Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Horowitz, O'Reilly, Scarborough and Crew: An End Run Around the First Amendment

By Kurt Nimmo

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Posted 02/09 | Add a Comment

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  1. These ‘little Herods’ would like to see Ward’s head on a platter.  The pious Ann Coulter wouldn’t ‘see the light’ until afterwards.

    Individuals like Mr. Horowitz, Ms. Coulter and Mr. O’Reilly may suffer from Asperger’s syndrome.

    Posted by MDPB from  on  02/09  at  06:56 PM

  2. Maybe, but I tend tt think of them as shameless self-seekers with a touch of sociopathology, if that’s even a word.

    Posted by Kurt Nimmo from  on  02/09  at  07:32 PM

  3. MDBP,my son was diagnosed with Asperger’s several years ago,and while I get your point,and people with Asperger’s may be “wierd"by “normal"standards,but they could NEVER be like Coulter or O’Reilly,because AS people are generally not violent,mean,cruel,or vicious.In fact,I’d even say they just might be quite alot smarter than some of these right wing pundits.Certainly they are gentler more loving spirits than these hatemongers.

    Posted by Quietly Contemplating from GA,USA  on  02/09  at  07:47 PM

  4. I think it ws in the print Counterpunch..Joe Scarborough didn’t rerun for his congress seat because he may have a lot in common with what some people see as Gary Condit.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/09  at  09:23 PM

  5. Ok, then they don’t suffer from Asperger’s.

    I refuse to refer to them as misanthropic imbeciles.  Somebody else can do that.

    Posted by MDPB from  on  02/09  at  10:17 PM

  6. Yeah, I have Asperger’s too, and I’m pretty far to the left.

    Posted by Keruchi from  on  02/09  at  10:18 PM

  7. Every time I read one of Alterman’s screeds du jour, I’m convinced that within the next five years, he’ll pull a Horowitz metamorphosis of his own.  I should start a pool.  The style of delivery is so nauseatingly similar…

    Posted by alsis38 from Portland, OR  on  02/09  at  10:55 PM

  8. Hey, Kurt, I got the same email. Responded, actually got to have a few words with Mr. Joe on MSNBC today. They told me I was going to debate Horowitz, but instead they gave me Joe. Blah.

    In a nut shell the whole operation is a scam. As if we didn’t know that. The cable news networks are fast food for Americans. Cheap, speedy and unhealthy. Americans can only digest these sorts of pre-packaged products.

    Aside from my agreements with Kurt that the MSNBC media giant, is an evil, awful monopoly, (and no I did’t get paid) I felt it to be my duty to jump in a ring with these loonies to defend Churchill’s right to speak.

    So I did. It went okay, the arguments they present were only rhetorical, with no clear understanding of the issues, let alone the gravity of the free-speech implications. Nor do I think Joe gives a shit.  In no way could I have possibly corrected the gross distortions they the network has presented in the 5 minutes of airtime I recieved.

    But it felt good to take a few swings anyway.

    Posted by Josh Frank from  on  02/09  at  11:06 PM

  9. Next time, let us know when you’re gonna be on, Josh...I’d enjoy witnessing that.

    Posted by Mickey Z. from  on  02/10  at  08:22 AM

  10. Yeah, I know, the selection’s over. I used to watch Alterman and Corn on C-Span, in my naive Dem-liberal days. It’s just this past year, after reading Alterman’s MSNBC blog, I just would vomit over his rants against Nader. (Yeah, I was a Nader supporter in ‘96, ‘00 and ‘04).

    I’m so thankful I’ve found this site, and Mickey’s, and now Kurt Nimmo’s, blogs.

    This may be o/t, but in the coming years, if indeed the right wing and corporate media increase their power, will websites like this one (and Counterpunch, Mickey Z, Democracy Now!, etc.) be curtailed or just not allowed by host servers? I mean if there is a move to control how we get our unbiased and fairly reported news, how will we get it? I recall how my Dutch relatives got their news during the Nazi occupation of NL...and have seen evidence in the Amsterdam Resistance Museum.

