-known El Diario La Prensa OpEd columnist Gerson Borrero who asked a few pressing questions about the feud with "El Vacilon," the issue of censorship and whether Jimenez would be willing to return to SBC Radio, owners of La Mega, if he was offered $10 million dollars.

But wait! What about the show's content?

Well, a number of new personalities were introduced in yesterday's show including Fay who describes herself as being a lesbian woman. She spent some time defending Jimenez from the accusations of homophobia and vouchering for his character (she's the show's Robin Quivers, if you will, to Jimenez' Howard Stern role).

Yesterday and today she engaged in some sophomoric banter with Jimenez - mostly of the Beavis-and-Butthead type - that played on words such as "mamar" (to suck) and "mamá" (mom) that, at least to my ears, fell mostly flat.

Today she asked reggae star Daddy Yankee, a guest, if he clipped his eyebrows just like Don Omar - another reggae singer with whom he has a feud - or if he regretted wearing pink in one of his old videos which might indicate he was less of a man (I guess if a lesbian woman uses the same stereotypes to call men's masculinity into question, all is forgiven, no?).

Then there was a feature in today's show - set to the Village People's "Macho Man" - in which male listeners were asked to call and see who could say phrases such as "If your hands are busy, I'll shake it for you" without sounding gay. A winner was named. As far as offensiveness goes, it was so lame that I'm not sure that it merits mention here.

No, there were no skit songs about a man enjoying being raped by another man or prank calls telling a man that he has hours to live because he has AIDS - as in the past - but I was struck by how boring the first two shows were (not something I would have said about the old "Vacilon" shows).

At one point, to promote the show's online prescence, we were told that a man was going to fall on a bed of mousetraps. For minutes all you heard was the clickety-clack of the mousetraps going off. Someone assured listeners that if they watched it online it would be funny.

As close as it got to the offensiveness of old was a song skit this morning about a man who meets a beautiful woman and takes her to bed only to find out that she has such a huge vagina that he's afraid to fall inside her and get lost. Pretty objectionable, I think, but it even felt forced. An attempt to "prove" that Jimenez hasn't changed his ways even if everything else in the show seems to indicates otherwise.

Previously:

• El Vacilón de la Mañana and Mariconsuelo (Nov. 30, 2007)
  
• A visit with the radio shock-jocks of "El Vacilón de la Mañana" (Nov. 16, 2007)
• Out of La Mega, Luis Jimenez throws a homophobic fit (Jan. 22, 2007)

A visit with the radio shock-jocks of "El Vacilón de la Mañana"

Is it that I am getting older? Or that I don't really care much about these things anymore? Or might it be that the place is the same but the circumstances have changed?

Five years ago I might have gloated about this or seen it as a big momentous occasion but when I finally agreed a few weeks ago to visit the studios of the La Mega radio station to meet and talk to the radio shock-jocks of the "El Vacilón de la Mañana" morning show it felt almost bitter-sweet.

After all, my refusal to appear in the show during an increasingly public confrontation in 2001 over the show's virulent homophobia drew on-air accusations from the former Vacilón shock-jock Luis Jimenez and his co-host Moonshadow that I was a coward (I wanted a serious meeting with the shock-jocks AND the owners of the radio station, not engage them on their home turf as entertainment for their public).

At the time Jimenez was leading one of the most successful morning talk-show team in all of New York - sometimes even beating "Howard Stern" in the ratings - by doing some of the most offensive prank phone calls and skits ever heard on the public airwaves (i.e. a skit in which man with a lisp sings a bachata about being raped the night before and enjoying it, a prank call to a man telling him he probably has hours to live because his wife just tested positive for AIDS and most probably infected him as well, etc.).

It wasn't the first time that the community had protested the show. In 1994 a group of New York City-based lesbian organizations that included Las Buenas Amigas, African Ancestral Lesbians for Societal Change and The Lesbian Avengers actually broke into the studio and disrupted a broadcast of the show and released a statement that characterized the show as follows:

Spanish-language radio station MEGA-KQ 97.9 FM describes lesbians as weird, disgusting, and sick; a 'comic' segment features 'Ros', a stereotypically effeminate and oversexed Latino homosexual who is the butt of denigrating jokes. Blacks ('africanos') belong to 'tribes' and have 'bad hair'; blacks are derisively called 'timba', 'tuta' and 'macumba'; an ongoing character, 'Mamu', who speaks in a caricatured East Indian / Pakistani / Bangladeshi accent is portrayed as oversexed and inferior; during Yom Kippur, the Jewish religious holiday was described as weird, incomprehensible and boring. Another ongoing character, 'El Chulo,' rejoices in the exploitation of older women for money, especially Asian and African women; the rape of a girl by an old man in Brazil was praised as sexual prowess. The character 'Tito Metralla' is taunted and scorned because he stutters.

