Gary J Carter
2008-08-07 20:38:44 UTC
Talk Radio and the Conspiracy to Kill
By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet. Posted August 1, 2008.
Would Jim Adkisson have killed without prompting from extreme
right-wing talkers?
Now I know how the others feel.
Having written extensively about talk radio's right wing shock jocks
and the hate speech they regularly use to tar opponents -- equating
liberals with terrorists, homosexuals with child rapists and the
Mafia, and political and media figures with the Nazis and the Ku Klux
Klan (even calling on air for assassinations, as Michael Reagan, son
of the late president, did last month) -- it was only a matter of time
until the smear merchants took aim at me.
Still, it was a little surprising to hear that "O'Connor's mentor in
spirit, Josef Goebbels, must be laughing in his grave." And it was
more than just disconcerting that the charge of Nazism was made as
part of an attack on the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the award-winning
tolerance group named for the late 'Nazi Hunter,' after the Center's
New York office offered to host a launch party for my book "Shock
Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio."
The allegation that Goebbels is my mentor came in an email forwarding
a post by former Boston Herald writer Don Feder, which originally
appeared on GrasstopsUSA.com ("Give Your Values A Voice".) Feder, the
email said, "believes that the Wiesenthal Center supports deceptive
fools like O'Connor to appease its wealthy leftist supporters. If that
is true (and of course no offical [sic] at the Center would own up to
it), it is shameful."
What's really shameful, of course, is trotting out the ad hominem
"You're a Nazi" meme when confronted with ideas that differ from your
own. Feder's "exclusive commentary" was headlined "Obama and the
Conspiracy to Kill Talk Radio," another false meme being consistently
bruited about by the right. Its opening made Feder's thesis clear:
"Looking ahead, liberals are determined to derail potential opposition
to their plans to accelerate the deconstruction of America.
Consequently, they have targeted talk radio. Bringing back the
Fairness Doctrine is just one facet of their scheme to eviscerate the
only part of the media controlled by conservatives."
According to Feder & Company, "The jihad against talk radio" (I
thought I was a Nazi, not an Islamofascist!) is this:
"The left will do anything to gag its opponents. From the college
campus to the halls of Congress (think campus speech codes, think hate
crimes legislation, think speech-suppression zones surrounding
abortion clinics), liberals are the chief proponents of censorship in
America.
On July 23, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's New York Tolerance Center
will host the launch of Shock Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio by Rory
O'Connor, a book which indicts talk radio as "highly politicized,
overly partisan and often factually challenged" -- unlike, say, The
New York Times, AKA, Mainstream Media Hacks for Obama.
But that's not all. According to its cover, this penetrating analysis
(endorsed by Walter Cronkite, the dean of liberal media manipulators)
exposes the "dirty secret" of radio talk shows -- how "they use the
guise of 'not being politically correct' to ratchet up their anti-gay,
anti-woman and overtly racist language." In other words, they're
against same-sex "marriage," reject feminist mythology and oppose
racial quotas. Oh, the venom! Oh, the malice!
The left uses allegations of hate speech to set the stage for
censorship. In its invitation, the Wiesenthal Center hyperventilates:
'Hate speech can lead to hate crimes. And hate speech has no role on
the public airwaves.' Apparently, the First Amendment doesn't apply to
anything the left deems "hate speech."
FYI, a friend of mine -- a Jewish conservative -- noted the exquisite
irony here: Conservative talk-show hosts tend to be the most outspoken
defenders of Israel anywhere in the U.S. media, while their
counterparts in the mainstream media are overwhelmingly anti-Israel.
Like the Anti-Defamation League, the Wiesenthal Center carries water
for the left in the guise of fighting anti-Semitism.
Shock Jocks is just the latest manifestation of the left's obsession
with talk radio."
Feder's unoriginal jeremiad -- which he further promulgated on WABC's
Sunday morning "Religion on the Line" program with Rabbi Joe Patasnick
-- went to repeat what other right-wing media organs such as NewsMax
and WorldNetDaily have already attempted to inject into the mainstream
-- the ridiculous idea that there is a conspiracy afoot to "Hush Rush"
and knock conservatives off the airwaves by requiring "fairness" and
"balance" in our public discourse.
Normally I ignore such ignorant attacks on my person, along with
absurd charges like the one that Barack Obama is somehow engaged in a
stealth "conspiracy to kill" talk radio. I raise them now only because
of a real conspiracy to kill -- one that took two lives in a Tennessee
church recently. After a troubled man named Jim Adkisson murdered two
and wounded seven, it was reported that he had books by shock jocks
Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly in his home. (What
wasn't widely reported is that radio station WNOW-FM in Knoxville airs
shock jocks Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz and Mark Levin
every weekday. Given the killer's professed hateful attitudes towards
liberals and homosexuals, it's at least as likely that he was
influenced by the hateful speech Savage and the others spew forth on
the public airwaves as by their books ... )
So when these and other shock jocks regularly employ and promote hate
speech over the public airwaves aimed at women, minorities,
immigrants, homosexuals, foreigners, Islam and its adherents, and
anyone else they perceive as an opponent, dehumanizing them with terms
like 'feminazis,' 'hos,' 'slanty-eyed gooks' and the like ... and when
they consistently blur the borders between news, opinion and
entertainment, then quickly retreat when challenged, claiming it's
just 'good fun,' asking why you're being so 'politically correct,' and
demanding that you just 'change the channel' ... and their audience is
angry and armed -- what do you expect to happen?
