Too quick on the trigger?

Ed Schultz first brought this to my attention on his show the other day, and now that I've heard the audio, I feel bad for Dave Lenihan. The guy was talking fast about SecState Condi Rice, said the word "coon" (and it's likely, as fast as he was going, that he meant to say some other word), and immediately, in milliseconds, apologized for it. Yet, twenty minutes later, the CEO of the station got on the air, apologized, and announced Lenihan's firing.

You know, I'm not a big fan of conservative talk radio (and some liberal talk radio is guilty of some of the same things conservatives do), but this guy shouldn't have lost his job. It was a bad slip of the tongue, corrected and apologized for immediately, and compared to Bill Bennett's monologue on aborting black babies and reducing the crime rate, it was nothing.

I might take some heat for it, but I gotta say, this guy should be reinstated. I don't think he could've acted any better than not having said the word at all, and now he's jobless for talking too fast, in essence. It's just a shame. Maybe Condi could step in and ask the CEO to rehire him. This was just overreacting, instead of the underreaction to Bennett's twisted thoughts.

Update (3/26/06)- Lenihan told the Miami Herald that he meant to say "coup" and not "coon," a perfectly logical, reasonable explaination, which Rice accepted without hesitation, forgiving Lenihan. Now, is this station going to admit it was way too quick to fire him and apologize and reinstate him? The poor guy made a fricking mistake. Let him have his livelihood back.