I recently started listening to the podcast of Penn
Jillette's radio show. Jillette is the loud, boisterous half of comedy/magic team "Penn and
Teller," whose show Penn and Teller: Bullshit! is currently in its fourth season on
Showtime. At one point, Jillette suddenly went on a hilarious rant about one director's alleged
desire to have Paris Hilton play the
role of Mother Theresa in an upcoming movie. Ever the contrarian, Penn's rant was not against Hilton, it was
against Mother Theresa, whom he claimed did not actually help people get well, but merely set up places where people
came to die due to what Penn claimed was some kind of sick perversion on her part.
I almost blogged about this when I heard it, but I think I was distracted by a shiny object or something, because I forgot about it. However, the AP reports that another radio host didn't cotton to Penn's rant, and sarcastically offered to pay a listener $5,000 to kill Jillette. The host, John London, was fired for his comments, along with the show's producer, Denis Cruz, and Chris Townsend, a sports reporter.
Click here for an MP3 of the Penn Radio episode.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-11-2006 @ 4:19PM
Juster said...
No! Paris Hilton can't be Mother Theresa. How could it be woman, which porn is distributed in internet?!
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4-11-2006 @ 4:38PM
gwangi said...
What did the sports reporter have to do with this?
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4-11-2006 @ 5:12PM
peggy said...
i'm sickened that paris hilton is even being considered to play mother theresa. let us not forget that she is famous (paris) for HAVING SEX ON TAPE !!!!! how is she even a candidate to play the part of a true humanitarian such as mother theresa who wouldn't have had SEX ON TAPE!!!!
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4-11-2006 @ 5:12PM
peggy said...
i'm sickened that paris hilton is even being considered to play mother theresa. let us not forget that she is famous (paris) for HAVING SEX ON TAPE !!!!! how is she even a candidate to play the part of a true humanitarian such as mother theresa who wouldn't have had SEX ON TAPE!!!!
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4-11-2006 @ 5:15PM
Don Wilson said...
I have to listen to the idiotic david lee roth instead of a (probably) decent radio show host like Penn.
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4-11-2006 @ 5:30PM
AGUYMAGIC said...
Penn is one of the most logical thinkers of the 21st Century. The fact that those who disagree with his opinion, and publically offer a reward to permanently stop his right to voice his opinion (free speech), is an act of anti-americanism. What's worse is, this so-called DJ can be held responsible for any listeners actions to Penn. Glad he's off the air! Putz!
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4-11-2006 @ 5:33PM
Ed said...
They explained the whole "Mother Theresa didn't really help people" thing in one of the episodes of Bullshit!, which I think was in season 2.
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4-11-2006 @ 6:31PM
vicki said...
Mother Paris??? Someone should fire the director. Were they kidding too??? Now saying on the air that you want someone killed is so Republican. I'm sort of surprised he was fired.
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4-12-2006 @ 12:56AM
Chris Arndt said...
Logic is no virtue when you start from an incorrect premise.
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4-12-2006 @ 3:42AM
Matt said...
London follows Jillette's show in the SF area and even though I only rarely catch the beginning of his show, he is usually complaining about how bad Jillette's show is or how Jillette shouldn't make jokes against Christianity (Jillette is an atheist).
I was listening to the end of Jillette's show that day. London followed and started on the $5K to kill him rant. He upped the offer for proof of pain and suffering. The other guys chimed in agreeing or furthering the rant. I thought it was overboard. They said they could use paypal. Monkeys.
Funny, only reason I've heard London is because he follows Jillette who he rips at the start of his show for being bad for radio.
I think he deserved the boot.
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4-12-2006 @ 2:45PM
corbett said...
Matt, are you saying that London bashes Jillette for bashing Christianity and then he turns around and offers $5k for someone to kill Jillette?
Wow. How amazingly christian of London. Sounds like the guy has a future filling in for Pat Robertson on the 700 Club.
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4-12-2006 @ 11:34PM
Matt said...
Yep.
He said Jillette is bad for radio since he jokes about Jesus and religion. London's claim is (happily: was) that since the majority of the US is Judeo-Christian that it will hurt the FreeFM radio format, drive away listeners, and London will suffer as a result.
Guess he doesn't have to worry about that anymore, eh?
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