Are the shock jocks creating a climate where such acts are somehow
deemed acceptable? Do they have blood on their hands if others --
albeit a few, marginalized, desperate and deranged listeners -- act on
their poisonous rhetoric? Would Jim Adkisson have killed without
prompting from extreme right wing talkers? We'll never know -- but
isn't it time to step back and think about the effect this sort of
debased dialogue is having on our democracy and society? It's not
'just entertainment' any more -- if indeed it ever was. Instead, it's
now literally a deadly serious business, and we all need to examine
our accountability -- as well as to look for new strategies to contain
the spread of hate speech in our media -- before someone else gets
killed.
In the last few months alone, Michael Reagan has called for murder
on-air; Rush Limbaugh has hoped for riots in Denver at the Democratic
National Convention and spoken about a non-existent tape of Michelle
Obama castigating 'Whitey'; Bill O'Reilly has mentioned Michelle Obama
and a lynching party in the same breath; Don Imus has (again) engaged
in racially charged remarks; and Michael Savage has called autistic
children 'idiots' and 'morons' and charged that both autism and asthma
are 'rackets.'
As previously noted, the real racket is the shock jock racket. You
know, the one where everyone gets paid -- Savage, Limbaugh (to the
tune of 400 million dollars), Hannity (100 million), etc. -- but also
local stations like WOR in New York City, which expressed 'regret' but
took 'no responsibility' for Savage's remarks; national distributors
like Talk Radio Networks -- the second largest provider of syndicated
talk shows -- and its headman Mark Masters, who puts Savage on 350
stations reaching 8 million listeners every week; and of course their
corporate advertisers and sponsors. So let's pressure the corporations
who are using the public airwaves but not serving the public interest
-- and let's challenge the shock jocks whose dehumanizing talk may be
leading to terror and hate acts such as that which played out so
tragically in a church in Knoxville.
In remarks given at my recent book launch party at the Tolerance
Center, I specifically warned about shock jocks' hate speech and the
potential for some listener actually to take their advice literally,
and to act on it in a real world "conspiracy to kill." Some attendees
later told me "You called it." I hope not.
Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor is the author of "Shock Jocks:
Hate Speech and Talk Radio" (AlterNet Books, 2008). O'Connor also
writes the Media Is A Plural blog.
By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet. Posted August 1, 2008.
Would Jim Adkisson have killed without prompting from extreme
right-wing talkers?
Now I know how the others feel.
Having written extensively about talk radio's right wing shock jocks
and the hate speech they regularly use to tar opponents -- equating
liberals with terrorists, homosexuals with child rapists and the
Mafia, and political and media figures with the Nazis and the Ku Klux
Klan (even calling on air for assassinations, as Michael Reagan, son
of the late president, did last month) -- it was only a matter of time
until the smear merchants took aim at me.
Still, it was a little surprising to hear that "O'Connor's mentor in
spirit, Josef Goebbels, must be laughing in his grave." And it was
more than just disconcerting that the charge of Nazism was made as
part of an attack on the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the award-winning
tolerance group named for the late 'Nazi Hunter,' after the Center's
New York office offered to host a launch party for my book "Shock
Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio."
The allegation that Goebbels is my mentor came in an email forwarding
a post by former Boston Herald writer Don Feder, which originally
appeared on GrasstopsUSA.com ("Give Your Values A Voice".) Feder, the
email said, "believes that the Wiesenthal Center supports deceptive
fools like O'Connor to appease its wealthy leftist supporters. If that
is true (and of course no offical [sic] at the Center would own up to
it), it is shameful."
What's really shameful, of course, is trotting out the ad hominem
"You're a Nazi" meme when confronted with ideas that differ from your
own. Feder's "exclusive commentary" was headlined "Obama and the
Conspiracy to Kill Talk Radio," another false meme being consistently
bruited about by the right. Its opening made Feder's thesis clear:
"Looking ahead, liberals are determined to derail potential opposition
to their plans to accelerate the deconstruction of America.
Consequently, they have targeted talk radio. Bringing back the
Fairness Doctrine is just one facet of their scheme to eviscerate the
only part of the media controlled by conservatives."
According to Feder & Company, "The jihad against talk radio" (I
thought I was a Nazi, not an Islamofascist!) is this:
"The left will do anything to gag its opponents. From the college
campus to the halls of Congress (think campus speech codes, think hate
crimes legislation, think speech-suppression zones surrounding
abortion clinics), liberals are the chief proponents of censorship in
America.
On July 23, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's New York Tolerance Center
will host the launch of Shock Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio by Rory
O'Connor, a book which indicts talk radio as "highly politicized,
overly partisan and often factually challenged" -- unlike, say, The
New York Times, AKA, Mainstream Media Hacks for Obama.