    Posted by JayVos from Burlington, VT  on  02/10  at  08:51 AM

  11. I visit Kurt’s blog daily. Find in refreshing. In this piece he has not responded to the identity charges against Ward, but has made the following comment in another piece. “Second, I have a problem with Ward Churchill claiming he is Native American when obviously he is not. This creates a huge credibility problem for Churchill. It makes him look like a fraud. It’s embarrassing. However, it does not diminish the essence of what he has said and written.”
    I think repeating charges of FRAUD, Kurt does Ward a disservice. It prompted me to search the net to verify this charge. Here is a responseI found: “I believe Ward is part Indian as he claims. Like a lot of people his parents never enrolled him when it was unpopular to be an Indian, and people who could “pass” did. I believe Vernon Bellecourt of the “national office of AIM,” a ficticious office that doesn’t speak for most past AIM members, created Ward’s ancestry problem when he couldn’t control Ward. Vernon himself probably has less Indian blood than Ward. As for his theories, How else did current America come into possesion of a formally Native populated continent?” Joseph G. Geshick Sr. full-blood Ojibwe 70 years old, 1970’s AIM member, and 1980’s Minneapolis AIM Patrol member. Further search resulted in what I think answers any questions I may have regarding the issue of Ward’s identity. It is long but it is full of information that is documented. It gives a history of the charges by Natives and the reasons. http://www.coloradoaim.org/why.html Please read it if you can. It is an eye opener. In conclusion… I think we should refrain from joining the attackers and deciding who is Native and who is not. We play the oppressors game and we feed into the witch hunt.

    Posted by Anita Mukarji-Connolly from cape cod  on  02/10  at  09:35 AM

  12. *Yeah, I know, the selection’s over. I used to watch Alterman and Corn on C-Span, in my naive Dem-liberal days. It’s just this past year, after reading Alterman‒s MSNBC blog, I just would vomit over his rants against Nader. (Yeah, I was a Nader supporter in ‘96, ‘00 and ‘04).*

    I don’t think I’ll forget the shock I felt when the slime machine --as so nobly exemplified by Alterman-- first got geared up in earnest against Nader and his supporters in 2000.  Not if I live to be one hundred.  I still remember sitting at my partner’s computer, with my jaw dropped about down to my navel, reading some screed from the Nation or Salon and feeling like *I’d* just been vomited on. >:

    The rabid hatred from the Alterman-Gitlin crowd confused and bewildered me for a long time.  It was just so intense, so over-the-top.  Recently, it dawned on me that they are a tribe and Nader was a one-time member who had broken that tribe’s central taboo.  Dis the Dems all you want, but NEVER leave them !! Taboo-breakers and deserters must be punished as an example to other members, or the tribe could fall apart. :/

    Most of the things I’ve learned in adulthood, I would rather forget. :(

    JayVos, I’m afraid we’re going to have to go back to mimeo machines and carrier pigeons. :/

    Posted by alsis38 from Portland, OR  on  02/10  at  09:48 AM

  13. I felt the same nauseating sense reading Alterman’s impudent slanders of Nader - a punk journalist slinging mud at a public servant of four decades.  A former subscriber I can barely stand to set eyes on The Nation anymore; and won’t even so much as consider subscribing again until it dumps Alterman.

    Posted by Tracy McLellan from Chicago  on  02/10  at  10:26 AM

  14. alsis38 & Tracy: Yup, my thoughts, too. I’d even add Mark Cooper to that list. Maybe, Ivins, but heck, I’ve lived in Texas and still like her spunky style, even though she opted from supporting Nader this time ‘round. There are just a few so-called left-liberal mainstream commentators I read now. I do like Jonathan Schell; his recent column about torture really blew me away.

    Posted by JayVos from Burlington, VT  on  02/10  at  10:38 AM

  15. It doesn’t surprise me that many constituents of a political party remain faithful to their party, even when their party abuses them and takes them for granted.  Abused spouses/significant others do that all the time.

    Posted by Nader Rider from  on  02/10  at  12:17 PM

  16. NR, thanks for your comment. It’s actually happening in Vermont… When my friend and I campaigned as Greens for local office last Fall, we ran into so many Dems and Progressives (a state party in VT) who sgared some of the Green values in common, but just would not take the plunge. And yet, I spoke to a Republican (a Republican!) who would vote for us because he did not like the right-fundy shift of the neo cons in that party and identified my friend and me as a difference he liked. It was that kind of interaction that kept me truckin’ on. smile

    I watched the original Manchurian Candidate the other day (the re-make is just plain awful, as most re-makes of old films are).

    I love The Frank Sinatra Method of Unbrainwashing:

    “Come on baby, all queens. Ding-dong-ding-dong. Yeah, chicky, all queens. That
    brainwashin’s gone. Doobie-doobie-doo. No more brainwashin’, you hear what I am
    sayin’? And if you aren’t salutin’ Old Glory, I’ll have Dino kick your ass.”

