Milwaukee

Radio host pulled for on-air profanity

A radio station indefinitely suspended a talk-show host after he used an obscenity on the air while criticizing state lawmakers.

Michael McGee’s “Word Warriors” show was canceled because the expletive may have violated federal broadcast law, Jerrel Jones, owner of WNOV-AM, said Friday.

McGee uttered the word Thursday as he criticized state lawmakers’ handling of a social service agency that has come under fire over how it has used money from the state’s welfare-to-work program.

A recent state audit showed the Opportunities Industrialization Center of Greater Milwaukee paid McGee $176,000 from the program to sponsor his show from 1997 to 2003.

McGee, a former Milwaukee alderman, said he believed lawmakers’ criticisms of the OIC were racially motivated.

New Orleans

Quadriplegic woman takes first plane trip

The hoopla is normally reserved for the highest dignitaries. When Brooke Ellison took her first flight, she was greeted by two fire trucks on either side of the plane spraying an arc of water over it. Ellison’s flight Friday was no small feat: She has been paralyzed from the neck down since being hit by a car in 1990.

Accompanied by her parents, Ed and Jean, Brooke was propped up in her first-class seat and held in place after being lifted out of her wheelchair. Her ventilator had to be connected to an external battery. Then the wheelchair was disassembled.

For Ellison, a 26-year-old Harvard graduate who is working on her doctorate, the arduous process was all worth it.

“It was surprisingly terrific,” she said. “It went more smoothly than I could have expected. For my first flight, I couldn’t have imagined it being much better. I can’t wait to do it again.”