Apropos of the hideous Unitarian church shootings in Tennessee over the weekend, R.J. Eskow makes a point about right wing media that I've made for years at neighborhood happy hours and elsewhere. The basic point is that words matter, especially when they are scripted subject to editorial review by media corporations before broadcasting to a mass audience.
The corporate infotainment industry has long-since debased the journalism profession to the point where reporters simply cannot be assumed to have their facts straight or to be working impartially. But it's much worse than that: millionaire propagandists posing as journalists have drifted over into packaging hate speech and calls to violence as conservative political punditry. This is simply not an exaggeration and cannot be denied in good faith: it's an obvious fact. Eskow cites some examples:
...right-wing rhetoric toward liberals and humanists like those who attended the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church has been exceptionally violent for years. Liberal groups are often called "Nazi" or "Nazi-like" by [Bill] O'Reilly.... [Michael] Savage says he'd "hang every lawyer" who tried to establish constitutional rights for Guantanamo prisoners, describes Obama as an "Afro-Leninist," and said the folks at Media Matters were "brownshirts"....
He reminds us that Sean Hannity has said "there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the speaker (of the House)." And that Ann Coulter has shared her considered opinion that "liberals should be beaten with baseball bats and tried for treason." Soulless, whoring, tax-evading former Bill Clinton advisor and Republican hater Dick Morris says "liberals are 'traitors' who should be decapitated," according to Eskow.
Commentary on this sort of right-wing incitement to violence against liberals has been easy to find on lefty blogs for years, and Media Matters for America frequently documents prominent national examples. It's not a secret.So how do the networks who employ Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilley and Ann Coulter retain their sponsors? How does this content make it past network Standards and Practices departments when an extemporaneous "fuck" issuing from Bono's mouth can cost a network half a mil in fines (until the ruling is laughed out of court on appeal)? As "Stone Cold" Steve Austin would say, "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY THESE THINGS HAPPEN!" It mainly matters just because they happen. (See keywords below anyway.)
I wonder how long many of these right-wing pricks would keep their jobs if broadcast executives were held liable as accessories to terrorism in cases such as the Knoxville church shootings.
Note about image: found on Bob Cesca's blog, it's an actual McCain political poster curently marketed by an outfit called ConservativeBuys.com. Yours for 18 bills.
The ultimate result of this hate mongering isn't just a shot up church. See the 2004 movie "Hotel Rwanda" for the kind of payoff it can/will have.
ReplyDeleteIn the background of the soundtrack during the entire first half of the movie (before the actual genocide began) you hear the relentless drone of radio man in the background, debasing the ethnic group about to get butchered, stoking the butchers-to-be, speaking in code about the when and how of murder. It works pretty much like dripping blood into a sea of starving sharks right before you toss in the victims.
Our radio (and TV) man is Limbaugh, Savage, Beck, OReilly, Hannity, Liddy, Coulter. And then there's the women, like Ingraham.
Someone with massive audience, like Oprah, should start selling a boycott of these savages' sponsors and put them out of business for good.
Totally agree, Anon. The Rwanda example was in the back of my head. Did not see the movie but heard news reports about dehumanizing the "others" as cockroaches.
ReplyDeleteI think our overall national character still has some desirable inertia in terms of its tendencies to be sympathetic to democracy, majority rule, minority protections, and other products of the Enlightenment. But cockroaches, er, I mean cocksuckers, like Hannity and Limbaugh have had enormous success eroding our national character and paving the way for encroaching horror.