That's definite second-degree smacktalk, by Bogney's rating system. The guy's no Sarah Palin, doubt more than seven people listen to him on the best day, but....
Since he/she's not here, just consider it deplored and then minimized with some comparative that MediaMatters found someone from the right saying.
Show my someone who thinks any conservative anywhere would not be fired for saying things like this liberal does and I'll show you someone who either lives in fantasy land or is a liar.
Well here’s something: Self-described “traditional Liberal Democrat” radio host Mike Malloy is not ashamed to have a total and complete meltdown on air.
Yup, while discussing conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh last week, Malloy went on an all-out, frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Rush tirade.
“But this son of a bitch personifies — if ever evil could be rolled into a huge fat mass, this is it!” Malloy said.
“This guy, this Limbaugh, this is one of the most vile human beings ever to live! If Limbaugh had the power he would open gas chambers! If Limbaugh had the power, he would line up people up against the wall and execute them! If Limbaugh had the power, he would destroy children because he can’t have any! The only thing he sees in children as sex partners! This is a sick, evil, degenerate man!
“Why is he on the air? This is not First Amendment protected speech! This son of a bitch is evil, rotten to the core!” Malloy continued.
“I know, and you know, that eventually, Limbaugh will say whatever — whatever he comes up with. I don’t know how he can get any worse than this. But somebody someplace is going to listen to him and that’ll be it! Unbelievable,” he added.
Final thought: Considering how strongly Malloy feels about Limbaugh’s “violence-inspiring rhetoric,” we wonder if he feels similarly about voice actor Jim Ward.
You see, while discussing Limbaugh on “Talking Liberally With Stephanie Miller” last week, Ward actually said that “some people deserve to be shot in the face.”
We’re sure Malloy would take a hard stand against this type of “hateful rhetoric.” After all, “somebody someplace might listen … and that’ll be it.”
The media does not belong to right or the left, it belongs to the various flavors of rich. Some of it favors rich liberals some of it favors rich conservatives, but it is used to maintain the status quo and prevent any serious changes other than a few degrees left or right of center.
That is an excellent point that is often forgotten.
The media does not belong to right or the left, it belongs to the various flavors of rich. Some of it favors rich liberals some of it favors rich conservatives, but it is used to maintain the status quo and prevent any serious changes other than a few degrees left or right of center. It does not hold government officials accountable or corporations accountable for their actions. It reports sensational scandals and crimes of the rich and poor that tittitlate and bump up readership, but there is little in depth reporting about truly important issues.
Where are the mainstream articles about the cost of Iraq and Afganistan, or of maintaining a military readiness that can absorb those costs? Where are the mainstream articles about the deaths, fraud and waste associated with those wars? Why are we even there anymore? Where are the articles about the morality of a volunteer army populated in large part by people with few other economic choices along with a few true patriots, while everyone else just tries to make money without any sacrifice for society as a whole?
The point of media is to entertain and pacify. Political media stirs things along predictable fault lines with talking heads shouting at each other for the benefit of one party and the annoyance of the opposition, but most of the arguments are superficial and really don't address fundamental moral questions that ought to be addressed that might effect funding priorities. Who is benefiting from the current wars? Are they truly necessary to prevent terrorist attacks and based on what evidence? Can we afford this way of allegedly avoiding terrorist attacks?
Speaking of unacceptable speech - one nutjob gone, just a few more to go!
ompleting a swift rise and fall from TV stardom, controversial host Glenn Beck will lose his once-popular Fox News show later this year, the network announced Wednesday.
Beck's 5 p.m. program, which earned scorn from liberals for its attacks on President Obama as well as its devotion to sometimes-obscure right-wing thinkers, was a top cable draw in 2009 and a signpost for the populist "tea party" movement in last year's midterm elections, which dealt a ballot-box rebuke to the White House.
But ratings plummeted and advertisers bailed as Beck — a cherubic, salt-and-pepper-haired longtime radio host who has compared himself to a rodeo clown — increasingly pursued a hard-to-follow agenda that many found too conspiracy-minded. He also chafed his bosses at Fox News, who faulted him for spending too much time on his far-flung business operations and not enough on honing his TV presentation.
Both sides cobbled together a diplomatically worded statement Wednesday that noted Beck would "transition off" his daily program but stressed that the host and Fox News had reached a new deal for future, as-yet-unspecified projects. Joel Cheatwood, a senior Fox News executive, was hired away to help run Beck's company, Mercury Radio Arts.
Fox News and Beck both declined to comment beyond the statement.
Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman and chief executive who until recently had overridden doubts about Beck among his subordinates, said in the statement: "Glenn Beck is a powerful communicator, a creative entrepreneur and a true success by anybody's standards."
