Mike Rosen slams David Sirota for distorting his "satirical" mosque-destruction comment
Last week, AM 760's David Sirota circulated a comment made by KOA's Mike Rosen during a debate, in which the latter appeared to call for hijackers to crash a plane into a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero -- a bon mot that later prompted MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to brand Rosen the worst person in the world. But Rosen says the remark was meant as satire and blasts his Clear Channel colleague for distorting it into an Internet frenzy.
Mike Rosen.
According to Rosen, the audience attending the face-off involving him, Sirota and KHOW's Peter Boyles earlier this month understood his tongue was in his cheek when he said, "I think they should be allowed to build it, following the hijacking of an Iranian plane right into that building and blow it to smithereens." And there was a good reason for that, he believes.
"The people cheering or laughing after I said that were mostly my listeners," he says. "And that surprised me. There were 400 people in the room, and I thought Sirota's left-wing minions would dominate the hall. But there were so many more of my listeners than I'd expected, and they knew I was being ironic."
David Sirota.
Sirota apparently didn't. In the complete recording of the debate, Sirota can be heard saying, "That's sick. That's some sick shit" -- with the "shit" bleeped on the audio clip. Rosen didn't catch this reaction, though. "He mumbled it under his breath," he says, "and we were sitting on the opposite ends of the stage" at Comedy Works South, where the event happened. "Only the people up front could hear that."
As for Sirota's spotlighting of the comment on the Huffington Post, Rosen says it was worse than a violation of collegiality; he and Sirota both work for Clear Channel stations. "It was grossly unprofessional," he maintains, in part because "he attacked me on his radio show personally. He wasn't talking about the merits of any disagreements. He talked about my divorces, my financial losses, my plastic surgery. It was so obviously a petulant, sore-loser, childish rant on his part, no doubt because everyone in the room knew that I made him look like a monkey that night.
"Peter and I were having a lot of fun" at the debate "even though we disagree on a lot of things. We were high-fiving when we scored with a good one-liner, which is what the evening was all about. But Sirota is so humorless and so programmed. His program is a repetition of all his simplistic, left-wing screeds. And the format lent itself to witty repartee, which is not his strength. He can't ad-lib."
Write Comment
Email to Friend
Print Article