In other words, despite the protest, things didn't change much between 1994 and December of last year when both Luis Jimenez and Moonshadow left the show in an increasingly acrimonious dispute with the radio station.

Not that the high-jinx have hurt Jimenez career: The reason for leaving La Mega was a multi-million contract that he accepted from rival Univision radio in December where he has since launched "The Luis Jimenez Show" currently broadcast in Chicago, Fresno, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco and Fort Myers and debuting in New York in early 2008.

As for his homophobic tirades, which he always argued were part of the tools used by a comedian who happened to be an equal-opportunity offender and not meant to be homophobic at all, since his move to Univision he has been caught calling a former co-worker a "faggot" and a "cock-sucker" off the air and received a two month suspension at Univision radio in May after GLAAD caught him doing a derogatory song skit about lesbians in the wake of the Don Imus "nappy-ho" fracas.

He has yet to apologize for either and is rumored to have been furious about the suspension. Still, just as Don Imus seems to be on his way back to the New York radio airwaves, I suspect that Jimenez will probably be welcomed back to New York with record ratings for his show once it debuts - as many fans as he left behind in this city who will surely buy into his "banished underdog arriving back into New York victorious" story - despite the fact that the guy has made millions of dollars with the shtick.

Ok, allow me to clear my throat after that (- ehem - ) which brings us to last months visit to the La Mega studios.

One of the great things that did result out of the confrontations with La Mega in 2001 was the realization by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) that they needed to step up when it came to Spanish language media (at the time they failed to take action because they had few people on staff who understood Spanish and said that they were not sure if the show was as homophobic as I claimed it to be which led to ongoing discussions that resulted in the launch of a successful Spanish-language media program at GLAAD).

I'm not sure if Chuy Sanchez, the current Spanish language media strategist for GLAAD was aware of my history with La Mega, but I certainly was surprised when I got an invite to participate in a meeting with the current on-air team, Frankie Jay and Juan Carlos (pictured above), as well as La Mega general manager Frank Flores - who is also the vice president and New York manager of the Spanish Broadcasting System which owns La Mega.

Brian Theobald of EDGE New York wrote a story ("Activists target homophobia on Spanish language radio" - Nov. 7, 2007) that describes how the recent meeting came to be although it doesn't say that among the participants were yours truly as well as my friend Pedro Julio Serrano from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).

Now, I have to confess that I haven't heard the show since the new team took over earlier this year but I did know from Pedro Julio that Frankie Jay, who joined El Vacilón from a show he did in Puerto Rico, had been an ally when both lived in the island and Pedro Julio was advocating for LGBT rights there.

So it wasn't a big surprise when both current shock-jocks seemed open to criticism, friendly and engaged in the conversation, even as Chuy pulled up video and audio files that demonstrated some questionable skits and banter that they had ran on their show since they replaced Jimenez and Moonshadow.

I also was not under any pretense that a meeting like this meant that things would change immediately or even that it was purely the result of good-faith (good-faith might have played into it but I'm sure that the recent attention paid to Don Imus and Luis Jimenez also had to do with it) but, still, I was surprised by how genuinely friendly and open to the Vacilón team seemed to be.

The next day, I wrote to Chuy to let him know just how impressed I'd been by the tone of the conversation and today I am even more impressed that general manager Flores would go on the record with EDGE New York to say "We fell into the same trap that most people fall into, thinking everything is funny when you’re not the punch line to the joke, they made us very much aware that some of the things we were doing on their air that we needed to change. It was like light bulbs going off in our heads" and "Changes like this don’t occur overnight, but the important thing is we now have a renewed sensitivity to the problem and an ongoing relationship with GLAAD. I told them that this is an ongoing process and they can always tell us when we’ve crossed a line."

That would have never happened under the old team and I am glad that I was able to take part of the exchange which I feel was a truly historic meeting when it comes to Latino LGBT activism in this country.

