Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [183]
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David Duke’s campaign manager said that the problem with Duke’s Senate candidacy was his obsessive anti-Semitism: “The Jews just aren’t a big issue in Louisiana. We keep telling David, stick to attacking the blacks. There’s no point in going after the Jews, you just piss them off and nobody here cares about them anyway.” (Gideon Rachman, “Iran, David Duke and me,” Financial Times, 12 Dec. 2006, http://blogs.ft.com/rachmanblog/2006/12/iran-david-dukehtml/.)
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Erick Erickson also likes to fantasize about shooting federal employees who invade his doorstep. When Washington State banned dishwasher detergent containing phosphates, Erickson spoke of readying his gun to protect his property from “government apparatchiks coming to enforce nonsensical legislation,” i.e., confiscate his dishwasher detergent. On another program, he threatened to scare off census workers with a shotgun. Perhaps he should just put up a sign in his yard: BEWARE OF BLOGGER! It might help with the Jehovah’s Witnesses too. (Erick Erickson, “At What Point Do People Revolt?” 31 Mar. 2009, http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/03/31/at-what-point-do-people-revolt/; “CNN’s Erickson: I’ll ‘[p]ull out my wife’s shotgun’ if they try to arrest me for not filling out the American Community Survey,” Media Matters, 1 Apr. 2010, http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201004010050.)
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“Vicious cycle.” In theory, the cycle can also spin to the left, and liberal commentators like MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann have turned up the heat since the mild days of Phil Donahue. Olbermann’s rhetoric hardly compares to the savage paranoia of his right-wing opponents, but should liberal paranoia rise sometime in the future, the solution should be the same as I’ve advocated against conservative media shows.
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“Opinion shows.” Jon Stewart helpfully tried to clarify: “For the audience here, let me help you out—because it does get confusing. The three hours you spend in the morning with Fox & Friends: not news. Your 4 o’clock to 5 o’clock post-tea and crumpets Neil Cavudo break: not news. The 5 o’clock to 6 o’clock emotional whirlwind and national group therapy session that is Glenn Beck: not even close to news. O’Reilly, Hannity, van Susteren-en-en-en: not news. This is according to Fox News. Those people—the ones featured in promos about how fair and balanced Fox News is—are not news. These people—otherwise known as the only people you ever think of when you think of Fox News—are not news. They are Fox ‘opinutainment.’” (Jon Stewart, “For Fox Sake!” The Daily Show, 29 Oct. 2009, http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-29-2009/for-fox-sake-.)
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“Ignore him.” There was one brave exception to the Republican wall of silence. In 1950, Margaret Chase Smith, a freshman senator from Maine, showed a good deal more courage than her political heirs, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. In a fifteen-minute address titled “A Declaration of Conscience,” she protested that the Senate had been “debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination.”
(Senator Margaret Chase Smith, “A Declaration of Conscience,” United States Senate, 1 Jun. 1950, http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/A_Declaration_of_Conscience.htm.)
Copyright © 2010 by Michael Wolraich
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