But there was little mistaking the upshot of the move: Less than three years after joining Fox News from CNN's Headline News amid a burst of publicity, Beck is being booted off the air. His sinking ratings certainly didn't help — they fell 32% for the first three months of this year, to 1.9 million total viewers, according to the Nielsen Co.
And after months of reported friction between the host and Fox News as well as an aggressive advertiser boycott after Beck dubbed President Obama a racist, analysts professed little surprise.
"His show had become tired," said Jeffrey McCall, professor of media studies at DePauw University. "He was spending a lot of time just talking in front of his blackboard. Guests were less frequently involved.
"The ratings drop was significant and couldn't be ignored," McCall continued. "The advertiser boycott didn't hurt the program or FNC as much in terms of dollars as it did in terms of bad publicity. Beck was no longer just a personality with a show on FNC. He became an easy target for Fox News critics to characterize him as representative of the entire channel."
Indeed, many executives at Fox News reportedly felt that Beck was never a good fit with the channel, which includes programming with such hosts as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity that appeals to more mainstream conservatives. This divide grew sharper in recent months, as Beck devoted more time to so-called "black helicopter" conspiracy theorists who view government agencies as allied with shadowy business and tech interests determined to manipulate the lives of ordinary people. Even some fans began to complain that Beck was ripping off anti-government ideas popularized by another popular radio host, Alex Jones.
Perhaps more important, as a former morning-drive DJ, Beck seems to have had trouble managing the transition to long-term TV news host, where the ability to synthesize the day's events and then create an entertaining program about them is the paramount skill. Viewers began to have trouble discerning which Glenn Beck they were watching: the joshing rodeo clown, the preacher-like man who teared up talking about America or the spectacles-wearing scholar who offered opaque treatises on W. Cleon Skousen and other conservative writers.
"You can't be a rodeo clown and maintain credibility," said Michael Harrison, the editor of Talkers, a trade publication that follows the talk-radio industry.
The program is expected to wrap up sometime this summer, though an exact date was not announced.
News of Beck's ouster was greeted with jubilation among his liberal critics. The left-leaning website Huffington Post featured a picture of the host with the giant headline: "IT'S OVER."
"His behavior went from erratic to completely unhinged," said Ari Rabin-Havt, executive vice president of Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group that has long attacked Beck. "Ultimately Fox had no choice but to make this decision."
But Harrison cautioned that liberals should not divine any larger political meaning in Beck's exit.
"A little dip in the ratings, and suddenly people think the whole conservative movement is going down," he said. "When people watch Beck or O'Reilly or Hannity or Howard Stern, it's not necessarily equivalent to saying 'I agree with them.' That's one of the biggest myths in broadcasting. Lots of people listen to these guys because they hate them."
The debate over what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable speech is all very interesting but it's completely beside the point of the OP. Maybe I wasn't clear, so I'll try once more, with feeling.
When bad things happen to liberals the MSM and the blogosphere catch intellectual fire with inuendo and implication that it's all due to conservative views and attitudes.
When bad things happen to conservatives we hear almost nothing, or we hear obfuscating discussions over definitions, or "Yes, however..." style arguments which attempt to defuse the argument by dissecting it into pieces, or "You're just as bad" style arguments which are little more than creative application of moral relativism.
If that's not clear enough then how about this:
The MSM is in liberalism's pocket and thus has failed in its responsibility to provide an extra check on the power of government.
__________________
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” – Mark Twain
In the hierarchy of inappropriate political speech, I would put legitimate death threats at the top, violent smack talk by people in the public eye second, and venting by the general public (including threats of violence) a distant third. True death threats with intent to act on them are criminal in nature. Violent smack talk by public figures, whether polliticans are not, set a tone for public discourse, and Palin sets the tone very low ("blood libel"). Violent statements by small frye with no intent or ability to act on them are of little importance until someone publicizes them for political advantage. Now, if they are publicizing their own hate speech, and it is being covered by the press, then it goes up to the second level because they are also setting the tone for political discourse inappropriately.
There are real, serious threats (like violent, anonymous death threats) and combative games played on both sides of the aisle. There's a big difference. As is the huge gap between macho football talk and rappers who really do shoot cops and rival gang members.
And there is a difference between the kid who brings to school a plastic knife to smear butter on his bagel with, and the one who brings his blade to "cut" someone. Or the gang banger with the semi automatic, and the kid with a squirt gun.
There is no moral equivalency between politicians talking smack and violent, potentially sincere death threats...accompanied with physical damage.
Seriously? "Don't retreat, reload," Sarah Palin. Palin's map with gun sites - or were they surveryer's marks. Palin is charismatic, but not elected - at least not since she quit on Alaska. I am sure that democrats have used similar metaphors and I don't think it is appropriate from either side. Obama said something along the lines of "if they bring a knife, we bring a gun" - some paraphrase of the Sean Connery line from "The Untouchables."
