Boyles equated sponsorship of homeless families, elderly to “Bigfoot” adoption

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

Discussing Denver's 10-year plan to end homelessness on his 630 KHOW-AM show, Peter Boyles said Mayor John Hickenlooper's proposal that churches sponsor homeless families and seniors would “be like Harry and the Hendersons,” referring to a movie about a family that adopts a “Bigfoot.”

On the February 13 broadcast of his 630 KHOW-AM show, host Peter Boyles stated that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's (D) idea of asking church congregations to sponsor a homeless family or senior citizen would “be like Harry and the Hendersons" -- a 1987 movie about a family that adopts a “Bigfoot” creature.

Boyles and frequent guest Bob Cote were discussing Denver's 10-year plan to end homelessness. As the Rocky Mountain News reported on February 13, Hickenlooper “wants area churches to play a major role in the city's 10-year program to end homelessness.” According to the News, “On Monday Hickenlooper appealed to metro Denver's religious congregations to sponsor a homeless family or senior.” The News further reported that Hickenlooper noted 43 percent of the homeless are women and children, and that under his proposal, sponsors or mentors would perform such roles as helping to find them permanent housing, raising money for rent and apartment deposits, and having an ongoing role in “work[ing] with the family or senior to help them leave homelessness behind.” During the broadcast Boyles read passages from the article, which did not report any proposal to have homeless people or families live with their sponsors.

After calling the mayor's plan “laughable” and claiming that "[t]he Rocky Mountain News drinks it like mother's milk," Boyles claimed, “That'd be like Harry and the Hendersons. Go down there and get one of those guys that Bob knows on the street down on Larimer. Take him home -- take him home with you.”

As Colorado Media Matters has noted (here and here), Boyles and Cote have dispensed falsehoods about Denver's homeless initiative in the past.

From the February 13 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Peter Boyles Show:

BOYLES: This kind of a plan is laughable, but a man who can't find anything about illegals, who can't find anything at all about gang violence, continues this nonsense on the homeless. And then they have the rocks to put out these statements and say these things. The Rocky Mountain News drinks it like mother's milk, and nobody calls you.

[...]

BOYLES: Watch this one go. But, by the way, the mayor is appealing to churches to adopt a family. That'd be like Harry and the Hendersons. Go down there and get one of those guys that Bob knows on the street down on Larimer. Take him home -- take him home with you.

COTE: Yeah, you better, you better do some double-dippin' screening before you send them out to the suburbs.

BOYLES: Yeah, get real ready, right?

COTE: What happened when they sent the refugees from New Orleans up to Des Moines? They wound up duct-taped in the closet and (inaudible).

BOYLES: I know, I mean, it's -- we're just -- I mean. I love liberals. They are such idiots.