Shock jock Don Imus has once again sparked public controversy, when a guest on his morning show railed a racist and sexist charge against CBS news anchor Katie Couric, saying she “looks Oriental.”
Fox News regular Bo Dietl verbally attacked Couric on Monday's program, accusing her of getting too much plastic surgery on her eyes, and acting like a “cougar,” by dating younger men.
“She looks like a Halloween costume,” he said. “She’s got her eyes pulled so far, she’s starting to look Chinese herself.”
Imus, who was fired from CBS radio in 2007 after describing the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos,” appeared to try to steer the conversation away from Couric, saying, “leave Katie Couric alone.”
However, Dietl refused to back down about Couric, continuing to pick at the way her eyes look.
“Ten years ago, she looked American,” he said. “Today, she looks Oriental.”
Throughout the program, Dietl could be seen pulling at his eyelids to emphasize his point, to the apparent disgust of Imus.
Blogs across the country have picked up the story, and the audiences are commenting their outrage.
“What, exactly, does an ‘American’ look like, Dietl? Are you saying that Americans of East Asian ancestry aren’t American?” wrote missmolly on Think Progress. “What a jerkwad.”
On Irene’s Daughters, a blog in which women explore race relations and prejudice, Nikki called the program “too bizarre,” and sarcastically wrote that if Diehl didn’t pull back his eyes, she would “just never be sure what they mean by ‘Oriental.”
“Racism and sexism, they go so well together,” she wrote.
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