To continue my rant, I hate it when football players coaches are interviewed by the media talk of going to war, etc. Rappers who talk about shooting cops and rival gang members as part of their "music."
-- Edited by Bogney on Monday 4th of April 2011 09:15:08 PM
Being there are threats and then there are, well, threats, I would have expected the great insinuator to have weighed in on this by now.
But Krugman, having the luxury of also being a duck-squeezing climate alarmist, seems to be preoccupied with other matters at the moment...
Just a few weeks ago Anthony Watts, who runs a prominent climate denialist Web site, praised the Berkeley project and piously declared himself “prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.” But never mind: once he knew that Professor Muller was going to present those preliminary results, Mr. Watts dismissed the hearing as “post normal science political theater.” And one of the regular contributors on his site dismissed Professor Muller as “a man driven by a very serious agenda.”
... yet his genius is evident, even in this brief snippet.
See he glosses over with "preliminary facts" that it's 2% finished, sucker-punching Watts with the sleight-of-hand, and then smears him with the actions of someone he's not even remotely responsible for.
No matter. Why, he's probably even now writing the column apologizing for doing the same to Republicans with Loutner and condemning the lady who wrote those death threats.
-- Edited by catahoula on Monday 4th of April 2011 06:04:57 PM
I look forward to being able to condemn that rhetoric because there is simply no place for that in the public discourse. Just like that assemblyman from Wisconsin screaming "you're dead." No place at all.
However, do you truly see no difference between violent letters of outrage from the rabble, and violent rhetoric from charismatic leaders offered to the rabble?
Can you give some examples of "violent rhetoric from charismatic leaders?"
The level of the violent rhetoric is deporable. However, do you truly see no difference between violent letters of outrage from the rabble, and violent rhetoric from charismatic leaders offered to the rabble? It is because of people who make threats like those you quoted that the political leaders should be more responsible with their metaphors. There are crazy people out there who should not be incited to take crazy actions.
Few would deny that there are nuts and extremists on both sides. Politicians should play to their rational base, not the birthers among them.
The amount and vehemence of the threats and violence against Wisconsin Republican representatives has been truly beyond the pale.
Remember all the folks on the left who indicted Republicans for the “Climate of Hate” after the Giffords shooting?
Where are they now?
Their silence is deafening.
Death Threats by the Dozens in Wisconsin We will hunt you down. We will slit your throats. We will drink your blood. I will have your decapitated head on a pike in the Madison town square. This is your last warning.”
Is this a passage from Bram Stoker’s Dracula? A snippet from al-Qaeda’s latest missive? No, this e-mail reached Wisconsin state senator Dan Kapanke (R., La Crosse) on March 9, after he voted for GOP governor Scott Walker’s controversial budget and labor reforms.
Kapanke is not alone. While the mainstream media generally yawn, leftists threaten top Wisconsin Republicans with murder. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/262428/death-threats-dozens-deroy-murdock?page=1
Turning a Blind Eye to Union Violence reporters have been loath to mention the violence and death threats associated with the Wisconsin labor protests. Signs comparing Wisconsin governor Scott Walker to Hitler were de rigueur among the protesters in Madison. One protester was caught on tape screaming “Hang them all!” There were numerous “ironic” references to the controversy over Sarah Palin’s alleged “targeting” of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot by a mentally ill man of no coherent political ideology. One such sign had Walker’s photo in crosshairs with the word “RELOAD.”
All of Wisconsin’s Republican state senators have by now received death threats, including a missive that read “you will be killed and your families will also be killed.” One state senator had a note shoved under his door reading “The only good Republican is a dead Republican.” Another had the windshield of his car smashed and nails spread across his driveway. Interestingly enough, at least one GOP legislator was threatened by a fellow legislator: Wisconsin Democratic representative Gordon Hintz shouted “You are f — ing dead” to Republican Michelle Litjens. The Weekly Standard, March 28, 2011
Uncivil disobedience?
Just a couple of months ago, in the wake of Jared Loughner's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, simple talk of "targeting" a political opponent for defeat was treated as beyond the pale. But let's look at some more recent language -- and conduct -- that our bien-pensant punditry can't be bothered to notice, let alone condemn.
In Michigan, protesters opposed to Gov. Rick Snyder's austerity budget broke a window to get into the capitol building. One faces felony charges after assaulting police with an edged weapon; 14 were arrested.
In Washington, DC, the windows at GOP headquarters were shot out, not the first time that Republican offices have been subject to such attacks.
In Madison, Wis., the state capitol was occupied for weeks by teachers-union members and their supporters. Doors and windows were broken; a mob tried to keep Republican state senators from entering the Senate chamber to vote.
