Prescott radio host fired in mural flap

[The Village Idiot]

http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/060510_prescott_fired

excerpt

Dylan Smith & Michael Truelsen
TucsonSentinel.com
 

A Prescott radio host embroiled in a controversy over a school mural is off the air, while the mural won't be subject to a whitewash order.

Steve Blair, who also holds a seat on the Prescott City Council, was let go from his talk radio show after drawing fire for his opposition to an environmental mural painted on an elementary school.

The "Go to Green" mural, based on the faces of children who attend the school, drew local criticism for featuring minority children.

The school district has reversed its request to lighten the faces of the students in the mural, after attracting national attention with the move.

"Shame on us if we can't say, 'We made a mistake and we're sorry,'" said Prescott Unified School District Superintendent Kevin Kapp on Saturday.

"From the very get-go, every time I drove by this beautiful mural, I got a wonderful feeling of pride and pleasure at the work these Mural Mice have done," said Kapp at a rally in front of the mural.

"Miller Valley made a mistake. When we asked them to lighten the mural, we made a mistake," said Miller Valley Elementary School Principal Jeff Lane.


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[The Village Idiot]

and more...

With the loss of his radio spot, Blair may not hold the same opinion.

"I am no longer the KYCA 1490 p.m. guy," Blair told PrescottENews.com. "I'm going to be the afternoon 'water my garden' guy."

"It was defacing a public building, of a historic nature," Blair said when interviewed after losing his radio job.

"Nobody bothered to let the community know what that mural was supposed to depict, made it very difficult even to buy in on what the mission statement of that mural was supposed to be," said Blair.

"It was too big, too in your face, wrong place, wrong time," said Blair.

"It looked like a guy, in my opinion, a black guy, brown guy holding a stick, and flowers and stuff, what was it supposed to mean? If they say it means going green, what does that mean?"

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott's Downtown Mural Project, told USA Today that he and other artists heard slurs from passersby as they worked on the painting.

"We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars," Wall said. "We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics)."

[The Village Idiot]

I think KYCA should hear from conservatives.

The mural looks like a Chinese propaganda poster.

I really doubt the artists were harassed racially all day while doing the painting.