Tag Archives: talk radio

media news, national news

Yes, we damn sure are a ‘nation of immigrants’

The quote under the picture is attributed to the fellow in the picture, right-wing lawyer and radio talk show host Mark Levin, who is engaging in some of the worst hyperbole I have seen in this debate over immigration, illegal immigration and immigration reform.

For starters, we damn sure are a nation of immigrants. I don’t know the first thing about Levin’s background, but given that he appears to be an white guy, my strong hunch is that his familial forebears came from somewhere other than the backwoods of wherever he was born.

Europe, maybe? Yeah, probably?

I am the proud grandson of immigrants to came to this country in the early 20th century. I have a deep pride in my Greek heritage. I make no apologies for it.

And yet . . .  I consider myself to be an American patriot. I have gone to war for my country. So, to suggest that to be an American citizen is somehow mutually exclusive from living in a nation of immigrants is the most disgusting demagoguery imaginable.

One more point. I do not believe anyone is treating those who “cross the border illegally as the most virtuous human being on the face of the earth.”

Again, hyperbole in the extreme.

But as it is with these radio talkers, their “fan(atic)s” take their word as some sort of gospel. They glom onto their message, pass it on, giving them a life of their own.

I’ll concede that I do not listen to Mark Levin; I don’t listen to talk radio of any political stripe. It’s just that when these messages show up on social media platforms and get otherwise good folks all riled up, I am compelled to speak my own mind.

Levin is entitled to his opinion. Just remember: Opinions are like a certain body orifice . . . everybody has one.

International news, media news, military news, national news, political news

Attacks work against Trump, Ms. Coulter

Conservative author Ann Coulter addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington on Saturday Feb. 20,2010. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Ann Coulter’s political expertise is, shall we say, quite suspect.

The latest exhibition of her ignorance surfaced this weekend when she tweeted that the Paris terror attacks have guaranteed Donald Trump’s election as the 45th president of the United States.

Someone, pass the smelling salts to the fiery conservative commentator and make her take a whiff.

In the hours since the attacks — in the midst of this political season — one of the key questions has become: How does this hideous event affect the presidential contest?

Well, the Pundit Class in Washington and around the country has been virtually unanimous in this regard: The attacks expose Trump’s utter lack of experience dealing with international terrorism.

His empire-building experience won’t help him. Trump’s self-proclaimed ability to “negotiate” deals will be of zero value; we don’t negotiate with monstrous killers such as the Islamic State.

Yet, there was Ann Coulter — the darling of the far-right talk radio listening audience, blathering on her Twitter account that Trump’s election is a sure thing.

We need someone with actual experience in government and/or diplomacy — and someone who gathers his or her military knowledge from sources other than Sunday morning new talk shows — to take the reins as commander in chief.

My own advice to Ann Coulter? Shut the bleep up!

 

 

media news, political news

Where has Rush been hiding?

Out of ideas

Maybe I’m a bit slow on the uptake — which I admit to readily — but I’m not hearing much lately from Daddy Dittohead, Rush Limbaugh.

I know he’s still on the air here in Amarillo. How do I know that? The gentleman who delivers our mail each day tunes his radio to the station that broadcasts Rush’s bilge, er, commentary.

It’s just that Limbaugh’s thoughts on this or that used to be quoted by mainstream media quite regularly. I haven’t seen much from or about the gasbag.

The only news I’ve seen lately involving Limbaugh has related to stations dropping him because of advertisers bailing out. I don’t expect that to happen in the Texas Panhandle, where Limbaugh is considered by many to be the voice of all that is wise and correct.

As one who thinks quite differently of this guy, my hope is that he remains in the background, blathering only to the Dittoheads who don’t quite grasp the irony of being labeled as such.

national news

Why give air time to these gasbags?

Someone will have to explain to me why talk-radio blowhards — mainly on the right, of course — keep getting so much attention for the preposterous things they say.

Come to think of it: Why am I even commenting on this?

I guess I have to get something off my chest.

Mike Gallagher is one of those blowhards who appears on Fox News on occasion to spout off on things of which he knows nothing.

Such as how women think about getting catcalls from men on the street.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/10/31/foxs-mike-gallagher-only-unhappy-women-complain/201399

Gallagher, of course, is not a woman. I’ll assume he’s never been one. Then again, you know what they say about those who assume. Whatever.

He dismisses the concerns that women have about men who shout out catcalls at them. He wishes women would do the same thing to him.

He says “there’s nothing sexually harassing” about a guy calling out to a woman and telling her “she’s good-looking.”

OK, dude. You know not a single thing of which you speak. Looking at these matters from your perspective might play well in the men’s locker room, but in the whole rest of the world that includes women — who have their own world view on how they should be treated — it comes off in in an entirely different light.

Mr. Gallagher, I shall now quote a high-profile Republican governor, Chris Christie, who recently got a heckling from a non-fan: Sit down … and shut up!

 

Uncategorized

POTUS has more power than he thought

I don’t usually listen to talk radio. All of it around here is of the right-wing variety, so I’m going to tune it out.

But this little item showed up on my Facebook feed today. It’s a snippet of an item from Mark Levin’s show.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/09/19/mark-levin-theres-more-enslaving-of-women-rapin/200819

OK, I trust you’ve listened to it and gleaned from it what I did.

It is that abuse of women — including rape and enslavement — is more prevalent during the Obama administration than at any time in history.

Wow, dude!

And to think that the president of the United States, who cannot get Congress to enact any of his legislative agenda, has all that power.

I’ll concede I listened only to that clip. I didn’t hear the entire tirade. Maybe there is more “context” out there that would cast it in a more reasonable light.

However, I doubt I needed to hear all of it to get the gist of the garbage that Levin is tossing out there.

Uncategorized

Liberals were right about Iraq?

Talk radio is big around here, the Texas Panhandle, that is.

It’s big everywhere it seems. Conservatives rule the air waves these days. They’ve got their devotees who hang on their every word.

The Big Two seem to be Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Throw in some others, maybe Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved and Mark Levin, mix ’em up, and they’re pretty big as well.

Thus, it was with some interest that I read an interesting admission from Beck the other day.

He said liberals were right about the Iraq War and that he — and other conservatives — were wrong.

http://www.newsweek.com/glenn-beck-admits-liberals-were-right-iraq-war-255341

I couldn’t help but think of “Happy Days” character Arthur Fonzarelli, who just couldn’t ever admit to being wr —-, wr —- about anything. Ever. He couldn’t say the word, for crying out loud.

Beck ain’t Fonzie, apparently. He was able to admit it.

“You cannot force democracy on the Iraqis or anybody else, it doesn’t work. They don’t understand it or even really want it,” Beck said on his radio show this week.

Newsweek.com had an interesting take on Beck’s admission: “This is a major turnaround for the famously right-wing pundit who in 2009 said, ‘The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be president would be ‘What the hell you mean we’re out of missiles?”’

In a perfect world, it shouldn’t really matter what an entertainer thinks about such matters. This world isn’t perfect, quite obviously. So I guess it does matter that a talk-show personality who purports to speak for millions of listeners is willing to do an about-face on one of the more contentious issues of our time.

Who’s next? Rush?

Don’t bet the farm on that one.