Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s radio show was pulled from KUTR (Utah) after the pop-star rabbi suggested that dispossed families who lost their homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina should relocate to Utah.

Rabbi Shmuley had been scheduled to be in Utah this week for programming meetings with Bonneville executives and, while on the air, quickly organized and invited his listeners to an event at the Salt Lake City Marriot where refugee families from Camp Williams could meet his mostly white, Mormon and Christian listeners, who could welcome the evacuees into their communities and help them find homes.
Rabbi Shmuley asked listeners to attend the event, and to call in and invite the evacuees to their own homes, and volunteer their time to show the families Utah neighborhoods so that the evacuees could make a decision for themselves as to whether they would like to permanently relocate to Utah. The response was overwhelmingly positive and the phones rang off the hook.
[…] What followed next is reprehensible and shameful. Although Rabbi Shmuley’s show was, by far, the most listened to and the most successful on KUTR, with a cult following, Rod Arquette, Bonneville’s vice president for programming, sent Rabbi Shmuley a message ordering him not to come to Utah, and on Saturday night, after Rabbi Shmuley’s Sabbath concluded, told him by phone that the radio show too was being permanently cancelled. He offered, as an explanation, Rabbi Shmuley’s having organized the event for the refugee families on Wednesday without the station’s prior approval. Rabbi Shmuley was dumbstruck. How, in this time of national tragedy, could a station cancel its most popular show simply because the host tried to use the airwaves to help poor black families, who had lost everything in Hurricane Katrina, to find a permanent home in Utah? Is that not what all Americans should be doing at this time? And how could a Church-owned broadcaster like Bonneville take this decision on the day before September 11th?

Full story.
In related news, the JTA reports,

A synagogue in Louisiana is shutting down its shelter for victims of Hurricane Katrina and has put its rabbi on administrative leave, JTA has learned.
Rabbi Barry Weinstein was asked to take paid leave from Congregation B’nai Israel in Baton Rouge for an unspecified period. He had led the effort to house dozens of evacuees who fled their Gulf Coast homes in the wake of Katrina.
Synagogue officials say the decision about the rabbi was related to a private matter, not directly to the shelter issue. They said the synagogue would continue to house medical personnel helping with rescue efforts. But some of the rabbi’s supporters charged that a few influential members of the community who are opposed to using the synagogue as a shelter had pressured the temple’s officers to act.
The supporters expressed outrage that the shelter was closing down and that the rabbi has been barred from the synagogue.

Lovely.