Still, Univision radio still has high-hopes with "The Luis Jimenez Show" in New York and it still remains a mystery if Jimenez has learned a lesson from his suspension. We will certainly be all ears once he makes the debut.

Television host says she didn't know expression was homophobic, should she have been fired?

A wide array of Latino LGBT leaders throughout the United States took notice of the recent firing of the host of a popular Spanish-language television gossip show for using a word that might be interpreted as homophobic in Cuba but not necessarily in other Latin American countries. I mean, I'm certainly as knowledgeable as most people when it comes to homophobic expressions in Latino culture and even I had no idea that the word cherna could be interpreted to mean "faggot." Then again I am not of Cuban or Caribbean descent (nor is Luisa Fernanda, the fired host).

Today's Miami Herald takes a look at Telemundo's swiftness in terminating Luisa Fernanda's contract as the host of "Cotorreando" and the mixed reaction from Latino gay leaders including Ron Brenesky of Miami's Unity Coalition - who is of Cuban descent - and says she should not have been fired ("Host had 'no idea' of gay slur").

The groovy, amazing and lovely Monica Taher of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (not to say that Ron isn't just as lovely or amazing) also expresses ambivalence about the firing, praising Telemundo's willingness to address instances of homophobia on the programs they broadcast, but also stating that the context in which the word was said was not necessarily homophobic.

Last week, Monica did an informal survey of Latino LGBT leaders throughout the United States and got a varied response, mostly supporting Luisa Fernanda.

How some of us came to defend a host in as trashy a gossip show as "Cotorreando" still makes me giggle a bit.

El muy groovy and amazing Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano (OMG, I love that name) put up his thoughts over on his blog God is Brown on Friday.

Here is what I sent to Monica last week as well:

When CBS radio fired Don Imus over the racially-insensitive comments he made on air a couple of months ago, it seemed to me that the radio company was responding to the escalating national outrage and the potential impact on their advertising dollars rather than purely because Imus had crossed the line. As has been reported, Imus and his on-air cohorts had crossed that line over and over again with nary a peep from CBS radio UNTIL it became a national controversy.

Similarly, Spanish-language radio shows such as "El Vacilon de la Manana" have long been the target of protests by Latino LGBT organizations and activists for more than a decade and none of the radio stations that carry El Vacilon have ever deemed that it was appropriate to suspend or fire a radio personality for skits, call pranks or comments that not only crossed the line but probably violated FCC regulations as well (case in point: a skit song about a man enjoying being raped and wanting more that was on "El Vacilon" at the time that radio personality Luis Jimenez was part of the crew).

The recent suspension of Luis Jimenez who made a move to Univision radio after he was offered a multi-million dollar contract was shockingly swift and must have been embarrassing for Jimenez. According to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the move came after Jimenez used pejorative language to refer to lesbians.

But don’t look for an explanation from Jimenez or Univision radio: Jimenez has yet to officially speak about the incident – or apologize – and Univision radio has only put out a vague statement about “inappropriate comments” and its commitment to upholding the “highest standards.”

But, come on! Univision must have known exactly what Jimenez would bring to the show (Jimenez has a well documented history of homophobic outbursts on and off the air).

Most probably, in the wake of Imus, Univision felt threatened by GLAAD’s interest in Jimenez’ show and potential repercussions if advertisers got wind of it.

The firing of Luisa Fernanda from Cotorreando shows that these punitive actions are probably a passing trend rather than Latino media finally having found its "conscience."

I have had a long personal and professional interest in being a watchdog over the representation of the LGBT community in Spanish-language media so perhaps I've been more involved than others on this topic. So I guess I can say that it frustrates me that some in our own community side with those who say that we are humorless censors looking for any opportunity to shut down anyone or anything that does not portray the LGBT community in the best light – when that could not be further from the case.

The Latino LGBT community is incredibly diverse. We come in all hues and degrees of masculinity or femininity, with all sorts of political and ideological backgrounds. There should be effeminate gay men or butch lesbian women represented on out television or radio shows, as well as femme lesbians and macho gay guys. There are good and bad and semi-good and semi-bad gay people. The issue is not to block out aspects of our community we might not like or to concentrate exclusively on the greatness of the LGBT community (although we ARE great!) but to stop being ridiculed and assaulted through Spanish-language media at our expense.

There is humor to be had through skits, songs or comedies that portray the LGBT community in Spanish language media (see the now defunct and groundbreaking Telemundo comedy "Los Beltran") but one thing is to laugh with us and quite another at us.

