A radio host for a Buffalo, New York rock station got into deep trouble earlier in the week when audio surfaced of a segment in which he compared his toast preferences to the skin color of Black women he found attractive. Now, one of the women mentioned, Oscar-winning actress, Halle Berry, has gotten wind of the segment and called it “disgusting.”
Rob Lederman, a host of “The Morning Bull” on 97 Rock, began a riff where he talked about making breakfast and his preference for toast. The former touring stand-up went into a bizarre discussion of the darkness of the bread he prefers, linking it directly to Black women he finds attractive.
Lederman said his toaster is set “at the attractiveness of women that I find to be attractive, so I will never go to a Serena Williams level.” He then mentioned Berry as a “comfortable” color for his toast.
“But I am very comfortable at a Halle Berry level. I need a little bit of mulatto still coming through,” Lederman said while other people in studio laughed, later adding that “Gayle King is not even on my toaster level.”
An ESPN reporter based in Buffalo posted the clip without much comment hours after it aired, and it immediately drew outrage from people in Western New York and beyond.
Didn’t hear this live but internet keeps receipts. @97RockBuffalo morning hosts compared how they like their toast to black women’s skin tone. So just in case y’all missed it too, take a listen pic.twitter.com/6nVolu5a23
— Marcel Louis-Jacques (@Marcel_LJ) March 24, 2021
As the clip went viral, 97 Rock quickly lost sponsors, and others in the studio were loudly condemned in the local press. Rich “Bull” Gaenzler lost his in-arena hosting job with the Buffalo Sabres, and he was also suspended by the radio station. Lederman, meanwhile, was fired by Wednesday and expressed his remorse for comments he admitted “sounded awful.”
On Friday, though, the recording had reached Berry herself, who retweeted Marcel Louis-Jacques’s tweet of the audio and called the segment “disgusting,” among other things.
Disgusting. It’s ridiculous this type of nonsense is still being broadcasted across airwaves. ALL Black women are beautiful and worthy, Rob Lederman. GTFOH. https://t.co/9qMrLysjy2
— Halle Berry (@halleberry) March 26, 2021
“Disgusting. It’s ridiculous this type of nonsense is still being broadcasted across airwaves,” Berry wrote. “ALL Black women are beautiful and worthy, Rob Lederman. GTFOH.”