Could This Be the Moment? (For Real Media Reform)

Note:  This piece was originally published on The Brad Blog 
under the title "Sheriff Dupnik is Right:  Radio Lies, Our Culture Dies."  
But after President Obama's remarks at the Tucson Memorial, 
I am changing my tone - a bit.
January 12, 2011

A moment in the culture. 
 
A moment like Columbine, like Fort Hood, like Oklahoma City, yet different; different because the madman's rampage that targeted Tucson, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was predictable. 

It's hot in Tucson --- temperatures soar to 117 degrees in the summertime. But that's nothing compared to the political heat generated recently in this community just an hour north of the Mexican border. Nowhere in the country were the 'Tea Parties' angrier than in Arizona; rage over healthcare and immigration reform boiled over in Tucson.

It had been bad already, even before Obama had been elected to office in 2008. Take a look at this remarkable list of eliminationist rhetoric coming from the Right, as compiled as long ago as March 2007. But, as if that wasn't horrible enough, things have gotten even far worse since then.

Who wouldn't be incensed? Reports of increased crime, beheadings on the borders, government takeover of health care, death panels. Given all that, who would not stand and fight to protect their grandmothers?

If all that were actually true. But of course, it is not true. Those reports and other fabrications like them are a creation of Right Wing Talk Radio. It isn't just the vitriol spewing from Savage and Hannity and Boortz and others, it is what is behind the vitriol: a genuine fear born of propaganda. And as a culture, we the people are buying into it.

It's Radio

January 8, 2011

My heart is heavy as I write this tonight.  I bless Tuscon Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and Federal Judge John Rolls and all those who died and all those who live in the wake of the senseless but predictable attack on democracy in Tuscon, Arizona today.

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, in his press conference this evening about the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Giffords' life, specifically cited vitriol in Radio as a culprit in the crime.
 
Radio.  Hate Radio.  Radio that misinforms.  Radio that kills.  One sided radio.   50 million listeners.  

Think there's nothing we can do about it?  Think again.  We can.  And we must.

     Radio Speech is Not Free Speech!   ..  Hate Radio and the War on Immigration

     Save Talk Radio?  Really?     ...     It's War.  Media War.

There's much more on this site.  Please... keep reading.   The democracy is at stake.  Lives are at stake.