So, having said this, it might shock some people to hear me say that Luisa Fernanda should not have been fired from Cotorreando. By all intents and purposes, she has had an on air and off air history of supporting the Latino gay community in ways that other supposedly pro-gay personalities have not done. And if she says that she had no idea that the comment she made was pejorative of lesbians in the Caribbean, she has more than earned the right for us to take those comments at face value.

Still, Jimenez is the superstar radio personality that Univision hopes will bring millions to the station – and he only gets a month's suspension (he is back on air as I write this) - while Luisa Fernanda is off-the air at Telemundo for good.

To me, this shows a case of commercial skittishness and fear from the national radio and television broadcasters rather than a true desire to curve some of the most offensive content on Spanish-language radio or television today.

It's great that Telemundo and Luisa Fernanda met this week with Miami's Unity Coalition. Hopefully the conversations will lead Telemundo to ask Luisa Fernanda back on the show.

But the networks and radio producers have a long way to truly change a culture that promotes extreme offensiveness in exchange for increased ratings even if they do have the power to edit content despite their contention that it's "what the public wants."

Censoring expression, even if its language that offends, is not the way to change cultural stereotypes. It’s whether that language incites hate, prejudice and violence against others that matters and needs to be challenged.

Related stories:

• Cotorreando's Luisa Fernanda is Fired (People in Español)

Blog Posts:

• Luisa Fernanda, fired for a word she didn't know (Alex Blaze in Bilerico)
  
• Luisa Fernanda should not have been fired (j.brotherlove)
  
• Unity Coalition to honor Luisa Fernanda on Sunday (Miami Herald's Gay South Florida blog)
  
• Hard Face (Stuck on the Palmetto)

Out of La Mega, Luis Jimenez throws a homophobic fit

[PLEASE NOTE: No anonymous comments will be allowed in reply to this post]

Long criticized for sponsoring homophobia during his stint as a radio shock-jock in NYC's La Mega radio station, Luis Jimenez always scoffed at the criticism saying that if they made fun of gays from time to time, well, they made fun of everybody else anyway so it should not be taken as an offense. He would also say that he personally had no animosity towards gays.

Jimenez, who recently left the radio station in an increasingly acrimonious split when he made a $5 million deal with Univision Radio, has seen his star rise despite (or should I say because) of the filth and raunch that characterized his run in the morning show "El Vacilon de la Mañana."

Question is, was Jimenez sincere when he said, for all intents and purposes, that he did not have a homophobic bone in his body?

Today, in his weekly El Diario La Prensa column, well-known political analyst Gerson Borrero reveals details of an alleged confrontation between Jimenez and Polito Vega on January 12th. Vega, who runs a salsa music show for La Mega and is allied with the radio station's owner, Raul Alarcon, is said to have forced other members of "El Vacilon" to sign contracts that prohibited them from following Jimenez to Univision radio.

Borrero writes that the two ran into each other at a parking garage in mid-Manhattan. Vega noticed Jimenez and said, in Spanish, "Hi Luis, how are you?"

"How do you think I am doing, old hypocrite! Faggot!" Jimenez is said to have shot back in anger, also in Spanish.

"You're the hypocrite, faggot!" replied Vega.

Jimenez then allegedly almost jumped out of his skin in anger and shouted "You are a back-stabber! Cock-sucker!" As Vega turned around and started to leave, Jimenez added "You have Raulito [Alarcon]'s fist up you ass, faggot."

Even Borrero makes note of the homophobic expressions used by both radio personalities though he says La Mega listeners might think they're more in line with language used in "El Vacilon."

If the description of the exchange is accurate, it shows that even when he thinks he is off the air, Jimenez deems it fit to call people a faggot [maricon], a cock-sucker [mama-bichos] or question their masculinity by alleging that he's got a fist up his ass.

The difference between the Grey's Anatomy fracas and Luis Jimenez is that while Isaiah Washington does not espouse what might be his homophobic views through his work in the top rated dramatic television show in the country, Jimenez usage of homophobic insults in private is pretty much what he did on air during his stint in the top rated Spanish language radio show in the nation.

But, because all this happens and is reported in Spanish-language media, while Washington might well lose his job over his comments, Jimenez will get $5 million to do more of the same, care of Univision radio.

UPDATE: Luis Jimenez is back in town (January 18, 2008)

ITN: Mario Acosta-Velez, Spain's weddings, Chicago shootings, La Mega

All these stories have run recently on English language media so... no need to translate them (Yay!)

