Posted on 11/28/2002 2:11:06 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
The legend of the liberal media is finally dead. When the mightiest voices of the mainstream gang up on Tom Daschle with Rush Limbaugh, who can believe in that old myth any more?
The historic rumble started after the Senate Democratic leader compared the shrill radio host to foreign fanatics, and complained that he and his family receive threats when Mr. Limbaugh airs a diatribe against him. "What happens when Rush Limbaugh attacks those of us in public life is that people aren’t satisfied just to listen, they want to act because they get emotionally invested," Mr. Daschle said. "And so, you know, the threats to those of us in public life go up."
After the discovery of anthrax in his office mail, Mr. Daschle deserves sympathy as well as the best possible protection. But as the losing Democratic leader, his remarks were ill-advised. Combined with his mild-mannered public persona and almost whispery voice, his complaint had a whining sound. Threats are part of public life, especially for Democrats and liberals.
Yet Mr. Limbaugh’s friends and fans in the mainstream media, from Fox News to NBC to The Washington Post, weren’t content to scold Mr. Daschle. They behaved as if Mr. Limbaugh is a paragon of respectability whose listeners would never, ever threaten anyone.
It isn’t so far-fetched, however, that a loony or two or a dozen among the millions who listen to Mr. Limbaugh every day might threaten Mr. Daschle. Why? Because of what Mr. Limbaugh has actually said about Mr. Daschle—and because a serious physical threat has already occurred at least once as a direct result of irresponsible broadcasts by Mr. Limbaugh and others.
On May 11, 1999, Hardball host Chris Matthews coaxed Kathleen Willey into naming Cody Shearer, a longtime Clinton friend, as the man who had allegedly used threats to silence her. That this was a wholly false (and easily disproved) assertion didn’t matter to Mr. Limbaugh, who repeated the inflammatory slander the following day and even spelled out Mr. Shearer’s surname on the air. Several days later, Mr. Shearer started to receive death threats.
Then on a Sunday afternoon, Hank Buchanan, a brother of Pat and Bay, decided to visit Mr. Shearer’s Washington home. He broke into the garage, slashed the tires of two cars and threatened three other people with a handgun before fleeing. Hank Buchanan was apprehended and sent to a mental institution. Mr. Matthews made an on-air apology to Mr. Shearer and to his viewers. And while that was the end of the matter, the assault by the deranged Buchanan showed that ugly broadcasts may have tragic consequences.
That instructive episode was forgotten when Mr. Limbaugh’s media friends rushed to his defense. Mr. Daschle was mocked universally, while Mr. Limbaugh basked in the sympathy of the same mainstream media he laughably describes as "liberal." To take just one example, NBC’s Tim Russert conducted an hour-long interview with the radio host that was one of the softest he has ever soaped on any guest.
The Washington Post’s eminent media critic Howard Kurtz—who covered the Buchanan-Shearer episode—described Mr. Limbaugh as "more policy-oriented than many of the people who shout on cable night after night," although noting that he can sometimes be "tough" and "hyperbolic." How hyperbolic were his remarks about the Senate Democratic leader? Anybody who relied on Mr. Kurtz’s column or listened to his CNN Sunday program would hardly know. And the media critic concluded it was Mr. Daschle who had unfairly demonized Mr. Limbaugh.
Readers of online media criticism at Spinsanity.com, FAIR.org and DailyHowler.com could learn, however, that Mr. Limbaugh has literally demonized Mr. Daschle for years. "How many different versions of Satan, the devil, have you seen in your life?" he asked his listeners in July 2001. "Is Tom Daschle simply another way to portray a devil?"
When the Republican line changed for the election year, Mr. Limbaugh denounced Mr. Daschle repeatedly as an ally of the "axis of evil." On Nov. 15, while audibly pounding his desk, he called Mr. Daschle "a disgrace to patriotism … Hanoi Tom," and accused him of seeking to "sabotage the war on terrorism for your own personal and your party’s political gain." In short, a traitor.
