Look, the comments -rejoicing in the death of Robert Novak - O'Reilly and Carpenter were talking about are attrocious. I saw similar comments at The Secular Web, a site which is in my Link section, and found them to be highly objectionable. But, again, these are individual commenters with little to no influence.
Meanwhile, Jerome Corsi, who has become a regular fixture on Fox News promoting his new anti-Obama book which smears Obama as an infanticidal radical communist Manchurian candidate secret Muslim is going to go on a white nationalist radio show that will also be broadcast on a New World Order conspiracy network to promote that narrative.
Anonymous commenters at web forums versus best selling authors. Were O'Reilly's mind not hermetically sealed, this might indicate to him an asymmetry in the nature of "liberal" and "conservative" hate.
O'Reilly's mind is sealed, however, and he is fine with Corsi's book. What's more, he's fine with having Ann Coulter on his show despite her having previously expressed her regret that Timothy McVeigh did not blow up the New York Times building.
Update: I didn't notice until I read Jeffrey Feldman's post about this, but this won't be Corsi's first appearance on the white supremacist radio show.
While it should go without saying, the ramifications this holds for the broadcast and print media are profound. While the media has widely reported that Corsi was the author of a previous 'Swift Boat' smear campaigns against John Kerry, major media outlets have yet to report Corsi's affiliation with white supremacist radio.Update II: Corsi decided not to go on the radio show minutes before air time because of changing "travel plans."
News of white supremacist ties to an author of a book maligning Senator Barack Obama's candidacy for President should be a top story within hours of its being reported.
3 comments:
You are of course right about the asymmetrical nature of the hate. The conservative hate is mainstreamed and highly paid.
You know who helps keep the conservative haters on the air? Liberals who have been convinced that their objecting to anything that these people say is somehow akin to censorship. Of course the right will scream, I have my first amendment rights!
As you well know the first amendment talks about the Government not limiting speech, NOT their talk show radio hos program managers telling a radio host to stop talking about killing people on the broadcast airwaves. I have no power to stop their speech I can't pull the switch, I can't fire them. Only their managers can and it is their management that grants them their "free speech". even then they are subject to guidelines long established and agreed upon.
I try and educate enough people that the first amendment doesn't guarantee the talk radio people have a paid platform to spew their hate. And there are some people who will talk about how we should "just ignore them".
When I talk about what I did with the people at K S F O I remind people that I did nothing wrong. I did everything within the law and they still had my blog shut down.
THEY have no problem ACTUALLY shutting down people's speech (and using the court system to boot)
But to help keep the hard core "We'll let the Nazi's speak in Skokie" people calm, I still said that the advertiser can decided if they want to support this violent rhetoric or not. I realized that if I called for them to be fired that there would be people on the left that would rally to the poor beleaguered billion dollar corporation and violent spewing host. And I wanted to avoid that.
I've got a couple more posts that will touch upon this subject that I'm writing but I've been "busy" watching the Olympics. I'm an Olympics junkie, now.
No sweat HG. I always come back.
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