Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage, Bill ORly and the Culture of Hate

So what do Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage, Fox “News”, Sean Hannity and countless other FNC experts have in common? Peddling hatred and bigotry.

All too often, people label me as “liberal”, even when I explain that I’m anything but. In today’s political landscape, “liberal” apparently means not agreeing with every piece of vitriol that spews out of a neo-conservative’s mouth.

In reality, I’m more of a moderate. Fiscally conservative and socially progressive. Like any sane individual, I’m not in love with the idea of warring between countries, but sometimes it is necessary.

Back to the topic at hand.. In July of 2008 there was a shooting at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee. When the news first started to break, Fox News ( wrongly ) reported that it was an attack against Christians on their website. Why Christian’s would be caught dead in a UU Church is beyond me, but once the smoke cleared and it was revealed that the shooter targeted the church because he “hated liberalism”, Fox altered the story and pulled it from the homepage of their website.

After the shooter’s house was searched, it was found that he was a big fan of Bill O Reilly, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity, three well known neo-con “shock jocks” that love to incite hatred against Democrats and by their extension, liberals. The media was quick to bury those details of the story and crucify Bill Moyers as a “left wing attack dog” when he tried to hold a discussion on the language and talking points used by the three commentators.

One radio host in particular, Michael Savage, really scares me. During an immigration-reform protest, he urged the students to continue fasting so they would starve to death and “take care of the problem”. A few years before that, he went off the handle on air to a prank caller, asking the caller if he was a ’sodomite’ ( which is his flag word for homosexual ), then saying he should go get AIDS and die. More recently he went on air to say that children with autism were just idiots who hadn’t been told to grow up and stop acting stupid.

Of course, when sponsors and even entire radio networks pull support, Savage and his loyal listeners start screaming about the “liberal media” and “the anti-free speech Left” and all that bullshit. It just expounds the fact that Savage, his listeners, and often most neo-con talking heads don’t even understand the first amendment. When a radio network responds to an outcry because you called autistic kids “idiots”, you are NOT being censored by the government, no matter how badly you believe it’s true.

While most people are familiar with Savage and especially Bill “Fuck it, we’ll do it live” O Reilly, not as many are familiar with Michelle Malkin. Her moniker in most circles is “The Right Wing’s Asian Pit Bull”, which describes her style pretty damn well.

Malkin is more of a “sleeper” than Savage or O Reilly. She did a stint on Fox News for a while, until she went too far “investigating” a story and was fired. Yeah, apparently even FNC has it’s limits.

The story that thankfully removed her from Tv was about the Frost family and the S-CHIP program. Malkin went the distance and stalked the family, interrogating their neighbors and business ties, just to try and create a talking point that they were undeserving of state-sponsored health care for their children.

After getting fired, she damned the “liberal media” and the “Left” for trying to censor her and, in her mind, her investigative journalism. One choice comment, and I quote:

A word for all the faux outraged leftists accusing conservative bloggers of waging a “smear campaign:” Asking questions and subjecting political anecdotes to scrutiny are what journalists should be doing.

…

If you don’t want questions, don’t foist these children onto the public stage.

Fast forward to “Babygate” from this year. Sarah Palin, the entirely clueless and inexperienced Alaskan Gov., is nominated as McCain’s VP pick. Bloggers and commentators begin digging around in Sarah’s history, trying to figure out her voting record, her stance on issues, etc, when they begin scrutinizing her pregnancy story. Photos turn up showing her looking very not pregnant at 7,8 months after surprising those close to the family who didn’t realize she was pregnant.

Focus then turned to pictures of Bristol Palin during the same time ( showing a baby bump ), and the story that she had a six month case of mono at the same time her mother announced the pregnancy and had Track or Trig or whatever F’d up name she gave to the kid.

So, after some _investigation_ by bloggers and arm chair _journalists_, the question of “Is Trig actually Bristol’s and not Sarah’s??” starts popping up.

Malkin, Savage, and the neo-con hate machine hit the air and denounce “Babygate” as being a sick attack by the Left, “inexcusable”, etc. Since the target was a Repub, I guess Malkin’s rule doesn’t apply anymore. When your mother, who has been named VP, has viciously defended her Abstinence-only policy and you have pre-martial sex ( another no-no to Repubs ) and become pregnant… well then it’s a political matter. The best thing Sarah could have done would be to admit her policy doesn’t work and support her daughter. Instead, Bristol is having a good ole shotgun wedding to a guy that exclaimed “Im a motherfucking redneck” on his MySpace.

Another Malkin favorite is to attack the reporter or interviewer when a neo-con or Republican speaker fucks up. Case in point would be the recent Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin, whom looked absolutely clueless during the questioning.

Malkin quickly turned the tables and dug for weak examples of Gibson being lenient on Obama’s camp, and then accused Gibson of being a liberal. Point, set, match

The latest Malkin attack is on Obama’s “out of control” $100,000 donation to build a park that was never acted on. Instead of blaming contractor scamming, she foams at the mouth and blames the Left and Obama, but is amazingly silent when Sarah Palin’s $398 million dollar “Bridge to Nowhere” comes up. As a side note, the Bridge to Nowhere was stopped, but Palin went ahead with a $26 million dollar Road to the Bridge to Nowhere.

Obviously, both “sides” are doing this. DailyKOS is the equivalent to Michelle Malkin for liberals, while infowars and Alex Jones are the liberal Michael Savage. All parties are guilty of spewing the hatred smokescreen, instead of focusing on real issues, but one major difference between KOS and Alex Jones is that they _aren’t_ held in the public view. AJ comes across as a lunatic, and DailyKOS is basically like preaching to the choir.

The real issue lies in the fact that Michelle Malkin, Billy O and Savage are SOUGHT OUT by Fox News and the ilk, and then have their trash paraded as “opinion”, which leads to incidents like the TN shooting. If Howard Stern gets in trouble for saying vagina, why shouldn’t Michael Savage get in trouble for encouraging students to die, or homosexuals to get AIDS and die. Which is more harmful?

And as a bonus question, if reality has a liberal bias, and the media has been caught countless times lying to their viewers, can we just go ahead and say that the media is Right leaning?