I predict a great career in right-wing talk radio! Go look at his comments -- and the response of his fans:
SiriusXM DJ Anthony Cumia, co-host of long-running radio program The Opie and Anthony Show, said he was fired Friday after launching into an extended racist tirade on Twitter, claiming a woman in Times Square assaulted him on Tuesday.
Sirius decided to cave and fire me. Welcome to bizarro world. Fired for shit that wasn't even on the air & wasn't illegal. So, who's next?
— Anthony Cumia (@AnthonyCumia) July 4, 2014
Patrick Reilly, SiriusXM’s senior vice president of communications, told BuzzFeed in a statement that the DJ had been let go late Thursday night.
SiriusXM has terminated its relationship with Anthony Cumia of the Opie & Anthony channel. The decision was made, and Cumia informed, late Thursday, July 3 after careful consideration of his racially-charged and hate-filled remarks on social media. Those remarks and postings are abhorrent to SiriusXM, and his behavior is wholly inconsistent with what SiriusXM represents.
[...] Gregg “Opie” Hughes and Cumia have been on the air since 1995, often hosting shows that include controversial bits such as the annual “homeless shopping spree,” once letting a homeless man into the studio to talk about wanting to sexually assault Condoleezza Rice, and reporting that former Boston Mayor Thomas Menino had died in a car crash, with the stunt going so far his daughter called into the show believing them.
The pair have been fined by the Federal Communications Commission and fired for such stunts, though they always found a new station to call home.
One instance, in 2004, had CBS Radio and Infinity parent company Viacom fined $3.5 million to cancel all pending indecency claims against the shock jocks. The issue was a “Sex for Sam” contest where listeners were encouraged to have sex in public.
The show, now hosted with comedian Jim Norton, first went on the air in Boston, and has been on SiriusXM since 2004. SiriusXM started The Opie and Anthony Channel in 2011.
