Go to consortiumblog.com to post comments

Order Now

Archives

Age of Obama
Barack Obama's presidency

Bush End Game
George W. Bush's presidency since 2007

Bush - Second Term
George W. Bush's presidency from 2005-06

Bush - First Term
George W. Bush's presidency, 2000-04

Who Is Bob Gates?
The secret world of Defense Secretary Gates

2004 Campaign
Bush Bests Kerry

Behind Colin Powell's Legend
Gauging Powell's reputation.

The 2000 Campaign
Recounting the controversial campaign.

Media Crisis
Is the national media a danger to democracy?

The Clinton Scandals
Behind President Clinton's impeachment.

Nazi Echo
Pinochet & Other Characters.

The Dark Side of Rev. Moon
Rev. Sun Myung Moon and American politics.

Contra Crack
Contra drug stories uncovered

Lost History
America's tainted historical record

The October Surprise "X-Files"
The 1980 election scandal exposed.

International
From free trade to the Kosovo crisis.

Other Investigative Stories

Editorials

Editor’s Note: The election of the first African-American President has unleashed an ugliness on the Right and within the Republican Party that now confronts the United States with a new political crisis.

It is a battle over whether facts and decency have any chance in a political/media system dominated by distortions and fury – amplified by hate-mongers and opportunists in the powerful right-wing media – as media activist Jay Diamond observes in this guest essay:

For months radio lout Steve Malzberg screamed 10 times a day that "Folks, Barack Obama HATES! this country and his WIFE HATES! this country."

And when for over 10 years, every day, Sean Hannity couldn't survive a fact check in the average kindergarten class, and when he violated Abner Louima with the equivalent of a verbal plunger after Louima had been worked over with a physical plunger, that was nothing else but Vile Poison.

Prior to low-brow, right-wing, dishonest, and hate-fueled talk radio, the political culture of our country would have prevented Joe Wilson from screaming insults at the President of the United States in the midst of an address to a joint session (or anywhere else).

This culture of relentlessly dishonest and utterly ignorant pure hate which is ubiquitous all over low-brow, right-wing radio is nothing other than poison, even though right-wing apologists try to cosmeticize this swill as merely "entertainment."

These transparently political apologists are no doubt descended from those fine folks in ancient Rome who made the case that throwing Christians to lions was also merely "Entertainment."

While it is possible to do a radio program that is truly entertaining, honest, intelligent, funny and informative, doing that requires some amount of ethics and talent and diligent application, and that does not describe the low-brow, right-wing, hate-fueled, dishonest and power hungry slobs who bleed pure poison all across our public spectrum.

Employing the most ugly and persistently untruthful political slurs about crucial public policy questions along with ugly and false personal character assassination in furtherance of a bigoted and feudal political agenda that could never exist on the merits absent their relentless tsunami of calculated lying, would not in any rational environment be considered even remotely as "entertainment." 

As but one illustration, on this idiotic and malicious low-brow, right-wing radio, the President of the United States is a Marxist who HATES! this country along with his wife. What I ask any decent citizen can be the purpose of repeating such a statement multiple times a day on an individual's radio program? 

And what can be the purpose of sponsors who purchase advertising on such a "show." And what can be the purpose of an station licensee who right now features this Malzberg in addition to Savage, Dobbs and Beck all on one station; WOR-AM in New York.

Color of Change, are you listening!?

That's just one example...some others: Death panels, birthers, the USA couldn't live without attacking and occupying Iraq (3 Trillion dollars later of taxpayers’ money), Sarah Palin is a genius who loves America even as she makes speeches of love to the Alaska Independence Party whose whole existence is devoted to LEAVING the country she makes believe she loves.

And an endless torrent of these irresponsible gargoyles hurling the red meat of hate and slander to the least informed, most hate-filled cadres in an increasingly ignorant demographic consumed in the malice and stupidity that makes license holders money today as it eats the country up from the inside in the long term.

This is the message that goes out all over talk radio on the Public's Air, minute by minute, day after day after day.

It is killing the country they claim they love so much.

Hey, but it pays well.

What it is, is a disgrace, and it is a travesty to trivialize it as "entertainment".
The unlettered, humorless slobs talking spit on low-brow, right-wing radio are not entertainment. They are an ugly spectacle. There is a difference.

Anyone who has seen traffic slow to a crawl as the motorists gawk at the spectacle of bleeding and broken bodies in the immediate aftermath of a deadly traffic wreck understands that difference.

It is not subtle. Neither is the radio cancer eating away at the civic body of the United States.

These low-lifes like to bray on about how they want to "take the country back" (presumably from the black President and his family).

How's this for an idea. How 'bout anti-hate Americans take back their radio stations!

Jay Diamond is a commentator and media activist in New York City. He can be reached at [email protected]

To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.

Back to Home Page