Terry Meiners - Controversy

Controversy

Meiners’ online postings and radio commentaries have elicited some highly charged responses.

Accompanied by the tune Dueling Banjos, Meiners regularly caricatured Wallace G. Wilkinson, Kentucky’s governor from 1987–92, as a scheming huckster with a warbling hick accent. At a 1989 NCAA basketball game in Minneapolis, Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson introduced Wilkinson and Meiners, with the governor snapping, “What did I do to piss you off?” When Wilkinson died in 2002, he was mired in bankruptcy proceedings that illustrated his orchestration of a $400 million Ponzi scheme that depleted the fortunes of many prominent Kentuckians and forced changes in auditing standards.

Louisville civil rights activist Rev. Louis Coleman, whom Meiners regularly parodied as a race-baiting extortionist on Meiners’ radio show, refused to be interviewed on the air. Coleman eventually wrote a letter to the founder of Clear Channel Communications in Texas, demanding that Meiners be fired. Coleman called Meiners a “trained imitator (certified nut case)” who should stick to comedy and not “serious issues.” In the letter, Coleman also misspelled both the first and last names of Clear Channel’s owner, and sent it to “San Antonia.”

Larry Birkhead, the onetime photographer who fathered a child with the late model Anna Nicole Smith, repeatedly threatened WHAS Radio and Clear Channel Communications with litigation to prevent Meiners from calling him “The Sperminator” or posting photos Birkhead claims he owns. In May 2010, a federal appeals court ruled that Anna Nicole Smith’s estate would not receive any proceeds from the estate of her late husband, billionaire J. Howard Marshall. Meiners posted the story under the headline, “Louisville’s Larry Birkhead is flying coach again.” Birkhead wrote multiple angry replies on Meiners’ Facebook page, calling the announcer a “douchebag (sic) on local AM radio.” Meiners replied, “Thanks for writing. Better go buy some work boots this weekend.” Birkhead responded “I am flying in FIRST CLASS to talk to my attorney about your defamatory comments… Do you want your legal papers served to you at work or at home?” In June 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal appeals court ruling denying Smith any part of the billionaire's estate, ending Birkhead's path to the money. The child Birkhead fathered has the billionaire's surname included within her full legal name. Birkhead is now selling Anna Nicole Smith's home in California, with proceeds reportedly going back into the estate which provides for the child.

In September 2009, Salon.com writer Alexander Zaitchek profiled Fox News program host and former Louisville radio personality Glenn Beck. In a segment titled “Glenn Beck becomes damaged goods,” the piece included Meiners’ recollection of Beck’s relentless cruelty toward another WHAS Radio show host in the 1980s, a period where Beck admits to erratic behavior triggered by drug and alcohol abuse. The Salon article opened up Meiners to fierce criticism from hundreds of Beck’s ardent followers, many of whom accused Meiners of being jealous of Beck’s ascent to national prominence.

In 2001, Meiners published an online parody article projecting massively acerbic behavior from Kentucky Wildcats fans toward now-hated Rick Pitino’s return to UK as the coach of arch rival Louisville. Meiners created moronic quotes and assigned hillbilly-like nicknames to each of the imaginary UK fans chronicled in the faux article. Two days later, the Lexington Herald Leader newspaper ran a front page story headlined, “Web site parody sparks outrage in Eastern Kentucky.” The next day, the Louisville Courier-Journal published a news story about the Meiners parody, followed by a Courier-Journal Sunday editorial excoriating Meiners for perpetuating hillbilly stereotypes upon eastern Kentuckians.

In 2010, the University of Louisville moved its men's basketball team from Freedom Hall to the new downtown KFC Yum! Center, tossing out familiar seating assignments for longtime season ticket holders. Meiners publicly criticized school administrators, saying that decades of fan loyalty had been ignored in the re-seating process to accommodate late line jumpers making fresh donations to the athletics department. In a live radio interview, Meiners asked a university fundraising spokesman about the number of prime seats school officials kept for its own use, whether school employees who received those free tickets were allowed to resell them “to enhance their compensation packages,” and about advance block sales of seats to ticket brokers before seats were made available to common fans. Meiners was soon removed from an upcoming charity golf tournament where University of Louisville athletics director Tom Jurich was slated to play in Meiners' foursome. Meiners responded by offering to buy two foursomes in the charity tournament, stocking the one in front of Jurich with four slow-moving octogenarians and the foursome behind Jurich with four long-hitters having “a delightful day of methodical shot selections.” Shortly thereafter, a university official notified WHAS-TV of changes in the coach’s show format for the fall of 2010, resulting in Meiners no longer hosting the program. Pitino told the media that he would take a year off from his TV show, claiming it was not punishment to WHAS-TV for its news coverage of the Karen Sypher trial. Pitino returned after a one year hiatus to host the show alone. Meiners was reinstated as host of Pitino's coach show for the 2012-13 season.

On November 14, 2011, Meiners was found not guilty by a Jefferson District Court jury in a speeding case where a police officer threatened a defamation lawsuit. Meiners and a second driver were simultaneously cited for "running 75 in a 55" mph speed zone. The police officer was talking to his girlfriend via cell phone while weaving through traffic to detain both alleged speeders. On WHAS (AM) Radio, Meiners called the officer a liar fifteen times, and gave him the cartoonish names "Black Barney" and "Black Car Barney," a combination of the black police car, Barney Fife, and notorious stagecoach robber Black Bart. The African American officer claimed he was offended by the radio comments, and authorized an attorney to ask Meiners for a $30,000 advance settlement to resolve all claims, avoiding a defamation lawsuit. Meiners refused and challenged the officer's citation in a trial by jury. The second car's driver also testified that he thought the officer's claim of 75 mph was incorrect. A crash reconstruction expert testified that the police video showed the second driver's car was traveling between 63 and 65 mph. The Meiners vehicle was behind the police car and never within its camera range. Meiners' attorney Steve Pence told the jury the threat of a defamation lawsuit was a shakedown, adding, "I called (the officer) a liar; he can sue me if he wants." The jury deliberated only three minutes to find Meiners not guilty. In 2012, the officer filed a defamation lawsuit against Meiners in Jefferson (KY) Circuit Court.