I’ve written before about the practice of right-wing radio station WISN letting one of their news readers, Nick Reed, fill in when its third-rate wing-nuts Jay Weber and Vicki McKenna are not available to push the usual poison bullshit on their morning shows. I guess, along with the destruction of the news-and-information industry by firings and attrition, we have to accept that many of those left are conflicted political whores who are willing to sell out their reporter credentials for a couple of hours of overheated GOP talking-point dissemination. To paraphrase Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine the Operator, they don’t care, they don’t have to – they’re Clear Channel.
This morning, Reed was cheerily wearing his wing-nut hat while "discussing" President Obama’s talk with school children around the country on what was for most the first day of school. What is it about this president, the temporarily not-newsman wondered aloud, that makes people so distrustful of him that he can’t even make a speech to school children without parents getting concerned?
This is like Al Capone walking into the garage on St. Valentine’s Day and wondering, hey, what’s with all the dead bodies? Reed and his fellow radio clowns know very well why anyone thought twice about Obama in the schools – they created the false hysteria in the first place. As soon as the White House announced the planned speech, the national and local wing-nut choir was screeching in perfect harmony about socialist indoctrination, how Mao Tse Tung and Kim Jong-Il did/do the same thing, how no president has ever tried to broadcast to school children (that lie is what they said the first day). Mainstream radio’s dutiful listeners responded in predictable, sheep-like fashion, a screechy minority putting pressure on school districts to not dare put "that guy" (the right-wing’s favorite way to refer to and diminish the president) on their school monitors, or, keeping their kids out of school for the day, no doubt part of their campaign to make sure their kids stay stupid for another generation.
But, in Reed’s imaginary world, hysterical reactions and staged stunts like disrupted town-hall meetings happen spontaneously, in a vacuum, without any help from the 24/7 right-wing campaign to delegitimize President Obama. Feigning surprise and concern about something he very much encouraged and played a very small part in creating, the newsman in the wing-nut tin-foil hat "reported" as follows (in full context, which is more than he will ever do for you):
"This administration has created such a massive distrust amongst the American people that just the idea of the president giving a speech to kids sends a significant portion of the American population into a tizzy. Now, a lot of liberals like to point out the fact, you know, well, Reagan did it and Bush did it, and there wasn’t a huge uproar about it. Well, that ought to tell you – that’s not really an argument in your favor, or in Obama’s favor. What that shows is that Americans, while they may not have necessarily cared for some Reagan, and some not caring for Bush, they didn’t have this fervent distrust that they just, did not even want their children, without them being – It’s almost like having your friends go on a field trip with a convicted child molester, is how people are acting about this. And I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t have acted this way about it, but you have to admit that the liberals are right when they point out, well, Americans didn’t act this way about Reagan and Bush when they did it. Well, what’s that tell you? I mean, that ought to make you wonder."
Well, it does make me wonder, but not in the way he thinks. It makes me wonder how a guy from the news department can compare any president with a child molester and come to work the next day, still employed. It makes me wonder how far wing-nuts are willing to go before the bounds of human decency are reached for the supposedly upstanding corporate citizens at Clear Channel. It makes me wonder how a supposed newsman like Nick Reed can gain press credentials to anything now that he is exposed as a name-calling, greed-sucking language-twister who has no more business being behind a microphone labeled "news" than Mark Belling or Sean Hannity. "I’m Nick Reed and here’s the news," he will say again someday soon, or maybe even this afternoon. Only the foolish will take anything he says seriously. On the other hand, the national affiliate is Fox News, so, you know, it’s all a big joke to Clear Channel anyway.
President Obama gave a great and valuable speech to school children today. He is someone who can reach them more and better than any old white guy named Bush or Reagan (who pathetically used the word "Negro" when he made a stab at chatting with children late in his failed presidency). His fatherless, diverse background makes him a valuable resource in reaching today’s kids. Because of who he is and what he stands for, he is very popular with school kids. And. no doubt, he reached many today.
The right-wing could have decided to praise or at least ignore Obama in this admirable effort. Instead, they poisoned the moment as only they can, telling lies, casting aspersions on his intentions and using it as another opportunity to delegitimize and dehumanize a president that they cannot defeat on the merits of any issue. They are a bunch of sick bastards with no morals or interest in the future of the country. They would burn it down, if they could, rather than accept any Democrat as president.
As it happens, one of those sick bastards, Nick Reed, is -- still -- a newsman at WISN.
3 comments:
does wisn still introduce their newscasts by saying they're "fair and balanced?"
Mike, what would you recommend to remedy this?
There is no remedy without corporate responsibility and the willingness of someone, anyone, to enforce journalistic ethics within the borders of Clear Channel itself. If they don't care and the light of day on the existance of the issue here -- or, maybe someday, elsewhere -- doesn't do anything, that's just the way it is, I guess. Those with no shame can't be shamed into doing the right thing.
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