No Rock And Roll Fun

BACK TO HOT97: The trouble for New York's Hot97 continues to grow as the free holiday awarded to the team who played the awfully unfunny tsunami 'jokes' doesn't seem to be much in the way of a message.

What's odder is the 'apology' from Miss Jones:

I apologize to all who have been offended by my poor decision to go along with playing that insulting (to say the least) Tsunami song. I should have known better and I didn't. So I'm sorry and hopefully we can move forward from this, or I can move forward from this being a better hostess, because I am better than that, and I know better than that -- and you deserve better radio than that."

Note the subtle "my decision to go along with playing" - the attempt to try and dissassociate herself from the content of the programme that goes out under her name is pretty seedy stuff - it's thought the original plan had been to issue a statement that "a big boy did it and ran away."

But Jones isn't without support - E D Hill from Fox News Network has sided with her and her team on the basis that it was "free speech." Now, imagine that a song like this had been about, say, US troops being blown to pieces in Iraq: would Fox and Friends be so quick to applaud?

[The song mentions] "Africans drowning, little Chinamen swept away." It also says God was laughing and telling victims to "swim."

The chorus, sung by a Michael Jackson imitator, says, "So now you're screwed -- in the tsunami, You better run or kiss your ass away, go find your mommy. I just saw her float by, a tree right through her head. And now the children will be sold in child slavery."

Or does Fox News only supports free speech when it's mocking foreigners?