April 13th, 2009
On Point with Tom Ashbrook did a segment on conservative hate speech being spewed by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, right-wing talk radio and their counterparts on Fox News. Here’s how the program is teased:
[T]he language lately on air has grown particularly fierce and apocalyptic: President Obama called a dictator and sympathizer with terrorists. His policies called socialist, Marxist, Bolshevik, dangerous. Americans called to rise up in revolt. All this while the economy tanks and gun sales surge.
That last line is the operative and, frankly, scary one: while the economy tanks and gun sales surge. Let’s not forget that conservative right-wing blowhards animated, if not inspired, two recent terrorist incidents: 1. A gunman that opened fire at a church for its liberal views, 2. A second man in Pennsylvania ambushed police officers because, he thought, they and Obama were coming to take his guns away.
I wish Tom Ashbrook, the host of On Point, had been unabashedly critical of the vile rhetoric being spewed by conservatives on Fox News and talk radio; but, like a good “journalist,” Tom maintained his objectivity and largely agreed that liberals were guilty of similar offenses during the Bush years. To which I simply respond: bullshit! When was the last time any liberal went on TV or radio to call for armed revolution against the US government? Tom Ashbrook’s default fallback of journalistic objectivity is simply weak, and irresponsible in this instance.
September 23rd, 2007
This has received little no coverage in the traditional media, so it’s no wonder that I had not heard of it; however, I can’t help but think, Wow, if a liberal group had done anything like this, the traditional and rightwing media would’ve been all over it.
For those who didn’t have the opportunity to watch the Values Voter Debate last evening, you missed quite a display of political pandering, ridiculous rhetoric and all-around right-wing lunacy. You also missed this lovely rendition of “God Bless America” performed by the Church of God Choir, from Springfield, Ohio – reworded to better reflect the Right’s agenda:
Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back
On everything that made her what she is
Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sin and heal our land
The courts ruled prayer out of our schools
In June of ‘62
Told the children “you are your own God now
So you can make the rules”
O say can you see what that choice
Has cost us to this day
America, one nation under God, has gone astray
Why should God bless America?
Shes’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is
Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land
In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right
But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land
Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is
Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land
