Yes, because the entire network may fairly be judged by a single example on a single show.
FWIW, and not that I frequent threads on a regular basis where I see Rush mentioned, the reason why the Chelsea “joke” was so appalling is that it was a grown man attacking a teenage girl who had done nothing, because he hated her parents. While this bit was not, based on the descriptions I’ve read, funny, at least the target was an adult.
Is Randi Rhodes the one who told a Republican caller to “hang up and go open a vein”?
Regards,
Shodan
Randi Rhode’s comments were stupid and wrong. What really angered me, however, was that MSNBC had G Gprdon Liddy on to talk about the incident. He said that he never stooped to such tactics on his show, and no one challenged him!!
In case you don’t remember:
I think that was Mike Malloy, the other Air America host who’s been doing liberal talk for many years before Air America came about. Randi Rhodes is the one whom Ralph Nadar hung up on.
By the way, the “gunshot” skit was produced by someone at the Air America office, not Randi Rhodes and her crew. Randi said she didn’t even know about it until after it aired.
Are you referring to the original skit, or something she said afterwards?
The skit.
I heard both the Monday show and the apologies live. They’ve been doing these “skits” or “bits” or whatever every day. They’re all bad and unfunny, and even Rhodes herself usually says so. I don’t know why they do this.
If I were in the Secret Service, I would investigate any possible threat, regardless of my political opinions. (They did this at an art exhibit in NY.) The day before Ronald Regan was first elected president, he was at a rally at a mall parking lot in San Diego. I and a friend decided to go down a small river that was close to the speaking area in an inflatable kayak. (I don’t remember why we did that.) The Secret Service stopped us, and asked us questions, but they didn’t arrest us. What we did wasn’t a crime, but they still had to investigate.
The Rhodes show was obviously a joke–not a crime–but they have to investigate anyway.
I forgot that Rush had that TV show. I simply assumed that the crack was from his radio show, which is what I associate with “Rush”.
Thanks for pointing that out. I apologize for making this bad assumption.
So, they were both planned, but clearly the Air America joke was in poorer taste.
You’re welcome – thanks for being so decent about it.
I would agree.
The joke incident on the Randi Rhodes show went down like this, according to my understanding:
The voice being broadcast, the one saying “Here’s your answer, you ungrateful whelp”, was not presented as being the radio personality “in character”. It was prefaced by a discussion of how the Republicans are opposed to gun controls, making it easier for anyone to get a gun*, and are also endangering Social Security. So imagine there are all these senior citizens with guns, see? And from there proceeds to do a skit, in which the radio personality is acting out as the character of a hypothetical armed senior citizen. Hence the “spoiled child” and “whelp” references.
If Saturday Night Live runs a skit in which an actor plays the part of a crazed assassin or a mass murderer, we don’t tend to think SNL or the network is endorsing assassination or murder.
The problem with the Air America Radio skit was that it’s obviously a very partisan show, the political sympathies are with seniors concerned about losing their social security benefits (if not necessarily also with senior citizens desiring to own assault weaponry), and it could be too easily construed as a “gee wouldn’t it be great if… / would sure serve the SOB right if…” kind of thing.
I think Rhodes is right to apologize, but for those of you saying this was in horribly bad taste or represents a real low for liberal radio: get a fucking grip.
It is a funny juxtaposition, it was not an endorsement of shooting the prez or anyone (it is, in fact, an on-message liberal warning* about lax firearms controls as well as an anticipation that lots of people on social security are angry about what the administration is trying to do), and it sure as hell wasn’t a direct threat.
Am I the only one who is remembering the sketch from MTV’s The State with a classroom of kids in a civics class, and the teacher is talking about how the secret service is there to protect the president or something, and one kid goes, “so you mean, if I say, for example, oh, ‘I’m going to kill the president…’,” at which point guys in black suits bust in and haul the kid away?
Well not quite. My friend was questioned by the Secret Service for a satirical article he wrote in The Press, the features newspaper for SUNY Stony Brook University. In the article he prayed to Jesus to smite Bush. Apparently asking a higher power to do the dirty work is still considered a threat. No further action other than the questioning was taken, however.
[QUOTE=beagledave]
Helms WAS investigated (as are hundreds of similar episodes every year).
Do you have a cite for Helms?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but AFAIK Liddy wasn’t joking when he said this.
The Secret Service investigating doesn’t mean there is a threat. It just means there may be a threat. They have to investigate to see if it WAS a threat.
Most of the time they are not, I’d suppose.
[Moderator hat ON]
I’m getting pretty tired of the constant political sniping and hijacking of threads in General Questions. This WILL stop.
rjung. You started the hijack of this thread. You’re about as guilty of this kind of behavior as anyone on the boards. It’s getting tiresome. And you’ve been here a long time. Don’t do this anymore.
Debaser. As far as I can tell, you were the second to hijack/politicize the thread. The OP did NOT require you to compare and contrast Liberal/Conservative talk shows and how they treat political subjects. Don’t do this anymore.
To those of you who tried to offer comments actually related to the OP, thank you.
Any factual, non-political further evidence is welcome in this thread.
[Moderator hat OFF]
[QUOTE=Thin Ice]
One from the right
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.16866/article_detail.asp
One from the left
The Helms event is a bit dated for me to find at regular news archives (which is why I could only find second hand accounts above) …but here is another cite for Helms investigation…from Reuters