A Toledo, Ohio radio station is unapologetically pushing its new ad campaign that gleefully mocks Caitlyn Jenner and transgender people.
Star 105.5 in Toledo, Ohio, is promoting its morning radio shock jock Denny Schaffer by mocking transgender people. In a new ad campaign, which includes a local billboard, Schaeffer attempts to mimic the now iconic image of Caitlyn Jenner on her debut Vanity Fair cover. The billboard bears the message, “TRANSITION to Star 105,” a juvenile play on words.
The station is part of the gigantic billion-dollar Cumulus Broadcasting network.
Schaffer is a born-again Christian who last year said he has changed from his previous ways. “I think a lot more before I speak or broadcast or do a show,” he insisted.
There is a Change.org petition calling for the firing of Denny Schaffer. Star 105 was only too happy to post it to their Facebook page, opting to revel in the controversy rather than take down the billboard and apologize.
Equality Toledo has spoken out against the billboard, calling it “hateful,” and they’re asking people to call Cumulus to complain.
The LGBT group isn’t the only local who’s angered.
Calling the billboard “lazy” and “deadly” in an open letter to Cumulus, a blogger and Toledo resident known as Phaylen (on Gawker’s Kinja platform) explains her disgust – about the billboard, and about Schaffer.
“To date, I’ve heard him attack a woman live on air, urging her to ‘Go to Jesus’ and ‘Get saved’ because she had a daughter that had considered abortion,” Phaylen writes. “I’ve listened to him have a preacher call in and tell listeners they were ‘Idiots’ if they didn’t believe in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior. On the heels of this, he’d go right back to making insensitive, bold and reckless remarks and jokes about LGBT people, and since Caitlyn Jenner became a national topic, it’s been more aggressive and far more frequent.”
Now, we see this billboard erected near a Mall, a place where young people go, where they hang out- Trans people too, and they’re seeing your advertisement mocking the image of a Transgender person in order to solicit an audience at the expense of a vulnerable human being in a city where Trans People are being beaten. Consider, just last November, less than a year ago, a Trans woman was attacked was nearly killed in downtown Toledo because of her gender status. Just one of the hundreds of thousands of nightmareish realities Trans people face often with disastrous endings. Such is the story of 17 year old Leelah Alcorn from the small Ohio town of Kings Hill who left a pleading suicide note on her Tumbr [sic] page stating; “Life ‘isn’t worth living… because I’m transgender.’
Phaylen’s letter is a must-read, though, sadly, the chances of any Star 105 or Cumulus executive reading it are slim.Â
If Schaffer had any interest in supporting the residents of Toledo – who include Phaylen – he would invite her on his show and allow her to read the letter aloud.
And then he would apologize.
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Images via Facebook