Flatulent Right Wing Fills Radio with Hate

[Guest guest]

Published on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 by the Capital Times

(Madison, Wisconsin)

Flatulent Right Wing Fills Radio with Hate

by Bill Berry

 

The man who does my parents' taxes in Green Bay seemed nice enough. He

shook our hands and greeted us with small talk as we sat down to go

over papers.

 

But the acrid sounds coming from a stereo tuner near his ancient desk

filled the office like dirty smoke. It was right-wing radio, an angry

white man on his afternoon shift. I was amazed that this accountant was

taking my parents' money and making us listen to this to boot, but I

reminded myself I was there to help them.

 

On this day, the topic was poor Dick Cheney and how the liberal media

wouldn't leave him alone after his little hunting mishap.

 

Soon the accountant was trying to wrench my 80-year-old mother into

this angry world. He asked her if she thought such a trifling matter

was grounds for Cheney's resignation. She snapped back, saying that she

didn't think the hunting incident merited Cheney's resignation but that

there were plenty of other reasons for it. She added that the two men

with her felt just as she did. The accountant curled his lip in

Cheney-esque fashion and went back to work.

 

My skinny little mother won that battle, but the drone of the angry

white men goes on day after day, and they still cling to the myth of

the liberal media as some sort of overpowering beast. Robert F. Kennedy

Jr., who spoke at last year's Fighting Bob Fest in Baraboo, has been

keeping a close watch on this. In a speech in San Francisco late last

year, he noted that the notion of a liberal media is a right-wing ruse.

 

" There is a right-wing media, and if you look where most Americans are

now getting their news, that's where they're getting it. According to

Pew (Research Center), 30 percent of Americans now say that their

primary news source is talk radio, which is 90 percent dominated by the

right. "

 

Unshackled by any meaningful oversight from the Federal Communications

Commission or any sense of fairness, the right has elbowed its way into

the mainstream, backed by big bucks. As Kennedy noted, " Twenty-two

percent of Americans say their primary news source is Fox News, MSNBC

or CNBC, all dominated by the right, and another 10 percent, Sinclair

network, which is the most right wing of all. " Sinclair also happens to

be primarily Midwestern, a broadcast company whose owner makes news

employees swear they won't criticize the war in Iraq or the Bush

administration.

 

Right-wing radio may be the most pernicious of all in the way that it

sneaks its way into the workplace day after day. If one person listens,

then all in earshot must, too. You hear it everywhere, in the places

where people work hard for a living.

 

There's good reason for these people to worry, but not about poor Dick

Cheney. We are about one Supreme Court decision away from an end to

collective bargaining for working men and women. Anyone concerned?

Nearly 50 million Americans lack health care insurance, and many times

that face shrinking benefits and growing premiums. Now there's

something to worry about. Higher education? It's slipping out of reach

for many.

 

But on it drones, this electronic flatulence. Call it the great

distraction. It makes little distinction between Muslim extremists and

loyal but liberal Americans. When Al Gore recently criticized the Bush

administration for trampling on civil rights, right-wing radio accused

him of treason. One can only hope that they didn't sentence him to a

hunting trip with Dick Cheney.

 

The message on a daily basis seems to be that it's OK to hate, to shout

other people down, to go about one's life in an angry mood.

 

Perhaps more frightening is this: If this brand of thinking is now

mainstream, what is next? What supplants the right at the far end of

the spectrum? What will feed the monster in coming years?

 

Bill Berry of Stevens Point writes a semimonthly column for The Capital

Times. E-mail: billnick

 

2006 Capital Newspapers

 

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" Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. "

-Albert Einstein

 

" It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely

uneducated. "

-Alec Bourne