From Democracy Now: Supporters of reproductive rights are mourning the killing of … Dr. George Tiller. The sixty-seven-year-old Tiller was shot Sunday as he attended services at his Wichita, Kansas church. The gunman fled the scene, but a suspect was later caught in a Kansas City suburb. The suspect, fifty-one-year-old Scott Roeder, has a history of involvement in anti-abortion activism and was once arrested and jailed on explosives charges. He has ties to the right-wing separatist group known as the Freemen.
If I were Michael Savage or Rush Limbaugh, I would just assert that the hate speech spewed hourly, daily…forever by the Hate Mongers at Hate Radio and Hate Television killed Dr. George Tiller. Bill O’Reilly was forever calling Dr. George Tiller a murderer and no doubt Scott Roeder found deep in the recesses of his twisted mind some justification for stalking Dr. Tiller on Sunday and gunning him down inside his church. No doubt he felt empowered by the likes of Bill O’Reilly.
But looked at coldly in the bright light of day one can easily draw the conclusion that Hate Radio and Hate Television kills. It is these mouthpieces of the reactionary right that beat the drums of war while yelling and screaming and pounding the table for law and order, that scream invectives at any one who has the brains to believe that disparate religions and disparate governments can rise above the law of the jungle and find accommodation. It is these foul, intellectual pornographers that scream for every tax dollar to be dumped down the Pentagon rabbit hole, who turn foreign aid into aid for gun runners and weapons manufacturers, and who provide all the reason any one, any where, any time would need to hate America.
Foreign policy is a boomerang. You get back, exactly what you send out. “They” don’t hate us for our freedoms. “They” hate us because we steal their oil and kill their families.
No matter that law and order zealots like Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus have long since fried their brains with drugs so that they are past processing anything that approaches the truth. No matter that Michael Savage is such a blatant reactionary, racist, inflammatory ideologue that he has been banned in Britain. No Matter that Laura Ingraham and Tammy Bruce, Neal Bortz , Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and the rest of this evil crowd are paid big bucks to spew the crap they spew. No matter.
But now they have more to answer for. Insanity begets insanity and Scott Roeder’s murder of Dr. Tiller is the logical outcome of this kind of hate speech. Bully for Great Britain!
Communities where these hate radio stations operate need to make it clear to the Federal Communications Commission that this kind of so called programming is not in the public interest and that it will not be tolerated. When there were decent Commissioners at the FCC this kind of hate spewing caused the loss of licenses. We need to get back to Federal oversight of the public property that is the American airwaves. City Councils and County Councils need to condemn these stations for the cancers that they are and move to excise them. And if these elected representatives don’t have the courage to speak up, then the voters should replace them.
As for the Hate radio and Hate Television crowd, they need to–to a mouthpiece, without exception–consider the evil that they do and repent.
Don Singleton
Your Morning Cup of Coffee 