Why oh why do I do it? Sometimes I just have to turn it on to see what nonsense he's spewing this week. Every now and then he amuses me, and once in a blue moon I actually agree with him.
Lately, though, his show has become less interesting as it's become more and more a right wing propaganda machine.
Today, though, was over the top.
He's talked about this a bit before, and he wrote a column about this topic not too long ago. He has a crackpot theory that Democrats and "community activists" forced banks to make loans to people they knew couldn't afford them, and that is why we're in our current trouble.
It's utterly ludicrous, of course. And I might as well bullet-point some reasons to justify myself.
- Most of the hubbub about redlining was in the early to mid 90's. The CRA (which Boortz was going on about) was in 1977. And yet the problems didn't bubble up until now. Interesting.
- No one forced banks to use exotic mortgage instruments. They chose to use ARMS, balloon mortgages, 40 year mortgages, etc. If they were worried about risk, there'd be no reason to do this.
- CDS's were a Phil Gramm kinda thing. They had nothing to do with ACORN or with any Democratic agenda.
- Not every person in foreclosure is poor.
5, The housing bubble was a product of Bush policy. Their (rather poor) answer to the bursting of the tech bubble was to create another bubble. Only this one involved encouraging average Americans to mortgage themselves to the hilt.
And I could go on, but what's the point? You know all this. Hank Paulson knows this. Heck, I think George Bush might even know this.
And the rant might actually be laughable, but for one thing. For a lot of people, putting "community activist" and "poor people" in the same paragraph is going to get them thinking about those "uppity negroes." Now, don't get me wrong: it's possible that Boortz is more concerned with people's political persuasion here than he is with their race. But a lot of his listeners aren't hearing that.
Plenty of folks are looking for someone to blame, and Neal is giving them an easy target. Regardless of his intent, Boortz is actively encouraging racial scapegoating, and that ain't a good thing.