But that's not all. According to its cover, this penetrating analysis
(endorsed by Walter Cronkite, the dean of liberal media manipulators)
exposes the "dirty secret" of radio talk shows -- how "they use the
guise of 'not being politically correct' to ratchet up their anti-gay,
anti-woman and overtly racist language." In other words, they're
against same-sex "marriage," reject feminist mythology and oppose
racial quotas. Oh, the venom! Oh, the malice!
The left uses allegations of hate speech to set the stage for
censorship. In its invitation, the Wiesenthal Center hyperventilates:
'Hate speech can lead to hate crimes. And hate speech has no role on
the public airwaves.' Apparently, the First Amendment doesn't apply to
anything the left deems "hate speech."
FYI, a friend of mine -- a Jewish conservative -- noted the exquisite
irony here: Conservative talk-show hosts tend to be the most outspoken
defenders of Israel anywhere in the U.S. media, while their
counterparts in the mainstream media are overwhelmingly anti-Israel.
Like the Anti-Defamation League, the Wiesenthal Center carries water
for the left in the guise of fighting anti-Semitism.
Shock Jocks is just the latest manifestation of the left's obsession
with talk radio."
Feder's unoriginal jeremiad -- which he further promulgated on WABC's
Sunday morning "Religion on the Line" program with Rabbi Joe Patasnick
-- went to repeat what other right-wing media organs such as NewsMax
and WorldNetDaily have already attempted to inject into the mainstream
-- the ridiculous idea that there is a conspiracy afoot to "Hush Rush"
and knock conservatives off the airwaves by requiring "fairness" and
"balance" in our public discourse.
Normally I ignore such ignorant attacks on my person, along with
absurd charges like the one that Barack Obama is somehow engaged in a
stealth "conspiracy to kill" talk radio. I raise them now only because
of a real conspiracy to kill -- one that took two lives in a Tennessee
church recently. After a troubled man named Jim Adkisson murdered two
and wounded seven, it was reported that he had books by shock jocks
Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly in his home. (What
wasn't widely reported is that radio station WNOW-FM in Knoxville airs
shock jocks Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz and Mark Levin
every weekday. Given the killer's professed hateful attitudes towards
liberals and homosexuals, it's at least as likely that he was
influenced by the hateful speech Savage and the others spew forth on
the public airwaves as by their books ... )
So when these and other shock jocks regularly employ and promote hate
speech over the public airwaves aimed at women, minorities,
immigrants, homosexuals, foreigners, Islam and its adherents, and
anyone else they perceive as an opponent, dehumanizing them with terms
like 'feminazis,' 'hos,' 'slanty-eyed gooks' and the like ... and when
they consistently blur the borders between news, opinion and
entertainment, then quickly retreat when challenged, claiming it's
just 'good fun,' asking why you're being so 'politically correct,' and
demanding that you just 'change the channel' ... and their audience is
angry and armed -- what do you expect to happen?
Are the shock jocks creating a climate where such acts are somehow
deemed acceptable? Do they have blood on their hands if others --
albeit a few, marginalized, desperate and deranged listeners -- act on
their poisonous rhetoric? Would Jim Adkisson have killed without
prompting from extreme right wing talkers? We'll never know -- but
isn't it time to step back and think about the effect this sort of
debased dialogue is having on our democracy and society? It's not
'just entertainment' any more -- if indeed it ever was. Instead, it's
now literally a deadly serious business, and we all need to examine
our accountability -- as well as to look for new strategies to contain
the spread of hate speech in our media -- before someone else gets
killed.
In the last few months alone, Michael Reagan has called for murder
on-air; Rush Limbaugh has hoped for riots in Denver at the Democratic
National Convention and spoken about a non-existent tape of Michelle
Obama castigating 'Whitey'; Bill O'Reilly has mentioned Michelle Obama
and a lynching party in the same breath; Don Imus has (again) engaged
in racially charged remarks; and Michael Savage has called autistic
children 'idiots' and 'morons' and charged that both autism and asthma
are 'rackets.'
As previously noted, the real racket is the shock jock racket. You
know, the one where everyone gets paid -- Savage, Limbaugh (to the
tune of 400 million dollars), Hannity (100 million), etc. -- but also
local stations like WOR in New York City, which expressed 'regret' but
took 'no responsibility' for Savage's remarks; national distributors
like Talk Radio Networks -- the second largest provider of syndicated
talk shows -- and its headman Mark Masters, who puts Savage on 350
stations reaching 8 million listeners every week; and of course their
corporate advertisers and sponsors. So let's pressure the corporations
who are using the public airwaves but not serving the public interest
-- and let's challenge the shock jocks whose dehumanizing talk may be
leading to terror and hate acts such as that which played out so
tragically in a church in Knoxville.
In remarks given at my recent book launch party at the Tolerance
Center, I specifically warned about shock jocks' hate speech and the
potential for some listener actually to take their advice literally,
and to act on it in a real world "conspiracy to kill." Some attendees
later told me "You called it." I hope not.
Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor is the author of "Shock Jocks:
Hate Speech and Talk Radio" (AlterNet Books, 2008). O'Connor also
writes the Media Is A Plural blog.