All this talk of ABC's bias last night got me a little wondering, so I turned on KSFO 560 AM last night after the debate. This is the Bay Area's local hate radio (right-wing) station. It happens to be an ABC affiliate.
Now I've listened to this crap before - for humorous content. But having been part of this community for a while now, it took on new significance.
But I still wasn't ready for what I heard this morning.
The guest on Lee Rodgers' show this morning was a right-wing nut named Rick Moran, star of such intellectual sites as the Right Wing Nuthouse (aptly named) and the American Thinker (not so aptly named).
And here you will find plenty of articles on Obama's Rezko connections, as Moran was happy to share at length this morning.
But then the discussion turned to Iraq. Rodgers, surprisingly, brings up the issue that the Iraqi government is not spending as much on reconstruction as it should be.
Moran takes it from here. Ah, these are Arabs, he reminds the host. All Arabs are corrupt. This is a cultural thing. Oh yeah, this is absolutely all their fault.
And here I am thinking about the missing $9 billion in cash, the incredible lack of accountability for politically connected Blackwater, the amazing incompetence and waste in U.S.-run reconstruction efforts, the inability to account for weapons issued by the U.S. to the Iraqi military, and that the U.S. as the occupying power bears a great deal of responsibility for both the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan being near the bottom of Transparency International's corruption perceptions index.
Then of course there's the domestic corruption of the Bush administration, which has been well covered here.
But as vile as the intellectual hypocrisy and the outright fraud in representing the corruption of the Iraqi government as a uniquely Iraqi issue is, it can't even begin to compare with how outrageous this persistently racist and paternalistic dialog is that continues to underly the right wing's rationale for the Iraq war.
Yes, this is an Arab problem. All Arabs are corrupt. We might as well nuke the bastards then, right? They're subhuman. They're untermensch.
And this overt racism is what passes for informed discussion on ABC radio.