    It is hilarious. No wonder Laurence Harvey killed himself at the end.

    I’m not advocating this with progressive Democrats or Progressives in Vermont. I just don’t know what the wake up call will be.

    So many Progs here confess to me they are in their heart of hearts Greens. And yet, you get a Progressive mayor of Burlington who ran as a Democratic gubernatorial candidate. He’s a developer, too, and I just think that he’s co-opted himself by siding with the Dems here to build more in Burlington and make our city less “green.”

    Sorry to digress and be o/t. But wanted to share.

    Posted by JayVos from Burlington, VT  on  02/10  at  01:00 PM

  17. JayVos, are you me ?  The only other person I can find in my circle who cops to voting Nader is the ex-Army Republican who sits behind me at work.  Says he did it because Bush is in the Mid-East too deep and nobody else seems to want to shake things up.

    *It doesn’t surprise me that many constituents of a political party remain faithful to their party, even when their party abuses them and takes them for granted.  Abused spouses/significant others do that all the time.*

    NR, this phenomenon just seems to take hold and get creepier more and more each election cycle.  The Churchill thing seems to be a particularly Baroque example.  Still, Garofalo in *Bitch* magazine was basically quoted before the election as saying that Nader just ought to shut up and sit down, because “all he can do now is help the Republicans.” A liberal blogger friend of mine said much the same thing, and this same blogger is really big on the Churchill thing right now because he “wants to protect the rep of Liberals” or somesuch.

    These are people essentially taking the same argument used against them by the Right Wingers ("Don’t criticize the war !  You’re only helping the terrorists and hurting the troops !") and turning it against people like Nader and Churchill.  And they don’t even seem to notice that they’re duplicating the tactics of the very people whom they despise.  Honestly, it just boggles my mind. :(

    Posted by alsis38 from Portland, OR  on  02/10  at  03:27 PM

  18. People tend to act tha same way in various circumstances.  The contexts may change, but how they conduct themselves within those varying contexts generally remains uniform.

    Take, for example, a person’s willingness to stay in an unsatisfying and/or dysfunctional relationship, be it a professional or personal one.  He knows that he wants something else other than what he has, but he won’t take the steps to create that.  Instead, he choses to settle for less than what he really wants, and continues to live a life of quiet desparation.

    And you wonder why, then, so many are so willing to settle for less at the ballot box?  It’s only one symptom of how many have chosen to live a life of settling for the lesser evil.

    Posted by Nader Rider from  on  02/10  at  04:14 PM

  19. I thought the remake of Manchurian Candidate was excellent.  Five stars on a four star scale.

    Posted by Tracy McLellan from Chicago  on  02/13  at  01:05 PM

  20. I’m really not sure what the point of the article was. Are you suggesting that Churchill should be allowed to voice his views but that the opposing view should not be heard? Or are you suggesting that the right-wing media should be silenced because they are wrong and the left-wing media is right? I’ve heard Horowitz debate and he seems very reasonable. Your tactics are not reasonable. “Obviously, there is no reason to partake in a “discussion/debate” hosted by MSNBC, owned by the likes of Microsoft”. What does that even mean, “the likes of Microsoft?” Without Microsoft, you would be writing your stuff on the back of a napkin. Also, on the Scarborough show you mentioned, which you have obviously not seen, the only ones shouting down the opposition are the left-wing people they have on like Giraffalo and Franken. The “far right hit squad”, as you put it, is more grounded in core values than elitists would have us believe. An open-minded person can debate without resorting to the name calling and vitriol in your article.

    Posted by Tom from Virginia  on  02/14  at  02:44 PM

  21. Right on # 20.
    Who is this Kurt Nimmo anyway? Never heard of him. Is he some kind of know it all? Does he have anything to back up 100,000 dead? Wonder where he was when old spider hole man was putting 100,000’s in mass graves? Sounds like the same old stuff you hear from everybody that lost the election. 60,000,000 people told you they don’t like what you stand for so get over it and quit your crying.
    Have a good day.

    Posted by Howard Burkhart from Knoxville, Tenn.  on  02/15  at  11:00 PM

  22. Great article Kurt. You hit the nail right on the head with your commentary on all the hate mongers. Their right wing blabber will soon come to an end because people will get tired of the fear and hate they spread. You made the right decision to avoid Scarborough. They do not know what telling the whole truth is and they love to spread hate and lies.

    Posted by Mike Reynolds from Neoga, Illinois  on  02/23  at  10:10 PM

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