Cover Man: DC's Metro Weekly profiles Latino gay activist Mario Acosta-Velez, President of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, member of DC's Human Rights Commission, Executive Director of the Latino Civil Rights Center and Board Member of Gente Latina de Ambiente (GELAAM). A few months ago Metro Weekly also featured a cover story on DC Latina transgender activist Ruby Corado, so kudos to Metro Weekly for featuring some of our own.

Why not U.S.?: The Advocate takes a look at why a mostly Catholic country such as Spain was able to allow same-sex couples to marry throughout the nation even as the United States continues struggling with the issue.

No arrests: The Windy City Times takes a look at a Martin Luther King Day march and press conference held in Chicago's South Side in light of the New Year's Eve shooting that left six gay men with bullet wounds (all six survived but authorities have yet to arrest anyone).

Mega shocker: Finally, the Spanish-language radio station airwaves in New York are in an upheaval after the recent departure of popular morning shock-jock Luis Jimenez from the top rated "El Vacilon de la Mañana" on La Mega (97.9FM) with his partner, Moonshadow, indicating that he might follow. For more than ten years we have criticized the incredibly homophobic content on which the show traded but the criticism mostly fell on deaf ears and was dismissed by the radio station in consideration of just how big a cash-cow it had become for them.

Unfortunately, Jimenez' departure is not a sign that Spanish language radio is waking up to their responsibility to avoid extremely obscene material in the mornings. I guess it's no big surprise that money was the key reason for the Mega-break up: He will now get an annual salary of $5 million dollars for Univision radio.

Puerto Rico's El Vocero says that a local radio personality, Frankie Jay, has signed up to replace Jimenez. Puerto Rico Para Tod@s' Pedro Julio Serrano tells us that the new DJ stayed away from homophobic fare while building a radio following in the island, which means that "El Vacilon" might just change a bit. We'll have to wait and see.

Funny, ha ha...

Members of the Jennifer Lopez fan club? Well, no... That's PapiChulo and YunYun of New York City's Spanish language radio station 97.9FM's "El Vacilon de la Mañana" playing gay as they disrupt a J. Lo movie shooting in New York (from today's radio broadcast and online links). Funny, ha ha... not really. Offensive? Not really either. Just a bit stereotypical and part of the way they use gays as laughing stocks almost on a daily basis.

La Mega shock-jocks rebuffed by mourning family

It's been a while since I listened to "El Vacilon de la Mañana" on New York City's La Mega radio station (97.9FM) but a Gerson Borrero column in Friday's El Diario La Prensa caught my eye.

Back on August 14th, 2006, in his "Bajo Fuego" opinion column, Mr. Borrero profiled Mr. Marino Heredia, a Dominican Republic immigrant who came to New York in 1978 already infected by a parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes called filalia. As a younger man, Mr. Heredia had trusted those who said his swollen leg was the result of an evil spell cast on him and had only sought help from brujos (witches). It wasn't until his arrival in the United States years later when symptoms worsened that he finally sought medical help - and was diagnosed.

At 50 years of age and weighing at 750lbs, Mr. Heredia contacted Mr. Borrero seeking help in finding a specialist that might be able to help him. Earlier this summer he gained a bit of notoriety in the Spanish-language press when 15 firemen had to assist in helping him out of his second floor apartment before he could be taken to a Queens hospital. Mr. Heredia did not survive much longer, he passed away last week.

In the article, Mr. Borrero asked Mr. Heredia to describe some of the symptoms. Mr. Heredia said that one of the worst things was that his "balls had grown too much." Asked if he was referring to his testicles, he clarifies that he is referring to two massive growths on both sides of his inner thighs, which made it impossible for him to walk (elephantitis of lower body extremities and sexual organs is common in advanced filalia sufferers according to this link)

Well, enter "El Vacilon de La Mañana." Upon learning of Mr. Heredia's passing last week, they apparently latched on the comments he had made to Mr. Borrero in August and called the El Diario La Prensa columnist to discuss Mr. Heredia's "balls." Mr. Borrero says he spent a few minutes trying to convey the seriousness of the disease during the broadcast (he should have known better than to actually have gone on air with the notoriously offensive "Vacilon" crew, which it must be said advertise prominently in the print and web portal editions of El Diario).

