First, Citadel has been closing out on staff around the country...Melanie is simply one of a few hundred. Duly noted by mediamole.
Second, William, facts are our friends. Morton Downey,Jr. was on KFBK in 1983. He made a crass comment about "chinamen" which, as far as I can remember, was aimed at Sacramento City Councilman Tom Chinn.
The following is fact, not fuzzy remembrances: Chinn complained to C.K. McClatchy, the last of the McClatchy family to operate the Sacramento Bee, and his long time friend. The Bee, at that time owned KFBK, and McClatchy told the GM, Paul Aaron, that he "had to do something with Downey". Aaron suspended Downey for two weeks, but that was not what McClatchy meant, and he indicated that to Aaron...suggestling strongly that Downey had to go. Downey was canned. Aaron saved his job, and brought in, on the recommendation of one of his consultants, a heretofore modest announcer from Kansas City...Rush Limbaugh.
C.K. McClatchy was an unrepentant liberal, and the Bee was certainly liberal in its POV. But McClatchy's favorite talk host on KFBK at that time (pre-Rush) was mostly conservative in his POV. There was never any attempt to rein him in. In the mid-80s the McClatchy corporation divested itself of its broadcasting components to Westinghouse, and several other corporate changes have been made, which have no relationship to current ownership.
Mark Williams was fired simply because he was an awful broadcaster...not because of his beliefs. Please note that Williams has not been picked up by any organization of significance, as opposed to one of his predecessors on KFBK, Spencer Hughes.
If KFBK ever introduced the Rush replay on the weekends as the "worst of Rush", (and as I remember, they may have), it was only Rush's twisted humor, reversing the "best of" mantra...totally a Rush thing.
It was a joke, like about an Irishman.
Meet my friend. He's Nytimese -- you might say he's a Nytiman. But I sometimes ignore that and rely on what he has to say.
The Nytiman went on to report that Mr. Chinn claimed that Downey fans sent "death" threats. Don't they all?
I like the Joe Pynes, Downeys, Michael Savages of the "audio radiance" as Lee Rodgers calls it.
I don't believe that it's healthy for honest debate to cower and keep on truckling to PC pukes.
There's no Constitutional protection from being insulted from time to time.
Just a few years ago there was a major effort to get Armstrong and Getty off the air (AM650). The mayor and some councilmen again.
Mark Williams was verbally attacked by city council members and Mark delighted in broadcasting one barely literate member saying that Mark shoudl be run out of town.
Of course I respect your memory and knowledge but city government too often gets in matters that it has no business.