How should the Senator have replied? He could have noted how odd it is for Mr. Limbaugh, who avoided the Vietnam draft, to question the patriotism of an Air Force veteran like himself. Or he could have adopted the strategy of Senator John McCain, another frequent target of the radio demagogue’s bombast.
After comparing Mr. Limbaugh to a "circus clown," the Arizona Republican apologized. "I regret that statement," he told an interviewer on Fox News the other night, "because my office has been flooded with angry phone calls from circus clowns all over America. They resent that comparison, and so I would like to extend my apologies to Bozo, Chuckles and Krusty."
You may reach Joe Conason via email at:
jconason@observer.com.
This column ran on page 5 in the 12/2/2002 edition of The New York Observer.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.observer.com ...
It just warms my heart to see these reptiles in absolute misery.
It's hard to take having the American people spit in your face.
In his own words, Joe Conason admits he and his crowd are no longer "mainstream."
Hank Buchanan, apparently, was all too eager to believe Matthews' report. After Sunday night's incident, Buchanan -- reportedly a manic-depressive -- checked himself into Washington's Sibley Memorial Hospital.
Even Salon doesn't try to make this leap,Joe Conason is waaay left.
Conason would be too embarrassed to consider:
In the 1995-6 election cycle, Clinton, Gore, Daschle, Gephardt and others in the Democrat dog pack claimed Republicans wanted to put old people out in the snow, take their medicine away, their Social Security, wanted to starve school children, wanted to kill people by poisoning the air and water.
Conason doesn't want us to recall that:
Alec Baldwin exhorted his audience to stone Henry Hyde to death, to kill Hyde's family as well;
Chris Rock offered to bring his crew from Brooklyn to put the beat on Ken Starr;
That Bruce Lindsey told Linda Tripp, "we will destroy you"; that Monica Lewinsky said, "I wouldn't cross these people for fear of my life";
That it's Hillary! who has "etiquette squads" of thugs to beat up protestors;
That Kathleen Willey was the victim of orchestrated harrassment, as was Foster witness Patrick Knowlton;
That Republicans have nothing to correspond to the Clinton body count, e.g., Vince Foster; Ron Brown; Jim McDougal et al;
That it was Democrat psychopath James Carville who warned, "Kin Staw's about one mistake away from havin' no kneecaps!"
The demonization referred to by Conason is practiced by the party of the politics of personal destruction;
And this party is still effectively run by the same Bill Clinton who has said, "I want him horsewhipped! I want him killed!";
And by his control, Hillary! who hallucinated a "vast right-wing conspiracy that has been out to get my husband";
And who followed that psychotic episode with the Peronistic comment: "They f--- with us, we'll f--- them!"
Tom Daschle is in fact an obstructionist fifth column agent of our enemies.
His destruction will continue to arise from his own blunderings, and the mirror held up to same by the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
And Joe Conason will go largely unheard in his pink-paged coccoon.
What a moron. It's not a legend, nimrod. People honestly interested in the truth, whereever it may lead, have long hated the 'big three' for their subtle and not so-subtle liberal stamp that was put on EVERYTHING -- It's just as telling on what isn't reported at all as much as defining the terms of the debate on the things that are.
But fear not, dear reader. The "liberals" still have 90 per cent of the print and broadcast media, and similar numbers for Academia from textbook publishing to tenured professors, all of Hollywood, the labor unions, etc. etc. Right of center commentators have AM talk radio, and FOX news. Big deal.
None of these folks are Limbaugh fans.
Violence is on the rise on the LEFT, not, as Daschle and Conason falsely claim, the right. Even Islamofacist al-Qaida relies on a leftist/Qu'ranic lexicon to justify its depredations.
McCain or not...That comment is FREAKING-HILARIOUS!!!!! LMAO!
But isn't that true of anyone who speaks or publishes in public, including the readers of Joe Conason "diatribes"?
Bernard Goldberg, for starters.
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