montel, dumped by fox

A few days ago, I posted a video clip here of Montel Williams on the set of a FOX News morning program. He’d been brought on to talk about the untimely death of actor Heath Ledger. Instead of doing that, however, he took the opportunity to ask the folks at FOX why they weren’t also covering the deaths of the 28 American servicemen and women who had already died in Iraq in the month of January. Well, guess what? A day or two later, FOX announced that they wouldn’t be renewing the Montel Williams Show. And, with that, CBS, the distributor of the show, dropped it. Montel’s television run, after 17 years, had come to an abrupt end.

On the face of it, it would appear that he’d been let go because of the comments he’d made. It seems to me, however, that there could be another explanation. What if Montel already knew that FOX was thinking of not renewing his show — might he not have taken the opportunity, after years of toeing the company line, and playing the game, to call them on their shit? Either way, FOX sucks and Montel did the right thing. It’s too bad that more people in the public eye don’t stand up and say “bullshit” when they see it.

[Thanks to Elvis Costello for bringing this to my attention.]