Yesterday Melanie Morgan and ABC Disney Radio station cynically used the anger and grief of a dead soldier's parent to sell more Sleep Train mattresses, mortgages, carpet from Home Depot, cars from Mercedes Benz, pick-ups from Dodge, and fast food from Burger King and McDonald's (all current KSFO advertisers).Picking it up just to add to their embarrassment, keyword-wise. Y'all read the original.
| David Gold The most loquacious, and I grudgingly admit, not at all bad. I suspect he may be a real conservative, instead of the expected Rovian Tool Rabbi Daniel Lapin One entry, but a surprisingly good one. But then, he also blogs here Toward Tradition and here at rabbidaniellapin.com Welcome to my Blogroll, Reb Daniel! |  | Lee Rodgers One Entry: "INTERNET LIARS AND OTHER ASSORTED LOW-LIFE" We love you too, Lee! Officer Vic Has written nothing. Of course, given the quality of his spoken words, it's a blessing if he is, as I suspect, functionally illiterate. |
"Now you start with the Sear's [sic] Diehard [sic] the battery cables connected to his testi*les and you entertain him with that for awhile [sic] and then you blow his bleeping head off. " [sic]I thought I'd go to NewsBusters and see what they thought made it wrong for spocko to send that "out of context" clip of Lee Rodgers. NewsBusters provided the entire context of a clip/quote Spoko sent to an advertisor, exactly as you see below. And just for effect, they inserted some photos to help improve their reader's ability to put the whole thing into the appropriate context.
Oh yeah. Since he's a criminal, it's apparently shameful and remarkable been tortured and then summarily executed = along with the judges who should have "Done Something." And just to make a vivid point of what our justice system should be doing to such persons, a photo of an Iraqi prisoner being "Stressed" at Abu Grab-ass is casually inserted.That’s Vulcan Illogical
Unfortunately, Spocko’s conspicuously brief transcript and audio link conveniently ignored and eluded the context of this discussion. Here is a more complete transcript of this segment:
Rodgers: You couldn’t make this up. This time he was breaking into cars. His name is Kevin Holder, he’s 41 years old. He’s been arrested 236 times.
His crime history, his rap sheet is 43 pages long going back to 1980.
Now wouldn’t you think at some point, in what’s supposed to be common sense, middle-America, somebody would ask, “Why is this guy running around loose?” What kind of idiot judges have repeatedly set up situations where this guy could be back out on the street? Actually, in a common sense world every judge who has ever sentenced this guy to any kind of circumstance that would allow him to get out of jail, every one of those judges ought to be in prison for life.
Officer Vic: Sure, this is Montana.
Rodgers: This is what passes for law enforcement in the criminal justice system in the United States of America these days and it’s just, well it’s just disgusting.
Morgan: Clearly we need a three strikes law at a national level.
Rodgers: Yeah, some SOB like this, lock him up, throw away the key.
Morgan: Yeah.
Rodgers: Better yet, put a bullet between his eyes and get it over because he’s never going to be worth a damn, never going to be anything but a criminal anyway.
Morgan: Well, that’s a bit of a harsh judgment, Lee.
Rodgers: No it isn’t, no it isn’t. No, it’s only common sense. What does the guy do? He’s demonstrated two hundred some odd times where he’s been caught. This doesn’t even count all the times he’s gotten away with crimes. So what the hell is the point of letting some creep like this live? What is the point? Now you start with the Sears DieHard, the battery cables connected to his testicles, and you entertain him with that for a while, and then you blow his bleeping head off. Thank you very much.
Morgan: That’s what I like about you. You’re so temperate.
It’s a bit different when you find out that Rodgers and Morgan were discussing a felon that had been arrested 236 times, and were thereby using the Sears DieHard image to mock the justice and penal systems for his continued presence on the streets. Wouldn’t you agree?
Context is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
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During the January 12 program, the hosts certainly did defend many of the inflammatory remarks that, in 2006, San Francisco-based blogger Spocko highlighted on his weblog and in letters to KSFO advertisers, before ABC Inc. issued a cease-and-desist letter that ultimately led to his blog being shut down. Nonetheless, on several occasions throughout the broadcast, the hosts emphasized that they had already apologized for some of the comments in question. For instance, when discussing his October 2005 remarks in which he asked a caller to "[s]ay Allah is a whore" in order to prove he was not a Muslim, host Brian Sussman said, "I realized what I said was over the top. It offended a lot of people. It could be deemed as being highly insensitive. And not only did I apologize once, but I've apologized several times since." Later in the show, Sussman addressed another controversial comment from December 2006 in which he referred to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) as a "Halfrican" -- a term that Morgan repeated. Sussman said on January 12, "[A]gain, this is one that I've apologized for and I've mentioned that my comments were insensitive." He then complained that people "don't want to hear any mea culpa. They don't want to hear any excuse. They don't want to hear any forgiveness or the asking thereof."Media Matters went to look for the apologies and could not find them. Perhaps there's a script involved that detects liberal readers and adjusts contents accordingly? Hm. I wonder if it can detect First Amendment lawyers?
From your lips to the FCC's ears, Mr. Rodgers. And thank you for a tour of your neighborhood.Most of the callers were sympathetic during Friday’s broadcast, but one blogger who has supported Spocko’s cause, Mike Stark, was encouraged to call in. The extended dialogue perhaps can best be summarized by one exchange.
Mr. Stark: “You’ve spoken of the number of apologies you have tried to make. How many apologies does a professional get before they realize they are an incompetent and move on to another line of work?”
KSFO’s Lee Rodgers: “Well I haven’t apologized for anything and I am not going to start with you. How the hell do you like that, creep?”
I feel a little caught in the middle here; as a Prog-Lib I've got feet in both camps. But I personally do draw a bright line at hate speech.
Indeed, making someone lose their brains and resort to the sorts of drooling lunacy served up as a regular diet on KSFO is to me a great big blue ribbon that says "I win." I mean, if you seriously suggest that "killing liberals" is a good idea, it pretty much means that their ideas are too dangerous to the the ideas you wished were true... but aren't.
I should add that I've seen this before. Vietnam era. Other side. Remember "baby killers" being screamed at returning draftees?
Same-same. This is the point where I stop listening, because if there's any truth buried in the crap - well, I hope I find it somewhere else, because life is too short to spend it having bile spat at me in anybody's cause.
Anyway, nobody is attacking their "free speech rights." They are attacking their right to be paid to speak, with the assumption of impunity.
Now, I know better.
And I also know there's not a single point made by KSFO that could not be made better by someone who wasn't using hate speech.
The moment you start attacking the person, instead of the idea, you have lost the argument. Everyone who doesn't already agree tunes out. Eventually, even those who agree become embarrassed to be associated with the viewpoint. And that political viewpoint, whatever it's validity, starts circling the drain.
And I see this as a serious problem. I don't LIKE the idea that there's nobody out there who can validly check my arguments. An honest argument on the merits of the case; that's a service to the American people. It's also good clean fun. But it's kinda like hockey. If you won't let the other team on the ice, it's just masturbation on skates - and after you've established that it can be done in the first place, I think most people lose interest rapidly.