In Friday's "Bajo Fuego" column, Mr. Borrero says that he was interrupted by a cell phone call from Mr. Heredia's sister, Luz Heredia, even as he was still on air with "El Vacilon." She wanted to express her family's indignation at the comments made about their brother on air at a time when they are also dealing with how to bury a man who weighed so much when he died.

Apparently, "El Vacilon" made an offer to help the Heredia family with burial expenses but Ms. Heredia tells Borrero "Even if we were in need, how can we accept anything from those who are disrespectful?"

Mr. Borrero is right to say that "[DJ's] Moon, Francis Mendez, Carolina, Chino and the rest of the abnormal [crew] were unmeasured in their insensibility" and ends by saying "You crossed the line, friends."

Question is: When haven't they done anything but stuff like this.

Previously

• Hispanic Jews in Miami vs. El Vacilon de la Mañana (Sept. 25, 2006)
• Letter to the NY Times: When You Raped Me (Nov. 2, 2006)
• Spanish language media no longer immune (August 13, 2006)

Spanish Language Media No Longer Immune

History was made. Yesterday, a San Francisco man was awarded $270,000 from Univision Radio (the largest Spanish-language radio broadcaster in the Unites States) in an arbitration court desison. Univision was found liable for "outing" the man during an on-air phone prank on a morning show. Roberto Hernandez, the victim, argued that the forced "outing" had a "devastating" effect on his personal and professional life.

I am aware that a few years ago the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined a Puerto Rican radio station for broadcasting obscene language but this is the first time that I am aware that a court or regulation enforcement agency has forced a Spanish-language media coropration based in the United States to pay for these kind of stunts.

And the fact is that we are not talking the usual radio shock-jock banter that people hear on, say, Howard Stern, or elsewhere. A local radio show here in New York, "El Vacilón de la Mañana" (97.9 La Mega FM) which is syndicated nationaly, practically invented the format (jokes, prank phone calls and parody songs all morning long with brief news and wheather alerts) and caught a lot of people unguarded when they actually beat Howard Stern's ratings consistently and became, from time to time, the most-listened radio station in the New York metropolitan area, regardless of language. Now the "La Mega" format is being exported to other cities around the United States and even rival Spanish-language stations in each market are imitating them.

So what is so offensive? A couple of examples:

In a song skit called "Cuando Me Violaste" ("When You Raped Me") set to a bachata rhythm, a guy sings about being raped by another man the previous night. He sings about how huge a hole the guy left afterwards and how much it hurt (while siging longingly and lisping a few words here and there).

In a "Vacilón" prank phone call a man is told that his wife has tested positive for HIV and that he needs to rush to the hospital for testing before he dies. The man, who does not understand what HIV means asks for clarification to which the pranker says "SIDA, amigo su mujer tiene SIDA!" ["AIDS, my friend, your wife has AIDS!]. At that moment the man starts losing his composure, gets agitated, and the radio jokey actually tells him that this is why it's so important to rush to the hospital: Because - if he also has it - he could die in a couple of hours. They also tell him that his wife has admitted sleeping around with other men. The guy on the phone sounds as if he's on the verge of tears but towards the end he seems to realize this is too much and asks if it's a prank. When he is told that it is, he lets out a sigh of relief and laughs along. Never mind the misinformation spread through these skits (HIV is not the same as AIDS, someone diagnosed with HIV or AIDS can live a long life, etc.).

You actually do not need to rely on my descriptions: These and other skits are included in one of the four popular CD compilations that "El Vacilón" has released commercially (where this type of material is defensible as a Free Speech issue). But so far, no fines from the FCC for the live broadcast of the same skits (which are not defensible if broadcast on live radio or television under FCC regulations).

They get away with it because nobody at the FCC seems to speak or undesrtand Spanish or care much about the most-listened radio show in the New York City metropolitan area. They get away with it because they began to run some HIV prevention messages during the commercial breaks as a shield. They get away with it because agencies like mine see the huge listenership as a means to reach as wide a Spanish-speaking population with an HIV prevention message and go to the show to 'inform' the community (but then get ridiculed the moment they leave the studio as when the HIV disclosure skit mentioned above was re-broadcast the moment members of my agency had left). They get away with it because so many people in the community don't see anything wrong with the skits.

At the very least, after that last experience, the top brass at my agency said that they had learned their lesson and will not be back on the show. But it certainly has undermined the on-going efforts to keep them from spewing so much mierda.