So Glenn Miller, senate candidate from the show-me state, is a very bad person. And he's not just bad in the way that Larry Craig said that Bill Clinton was a "naughty, dirty boy" (that Larry Craig clip always cracks me up). He's really bad. Kudos to oblios arrow for bringing this to our attention.
But very bad people who are silly are not that dangerous. What makes them dangerous is the support they get in the form of silence and equivocation from people and institutions who should not be silent and should not equivocate. Here's the story.
Glenn Miller (not the band leader) is not a good person
Here's the proof:
Glenn-Miller-is-evil Exhibit A (from a Glenn Miller for Senate Radio Ad):
"We've sit back [sic] and allowed the Jews to take over our government, our banks, our media,"
Glenn-Miller-is-evil Exhibit B(also from a Glenn Miller Radio Ad):
"We've allowed tens of millions of foreign mud people to invade our country."
Glenn-Miller-is-evil Exhibit C (ditto):
"It's not the liberals or conservatives, and it's not the Republicans or Democrats. It's the Jews [pause] Stupid."
There are a number of other statements that show that this guy is not just a hateful bigot, but that he doesn't seem to understand what America is about, nor even what humanity is about. Click on the link, if you're in one of those I-enjoy-being-horrified kinds of moods. We all have them.
In fact, this guy is so evil that he's really a caricature of old evil guys, like Charlie Chaplin in the great dictator, or Howard Stern's former guest who was the head of the KKK, or any number of screaming angry tea-partiers carrying misspelled signs insisting that WE learn English (those always crack me up). Such displays of iniquity are laughable for being so extreme, but they are not dangerous . . . unless they are supported by silence and equivocation.
Now here comes the equivocation. The local news station KCTV dutifully reports the story, which is about a bigoted nut running bigoted ads on a local radio station, but the radio station can't refuse to run the ads because of FCC regulations. "Candidate Draws Criticism for Controversial Ads" reads the headline. The article goes on to add the following jaw-dropping paragraph:
Some people have described the advertisements for candidate Glenn Miller as racist and hateful.
Huh? Some people? KCTV is apparently so fair and balanced that they don't have eyes, ears or minds. "Jersey Jon reports on his day: Some people say that Jersey Jon wears shoes to work, and skips meals."
The article then elevates the discussion by providing an academic perspective from the estimable political science professor Charles Moran, of Rockhurst University. Here's what that guy said:
the political climate is different now than it was years ago.."
Ok, that's true, and true is good.
There appears to be more anger and fear among voters.
Also, true.
"In both parties, these extreme groups have been formed," Moran said. "You have the tea parties on the Republican side. Moveon.org on the liberals' side. You never had all that stuff to get people all worked up."
Hold it right there.
A candidate for the United States Senate is running on a public platform of overt hatred of Blacks, Latinos and Jews, and a political science professor's comment is that extreme groups on both sides have formed? And then a news organization reports that reports those comments as somehow informative and not complete and utter bullshit?
The article continues:
Ads like Miller's spark emotions.
I don't know why the article didn't say, "Some argue that ads like Miller's spark emotions."
Now it may be that this article is just an aberrational POS. But it's also true that we have a pretty large news organization and a professor who are essentially sanctioning and supporting the preposterous evil that is Glenn Miller by equivocating. They falsely assuming that their inquiry ends as soon as they can identify and articulate two sides of the story, because they are not participants.
Now this may be an extreme example of bad coverage, but extreme examples permit us to see patterns of behavior that we might otherwise overlook. How many times have we seen CNN try and fail to meet their obligation as a news organization by doing no work and simply having talking heads "report" both sides of a story? Doesn't this explain why is Pat Buchanan even on MSNBC? Or why Ann Coulter gets any airtime at all?