Air America of course.
A lot of anger going on
Liberal fury at Team Bush has gotten positively murderous
The voice-mail message started out innocently enough. The caller gave her name and said she lived in Connecticut and was 77 years old.
"I think Air America is a breath of fresh air, and we liberals love it.... You didn't like what they said about the President on the Randi Rhodes program? Too bad about you. I believe that Osama Bin Laden had it right: His throat should be slit."
Whoa, Nellie - what's going on here? What happened to arsenic and old lace?
The caller was among the scores of people responding to my Wednesday pan of Air America Radio, the all-liberal-all-the-time network carried on WLIB (1190 AM) in New York.
I wrote then that during 10 hours of programs, network hosts made frequent sex jokes about the Catholic Church, suggested that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should be tortured and that President Bush should be shot.
While Al Franken, the network's top host, told me later in a phone chat he was sure there was no literal intent of violence, the angry caller certainly found the idea of a dead President appealing.
It's a chilling thought, all the more so because the caller, whose name I won't repeat, was endorsing throat-slitting on the very day America was reeling from the pictures of Nick Berg's beheading by Arab terrorists.
Her call was unique in that regard, but the overwhelming tone of the responses made clear that some on the left are burning with an anger at the Bush administration that borders on irrationality. Attacks are not expressed in terms of disagreement. Rather, the players of Team Bush are routinely called liars, cheats and thieves and likened to the Taliban and Nazis.
Some respondents have bypassed anger and gone straight to hate.
"Hating Rumsfeld is the most patriotic thing anyone can do," Suzanne Hayes wrote in a fairly typical E-mail. Like many others, she began by calling me names - "a brainless right-wing idiot" - and asserted that Air America speaks for the "liberal majority."
In that case, bring back the silent majority. At least they were nicer!
The most striking thing about the responses was how most said that right-wing talk jocks had been spewing venom for years and now it's payback time.
"It's return fire," wrote Greg Burrows. "Long live Air America."
Those making that argument invariably cited Rush Limbaugh, which confirmed my suspicion that the pill-popping Rush has rattled the libs. Apparently having given up on beating him, they've sunk to defending their own low-road antics by saying he did it first.
As every parent knows, that's a mighty lame excuse for bad behavior. In political terms, it makes the left part of the problem instead of the solution.
But I heard that explanation over and over.
Because of Limbaugh's attacks on feminists, "calling Rush a Nazi ... is long overdue," wrote Tom Nugent. Patrick Robinson of Seattle said the references were fair because "Limbaugh often comes off like a modern Hitler."
Let's see: Limbaugh's bombast = the man who did the Holocaust. Talk about your fuzzy math.
It's too soon to say whether Air America will develop enough of an audience to be a political force, but a liberal friend is pessimistic.
"Their cardinal sin is not being funny," said the man, who is a successful TV executive. "It's not enough just to be an angry activist if you want to get people to listen."
He left me with a good question: Why is it that the left, which has a lock on the entertainment industry, can't figure that out?
Originally published on May 16, 2004
link
A lot of anger going on
Liberal fury at Team Bush has gotten positively murderous
The voice-mail message started out innocently enough. The caller gave her name and said she lived in Connecticut and was 77 years old.
"I think Air America is a breath of fresh air, and we liberals love it.... You didn't like what they said about the President on the Randi Rhodes program? Too bad about you. I believe that Osama Bin Laden had it right: His throat should be slit."
Whoa, Nellie - what's going on here? What happened to arsenic and old lace?
The caller was among the scores of people responding to my Wednesday pan of Air America Radio, the all-liberal-all-the-time network carried on WLIB (1190 AM) in New York.
I wrote then that during 10 hours of programs, network hosts made frequent sex jokes about the Catholic Church, suggested that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should be tortured and that President Bush should be shot.
While Al Franken, the network's top host, told me later in a phone chat he was sure there was no literal intent of violence, the angry caller certainly found the idea of a dead President appealing.
It's a chilling thought, all the more so because the caller, whose name I won't repeat, was endorsing throat-slitting on the very day America was reeling from the pictures of Nick Berg's beheading by Arab terrorists.
Her call was unique in that regard, but the overwhelming tone of the responses made clear that some on the left are burning with an anger at the Bush administration that borders on irrationality. Attacks are not expressed in terms of disagreement. Rather, the players of Team Bush are routinely called liars, cheats and thieves and likened to the Taliban and Nazis.
Some respondents have bypassed anger and gone straight to hate.
"Hating Rumsfeld is the most patriotic thing anyone can do," Suzanne Hayes wrote in a fairly typical E-mail. Like many others, she began by calling me names - "a brainless right-wing idiot" - and asserted that Air America speaks for the "liberal majority."
In that case, bring back the silent majority. At least they were nicer!
The most striking thing about the responses was how most said that right-wing talk jocks had been spewing venom for years and now it's payback time.
"It's return fire," wrote Greg Burrows. "Long live Air America."
Those making that argument invariably cited Rush Limbaugh, which confirmed my suspicion that the pill-popping Rush has rattled the libs. Apparently having given up on beating him, they've sunk to defending their own low-road antics by saying he did it first.
As every parent knows, that's a mighty lame excuse for bad behavior. In political terms, it makes the left part of the problem instead of the solution.
But I heard that explanation over and over.
Because of Limbaugh's attacks on feminists, "calling Rush a Nazi ... is long overdue," wrote Tom Nugent. Patrick Robinson of Seattle said the references were fair because "Limbaugh often comes off like a modern Hitler."
Let's see: Limbaugh's bombast = the man who did the Holocaust. Talk about your fuzzy math.
It's too soon to say whether Air America will develop enough of an audience to be a political force, but a liberal friend is pessimistic.
"Their cardinal sin is not being funny," said the man, who is a successful TV executive. "It's not enough just to be an angry activist if you want to get people to listen."
He left me with a good question: Why is it that the left, which has a lock on the entertainment industry, can't figure that out?
Originally published on May 16, 2004
link
