Radio host suspended over ‘concentration camp’ slur
RADIO host Kyle Sandilands has been suspended indefinitely by Sydney's 2Day FM after suggesting that comedian Magda Szubanski would lose more weight "in a concentration camp".
LEXI LANDSMAN
RADIO host Kyle Sandilands has been suspended indefinitely by Sydney’s 2Day FM after suggesting that comedian Magda Szubanski would lose more weight “in a concentration camp”.
Sandilands’ comments during Tuesday’s breakfast show sparked a furore in the Jewish community.
“You put her in a concentration camp and you watch the weight fall off … like she could be skinny,” Sandilands said on the 2DayFM breakfast show.
A statement released by Austereo said that 2Day FM “believes the comments made by Kyle were unacceptable and sincerely apologises and regrets any offence they caused”.
The chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Alhadeff, said that despite finding Sandilands’ remarks offensive, “at no stage did the Jewish community call for Mr Sandilands to be sacked or suspended”.
“Concentration camps have caused the deaths of millions of people throughout history — in Cambodia, in Bosnia, in the Holocaust. Events of such magnitude should never be trivialised,” Alhadeff told The AJN.
“It is not only those directly affected by the crimes that occurred in those camps who take exception to such trivialisation, but all people of goodwill.”
Sandilands’ comments were in response to a discussion about who should be the next ambassador for Jenny Craig after Szubanski, who is the current face of the weight-loss company, lost 25 kilograms.
But Sandilands suggested Jenny Craig did not need a new ambassador. “Let’s face it, Magda could have another run at it couldn’t she, she could get another season out of them, easy,” Sandilands said. “She’s not skinny.”
In a statement released after the incident, Szubanski, whose father was Polish, said she couldn’t “give two hoots about what Kyle says” about her, but said that “to trivialise what happened to people in concentration camps is abhorrent”.
Sandilands apologised for the slur in a statement. “It was not my intention to upset anyone and I sincerely apologise to anyone offended by my comments,” he said.
It is the second time in a month that Sandilands has been suspended. Sandilands and his co-host Jackie O returned to the airwaves three weeks ago after a two-week “recess” imposed by Austereo, following a segment in which a 14-year-old girl, who was hooked up to a lie detector, revealed she had been raped when she was 12.
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