MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT IN AMERICA:

YPSILANTI — WEMU-FM host Terry Hughes, known on the air as “Thayrone,” was fired from the Eastern Michigan University public radio station Wednesday for repeatedly expressing his views about the war in Iraq, and refusing to run NPR news during his Sunday night music program “The Bone Conduction Show.”

Hughes was fired by station manager Art Timko.

“Art said he was ‘tired of the fight,’ trying to get me to run news on the show and not have an opinion,” Hughes said. In between the vintage Detroit R&B and soul music he plays, Hughes has been talking up the war in Iraq, expressing his support for the troops and for President Bush, and denigrating National Public Radio.

The WEMU station manager admitted: “Thayrone has always been opinionated. But most of what he had opinions about was not controversial. This time, it was.”

But I thought dissent was, you know, patriotic.