This is an opinion piece. If you're expecting research and documentation I think that's down the hall to the left.
It's important to strive to keep a certain level of honesty and truth in the media that are charged with keeping Americans informed. When there is an egregious error, it is well and good that someone call the writer/anchor/host on the carpet and lead them into the light.
But this endless, pointless, energy sapping barking at the moon everytime Bill O'Riley tricks you into saying his name a thousand times by saying something inflamatory has become almost pitiful.
I guess this is where I stop and direct you to the fold...
I enjoy a Rush Limbaugh expose' as much as the next guy. But come on, what the hell did you expect? If he's not on GW Bush's payroll I'll buy ya dinner. Do you know that when he says the most base, offensive thing - like make fun of a victim of some horrible disease, or make racist or bigoted commments about gays or blacks in whatever underhaded way so as to leave himself a rationalization - you are playing directly into his fat little hands by reacting as we often do. We wail, and gnash, and blog for days ad nauseum and he laughs his ass off.
Bill O'Rielley (and I have stopped trying to spell his name correctly) is a piece of human dung wherein his political and sociological perspective is concerned. But what is gained by making him the center of attention in diary after diary, headline after headline?
The same goes for Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, all of them; I won't do them the favor of listing all their names. They say and do what they're supposed to say and do. They're republicans. If they ever said a kind, or accurate word that's when I would be stricken with curiosity!
So it's become a sort of Whack-a-Mole of TV and radio Stars. What a monumental waste of time! The biggest benefit I can see out of this is the cross referencing on other progressive blogs. But who's really taking you seriously? His advertisers? Ugh. Pullease.
The advertiser gets worried when there's a risk of rampant public outrage. Not when the sensitivities of a lefty blog website are violated. Threats of boycotts and other refusals of business-doing are a good tool ... WHEN THEY ARE USED BY PEOPLE THAT CORPORATE EARTH TAKES SERIOUSLY. But if everytime we get sand in our eyes and we load our boycott rifles and start making gasping sounds like Grace Adler, we start to take on a certain cariciature quality.
At whom SHOULD we be directing our energy?
Can it be said that the more juice we spend on chasing after TV & Radio acts the fewer arrows end up hitting our intended targets? I think it can be said.
The Bush administration, and to a greater degree the Republican Party ... politicians who may be elected and make policy ... are our game. Rush, Bill, and Brit are human sheilds. And unless your boycott bullet is going to pass through them and on to the target, it's wasted. You're doing nothing but, if I may borrow a phrase, "Swatting At Flies."
I hope you can see clear to reeling yourself in a smidge and keeping your powder a little dryer in the future. When the truth is on your side ... and people actually care about the message you're tring to get out ... you can do a lot of good. You already have.
But when you start to shoot at chipmunks because you're bored waiting for the Elk to appear you're serving no one but yourself.
That's just my opinion, and I felt like I needed to get it out. If you made it all the way down here, I appreciate your time.
.