Two days earlier, Valenti had read an instant-feedback joke sent from a listener - a sick joke about Corey Smith, the free-agent defensive end who had played for the Lions the past three years and was among three men lost at sea off Florida's West Coast.

"It was a very, very, very stupid decision on my part," said WXYT's Valenti, quoted in the Detroit Free Press. Valenti, 28, co-hosts Detroit's highest-rated sports talk program. "It was probably the dumbest, most reprehensible decision I've made in my radio career."

Valenti wasn't done. "I just offer you my sincerest apologies. It was completely ridiculous to put it on the air. And again, it comes to me. The only thing I can promise you as my listeners: It won't happen again. Otherwise, I'll tell you right now, I don't deserve to be around."

Strong. Convincing, too.

And yet, as ear-witnesses to what sports-talk, "guy-talk" and commercial radio have become the past 30-35 years, does Valenti, or anyone else, coast-to-coast, starting here with Craig Carton, owe anyone an apology? For what? Doing what it takes?

How else do you make it - get hired, for starters - unless you fill the formula, unless you are willing to behave as a social vandal, a remorseless punk, a trash-talking, name-calling, crotch-grabbing, did-you-hear-what-he-just-said shock artist?

It doesn't even matter if you're any good at it.

And of course, when the inevitable, from Anthony to Opie, occurs, station management and ownership will issue their tsk, tsk, tsks - their acknowledgements of "inappropriate" content and assurances that "we don't condone" whatever it is that caused the blowback.

In May, Mark Madden, host of ESPN Radio's Pittsburgh affiliate, was fired several days after cracking that he was upset to learn that Ted Kennedy had been diagnosed with cancer - after all, Madden continued, he'd been hoping Sen. Kennedy would "live long enough to be assassinated."

Hey, that's sports-talk radio!

Because Madden's show was highly rated, it took a few days for the decision to come down to can him; it took a while before ESPN determined that this one, good ratings and all, wasn't worth indulging.

Four months later, Madden was back on the air, at another attitude-enriched Pittsburgh radio station. Inappropriate has become the prerequisite. If you're not inappropriate you're inappropriate; you've got no shot, no business being in the business.

Selected for stardom by WFAN because he was a fully committed professional lowlife with no other discernible skill - he once recited a vulgar poem mocking those afflicted with breast cancer - Sid Rosenberg, after FAN finally had too much of a bad thing, quickly found work as a drive-time radio host on an all-sports station in Miami. He's the industry's ideal of a Sports-talk host.

Don Imus, fired for "inappropriate" comments that management and ownership "could not condone," was replaced with Carton. Why, because Carton's better? Or because he's just as bad, maybe even worse?