St. Louis Hate Group Leader, Earl Holt, Continues to Host Radio Show After Posting Racist Diatribe Online
After replying to an antiracist blogger with an expletive- and slur-laced E-mail that went public, Earl P. Holt III has not been asked to step down as the co-host of a talk radio show in St. Louis, Mo.
Earl P. Holt III was very sorry for what he did. Maybe it was the booze, or his own stupidity, but something caused the brash St. Louis, Mo., radio talk show host — a man whose co-host is the leader of one of the nation's largest hate groups — to post an expletive-laden, racist E-mail on the Internet on the night of Nov. 14.
Just in case anyone wondered if it was really him, Holt tacked on his home address.
Luckily for Holt, his remarks were not made on the air. That, say officials of WGNU-AM 920, is the reason he wasn't fired after his tirade became public.
Holt's long-time "Right at Night" co-host is Gordon Lee Baum, the CEO of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the reincarnation of the segregationist White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s and a group that has described blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity."
Holt, who was a member of the St. Louis school board between 1989 and 1993, is on the CCC's national advisory board and is its St. Louis leader. Baum and Holt have co-hosted their show since 1995. Holt once edited and still writes for the CCC's racist tabloid, Citizens Informer.
The CCC has angrily denied charges that it is white supremacist, although a five-minute visit to the group's Web site will dispel that notion for most people. For any who might remain in doubt, Holt's outburst last fall was an instructive one.
"Dear Commie," Holt began as he responded to an Internet blogger who had accused Holt and three others, who also won election to the St. Louis school board on an anti-busing platform in the late 1980s, of being white supremacists.
"Being the shallow n------loving dilettante that you are, you probably DO consider n------ to be your equal (who am I to question this?)," Holt wrote. "Yet, unlike you and your allies, I have an IQ in excess of 130, which grants me the ability to objectively evaluate the Great American Nigro (Africanus Criminalis)."
Holt then reeled off a series of questionable statistics to back his assertion that the "nigro is still as criminal, surly, lazy, violent, and stupid as he/she ever was," despite years of government aid.
Busing students to desegregate schools, Holt added in his posting, "is a colossal waste and nothing more than a symbolic gesture."
"I honestly pray to God that some n----- f----, kills and eats you and everyone you claim to love!" Holt concluded, daring the blogger to print his E-mail on the blogger's Web site.
As news of the E-mail spread on the Internet and beyond, Holt found himself making a tail-between-the-legs apology to his bosses at WGNU, a small station that broadcasts other fringe characters.
General manager Esther Wright and owner Chuck Norman discussed the situation "extensively," Wright told the Intelligence Report, but decided that they would keep Holt because his remarks were not made on the air and because it was the station's policy to be "controversial."
"With so many different opinions going out," Wright said, "we want to be fair all the way around and give everybody the opportunity to speak and say what they feel."
