Late Nite FDL: What’s That Sound?
Posted in: Media, Random Wingnuttery, Talking Heads
It's the sound of Wingnuts' heads exploding! It sounds like…victory. For you see, the Spocko vs. KSFO Snuff Radio story has made it all the way to USA Today, and for once the Big Media seems to have gotten it right.
Some advertisers, including Bank of America and MasterCard, have deserted KSFO since an anonymous media critic identifying himself online as Spocko began posting recordings of the station's "Hot Talk" hosts. Spocko and some of his readers have been e-mailing the audio to KSFO advertisers since 2005, asking the companies whether they want to be associated with the controversial rhetoric.
The First Amendment flap was debated Sunday on CNN's Reliable Sources. Dan Riehl, a blogger critical of Spocko, said some of the radio hosts' comments "were blown out of proportion or misrepresented" in the complaints to sponsors.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Misrepresented" those poor, poor victimized and persecuted six-figure swill merchants at KSFO. Fortunately, the man debating Dancin' Dan Riehl was none other than Mighty Mike Stark!
Mike Stark, another blogger and a Spocko ally, said: "The way to fight free speech that you disagree with is to engage in more free speech. And that's exactly what Spocko did."
Touché!! Suck it, Riehl! You know if this was the other way around, Riehl would be squawking like a wet hen that Disney/ABC was trying to silence him and trample upon his God-given right as an American Asshole to make a fool of himself in public. But while we're introducing shoes to other feet to see how they feel, let's look at what Dan Riehl had to say about the Dixie Chicks controversy:
The Dixie Victims
Aww … those bad people aren't buying our records. And now the evil Rethuglicans have influenced the media preventing us from running our bash Bush / Republicans ad right before an election.
I can't recall ever seeing anyone so desperate to try and kick start their career.
"It's a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America," Harvey Weinstein said in a statement. "The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American."
Shudder, the liberal elitist is questioning our patriotism. I'm outraged!!
lol Actually, like 99.9% of the rest America, I don't even care what the idiots say or think, let alone sing. That they think they are entitled to force themselves on the public is the real joke. It's a free world and the free world has told the Dixie Twits to take a hike. They should take along their instruments and serenade trees, or something. It seems a captive audience is the only way they can get one these days – and that's no one's fault but their own.
Well, Danny, there's a very healthy chunk of the population who think that for Melanie Morgan and Lee Rodgers to think that they're "entitled to force themselves on the public" is the "real joke" here. It's the marketplace of ideas, comrade! And the free world has told KSFO to take a hike. Ipso facto. Quod erat demonstrandum. Legitimate businesses don't want any part of KSFO's brand of bloodthirsty extremism.
MasterCard and the state-run Michigan Economic Development Corp. say they advertised on KSFO talk shows last year but won't place new ads. "It's hard to listen to those clips and not be offended," says Mike Shore, spokesman for the Michigan agency.
Bank of America says it withdrew ads last spring. The California chapter of the American Automobile Association says it pulled an insurance ad from Sussman's show in September.
Aheh. This is where I dance around the room hooting, "WE WON! WE WON!!"
Yes, in spite of their frantic attempts to spin and distance themselves from their intemperate remarks, to squelch opposition with bogus legal threats, and to mount a counter campaign against all of Lefty Blogistan, all KSFO and Disney have succeeded in doing is losing more advertisers, making asses of themselves, and making Spocko and Mike Stark hugely famous. Hooray!
KSFO claimed on its website that it is the victim of "an anonymous Internet smear campaign." The station canceled three hours of regular programs Jan. 12 and put the talk hosts on the air to explain their remarks.
During that broadcast, Morgan said ABC had reissued guidelines about "violent" commentary. "We don't believe we have crossed a single line," she said. "If you're waiting for an apology, you'll be waiting a long time," Rodgers said. When Stark called in, Rodgers called him a creep.
Sussman repeated an apology for his Obama remark and said he sometimes went over the line in talking 20 hours a week. Rodgers and other hosts complained that liberals are ganging up to threaten their jobs. "I will not be silenced by the left," Rodgers said.
I think that it's terribly important to mention that Rodgers was hanging up on Mike Stark when he bellowed his defiance about how he refuses to be silenced. Way to lose an argument, dickhead. I think my home Ironi-Meter™ actually threw a rod when that happened.
"Yes, this is a freedom of speech issue, and this individual is entitled to say what he wants to," Morgan told the San Francisco Chronicle. "But he's trying to take away my livelihood, and I'm not trying to take away his."
Oh, boo-freakin'-hoo, Melanie. Just because you can't go all Rwanda Massacre on the radio doesn't mean that you can't keep writing your filthy, slanderous, completley fact-free hit-pieces, er, "biographies" of prominent lefties. Didn't I just hear that you're following up your Cindy Sheehan "bio" with a book on Hillary or something? I'm sure the Wingnut Welfare system will kick in any minute. No one's about to make you eat ramen noodles or color your own hair. If you were poor, you might turn into a liberal. And we can't have that.
Seriously, though. No one wants to take you off the air. It's like I said the other night. We need you.
Now, I'm not saying that hate speech should be taken off the air. I think it's an important object lesson that liberals can point at as a warning to our children. ("Now, be good in school and pay attention, Junior. You don't want to turn out an ill-informed, illogical, incoherent, screeching hate-monger like Melanie Morgan. Your advertisers will abandon you and no one will ever love you because your hate has made you into a scorched, empty husk of a person…")
"I think Disney learned a lesson," Stark says. "Strong-arm tactics on the blogosphere just don't work."
Related posts:
Social Web