Anti-Defamation League Complains About 2 DJs

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith charged Thursday that Los Angeles radio station KLOS-FM frequently broadcasts “racist and anti-Semitic commentary” by its morning comedy team, Mark Thompson and Brian Phelps.

The league said it had complained to the station’s program director and to the station’s owner, Capital Cities/ABC.

In a letter to the owner, the league said listeners to the Mark & Brian show “frequently hear commentary or musical parodies which target Jews, Jewish women, Jewish mothers, Asians and blacks.”

Objects to Song

“Recently,” the letter continued, “the show featured a song about ‘Oriental Drivers’ produced by Mark and Brian. “Little Sambo’ is a character on the show which parodies stereotypical racial prejudices. Heidi, who is apparently another ‘visitor’ to the show, tells jokes which play off bigoted anti-Semitic stereotypes.

“Humor that targets individuals as the butt of jokes because of their race, religion or ethnic heritage denigrates all minorities,” the letter said. “Anyone who identifies with the group vilified feels humiliated and violated--a victim of verbal assault.”

The letter, dated July 14, was signed by the league’s civil rights division director, Jeffery P. Sinensky, and addressed to Thomas S. Murphy, chairman of the board of Capital Cities/ABC. It was made public late Thursday by the league.

An attempt to reach an ABC spokesman failed.

But KLOS-FM’s president and general manager, Bill Sommers, said the league has some of its facts wrong.

He acknowledged that the disc jockeys had done a parody of a Billy Joel song called “The Longest Time,” and that the parody concerned “Oriental drivers being slow.”

But he said Thompson and Phelps had never used a character called Little Sambo.

“I would never allow it,” he said. “The only character they do is Elvis Presley.”

Done for Entertainment

Of some of the two personalities’ commentary, he said: “I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. Things are done for entertainment. . . . I have had 10 complaints on this whole thing . . . out of 1.3 million (listeners). . . . I don’t get enough complaints to warrant that there are many people upset with what’s going on.

“Some of the things they do may be offensive to two or three people,” Sommers continued. “But I don’t think there is anything in this day and age that we could talk about that would not be offensive to some group.”

Thompson and Phelps, known for their bratty, improvisational style, were recently credited by a KLOS official as the key reason for the album-rock station’s No. 1 rating among 18- to 34-year-old men in its listening area.

Neither Thompson nor Phelps was at the station late Thursday, Sommers said. He declined to try to call them at home to see if they would like to comment, but said they would be happy to meet with league officials who, he added, had not asked for a meeting.