EDIT: So Senator Richard Shelby has decided to follow Alan Keyes lead. This is great news. We needed to expose that nonsense and Senator Shelby is doing it for us.
For some years now I've been sampling various conservative talk radio shows just to keep up to date with their latest arguments and talking points. (Please don't tell me it's better to ignore them. As Tom Tomorrow says, these guys aren't going to go away just because you pretend they don't exist.) I've always known when to cut back for the sake of my sanity, but I can usually tolerate small doses without having it completely ruin my day. However, those doses are becoming more toxic now that these people are having to deal with a liberal non-white President.
Yesterday morning finally convinced me that I should no longer sit back and just shake my head in disagreement. I am going to start pushing back every little way I can. I'll go into what prompted this below the fold.
I live in a very blue state, Rhode Island. Yet even here, all of our radio stations are filled with Conservative talkers, both local and nationally syndicated. The two major local AM talk stations, 630 WPRO (Citadel Broadcasting) and 920 WHJJ (ClearChannel) feature Conservatives exclusively, day after day. Recently 630 has decided to go mostly local, while 920 is almost completely syndicated stuff (Limbaugh, Hannity, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Bill O'Reilly, and worst of all, Quinn & Rose).
Yesterday Morning I decided to check up on my good buddy Jim Quinn of Quinn & Rose in the morning. My half hour drive featured two segments where Quinn was reading verbatim from this lovely column by someone named Joan Swirsky. Here are the first two sentences of the piece, which will pretty much tell you all you need to know.
Once upon a time, a white teenager from Kansas got pregnant by her black Kenyan boyfriend, Barack Obama Sr., or was it her husband? Whatever. (I say whatever because we’ve never seen either marriage or divorce certificates.) Some say the couple was in Kenya visiting relatives when the birth of their son, Barack Obama Jr., occurred. No matter. (I say no matter because we’ve never seen an authentic birth certificate.)
Never mind that we HAVE seen an authentic birth certificate. (I say never mind because the certificate provided by Obama's campaign was certified by the State of Hawaii and deemed legitimate by numerous non-partisan groups who've had a chance to actually hold it in their hands. A "certified" birth certificate meets the standard definition of "authentic"). Basically the story warns that Obama is a "Trojan Horse" who was raised mostly by a hodge-podge collection of radical communists (which included his mother) who have groomed him to one day take over the country and destroy it.
Mr Quinn then went on to read some of the now infamous statements from Alan Keyes stating that the country's very existence is in jeopardy if we don't stop Obama. Keyes rant also included numerous debunked charges such as Obama supports killing babies that survive abortions
and Obamas mortgage plan signals to all Americans that if they simply stop paying their mortgage, the government will pick up the tab for them. Keyes also points out that some US servicemen are going to court to see if they really have to follow the orders of what they consider an "illegitimate" President. (Imagine what would have happened to anyone trying to pull that crap on George Bush 7 years ago) For those who haven't seen Keyes rant, I suggest you view here for yourself, and keep in mind that THIS is the man the GOP hand picked to run against Obama in 2004 after Congressman Ryan had to step out.
Jim Quinn then added, as supposed evidence that Obama was systematically planting the seeds of communism, the charge that Obama is giving ACORN Billions of dollars in stimulus money, another widely debunked and completely false statement that could be confirmed easily through public record. Quinn also claimed that Obama wants a "civilian army" much bigger than the US Department of Defense.
I know as well as anyone that talk radio has been spreading various forms of nonsense for years now, but enough is enough. Our country is going through tough times, and it's dangerous enough to stoke the flames of hatred now, but even worse when you do it with BLATANT misinformation. I have sent an email on to the program director at this station, and I plan on sending out emails to various advertisers on these stations. One is a landscaping company called "Mikes Tree Service" which "proudly" sponsors the "Rush Limbaugh Update", a one minute advertisement/news segment where Limbaugh recaps his "brilliant" analysis of the day.
I hope that we can take this opportunity to apply antibiotics on a festering sore before the infection spreads any further. Radical conservatism has been thoroughly debunked the past 8 years, but it is still alive in talk radio, mainly because the media refuses to point out how extreme and unstable it really is, and because many of us simply pretend we don't need to worry about responding or countering what these people are saying. It's time we supplement the work Media Matters is doing by pointing out the nonsense that passes for debate on a supremely large majority of our nations talk radio stations. Contact local advertisers who use this medium and politely ask them why they support this. Tell your friends to call as well and point out that if the company wants to be political, they will have to accept losing potential customers. Write letters to your local paper, heck even national papers.
It's time to show these people that we hear them loud and clear.....and we think they're full of shit. Remember, one thing that emboldens many talk radio listeners is the idea that they've discovered some secret fountain of knowledge. They truly believe that no liberal could ever match wits with the great Limbaugh or any other host and have their ideology live to tell about it. Shatter this illusion, and we may be on our way to truly saving this country