Photo: Erik Hill / Bob Lester talks about what he's learned from a working group on race relations, after an on-air skit offended some in the Alaska Native communityYou know how it feels to say something you think is funny and then realize later that it hurts people? Now imagine saying something like that on the air, and hurting lots of people. What does that feel like?

Radio personalities Bob Lester and Mark Colavecchio of the Bob & Mark show on KWHL will tell you it feels terrible. It’s taken months to make it right, they said in a press conference on Wednesday.

It began in May, when Rochene Rowan-Hellén, who is Alaska Native, was listening to their show in her car and happened to catch a radio comedy skit called "Cash for Tlingits." Bob and Mark are not known for being politically correct, but the skit took it too far, she said. It was more than off color, it was cruel and degrading, tapping into a current of anti-Native feelings in the city. She fired off an e-mail to the press and Alaska Native leaders. She was tired of Alaska Natives being the butt of the joke.

At this point, something predictable could have happened, along the lines of what happened to KBFX personalities Woody and Wilcox, who made a similar on-air gaffe in 2008. That provoked rebuke statewide, from the Alaska Federation of Natives, to the mayor, to the Anchorage School District. The dee-jays were suspended and ordered to sensitivity training. And people whispered that Alaska Natives couldn’t take a joke.

Rowan-Hellén didn’t want it to go that way. Humiliating Bob and Mark wasn’t going to make them see things from her point of view, she said.

“I didn’t want to see things done in anger because I was angry,” she said.

With the help of a group of Alaska Native leaders at First Alaskans Institute, they came up with another plan. They invited Lester and Colavecchio to a meeting. The group wanted them to understand why what they said was insensitive. They wanted them to understand that for Native people, stereotypes get old, they harm the way children see themselves and they feed discrimination. They also wanted to forgive the dee-jays. The group decided not to go to the media. News stories split things into two sides and heighten the conflict. They wanted to diffuse it.

“We stepped away from fueling the fire,” said Elizabeth Medicine-Crow, one of the organizers.

Meanwhile, as criticism rolled in at the station, Lester and Colavecchio were caught off guard. They have Native friends, they didn’t think of themselves as racist.

“It was catchy, clunkers and Tlingits, it just sounded like it would be funny,” said Lester, who wrote the skit. “At the time you don’t think about how your words could be hurtful while you’re in the mode of humor.”

But when they realized how their skit came across, they felt sick. Along with Anchorage Media Group General Manager Dennis Bookey, they agreed to go to a meeting with 20 people from the Native community, including Rowan-Hellén.

“I had a hard time keeping it together because I was so ashamed that I’d hurt this girl that I never met,” Lester said. “We’ve done so many good things that I’m proud of, the shame and the hurt that I felt took all that away from me.”

But Rowan-Hellén wasn’t mad, she just wanted them to hear her out.
“I was so overwhelmed with the feeling of forgiveness that was so immediate,” he said.

Lester, Colavecchio and Bookey agreed to be part of a working group to come up with ways to make lasting changes at the station and in the community. Lester and Colavecchio went to a training at the Alaska Native Heritage Center to learn about Alaska Native culture. When they were there, they met a lot of Native people who listened to their show.

“The thing that hit me that day was these people love what I do and I let them down. It’s like letting down a loved one,” Colavecchio said.

At KWHL, they reviewed all their radio skits and deleted the ones that had racial overtones. They apologized formally. They started planning some outreach events in the Alaska Native community. They discussed the possibility of having an Alaska Native intern on their show. And, the two guys, who over the years have flirted with shock-jock status because of edgy humor, thought hard about what it means to be funny. Funny can be irreverent. Funny can poke at public figures. Funny doesn’t have to rely on stereotypes.

“If I’m going to have fun, it’s with my arm around somebody,” Lester said. “I’m not going to punch them in the face.”

“You can’t satirize a culture,” Colavecchio said. “If nobody ever tells you that, you don’t know that. You are ignorant.”

For the last three months, they tweaked the tone of the show. And their ratings came back higher than at any time in recent memory. They hadn’t lost their edge. They’d gained audience

Wednesday, Lester and Colavecchio stood in a conference room at Cook Inlet Tribal Council and told reporters they’d been ignorant. But understanding and forgiveness, not anger or woundedness, educated them. They weren’t defensive, they were sorry.

And I left the press conference wishing that more conversations about race in Anchorage could end that way. Because we’d all be better for it.