By Jim Edwards | October 28, 2010
By all accounts, the advertiser boycott of Fox News Channel over the
ideological fuel it provides to right-wing extremists is going
nowhere. Only Zurich Financial Services has said anything about it on
the record: they're "reviewing the situation."
UPDATE: The Giffords Shooting: Fox Embarrassed By Palin Link, Runs for Cover
It was a quixotic quest, but not an unreasonable one given the way Fox
— and Glenn Beck in particular — seem to be inspiring conservatives to
engage in armed civil war with their liberal neighbors. Perhaps
advertisers don't know quite how extreme Fox and Beck have become: The
recent incident in which a Kentucky county campaign coordinator for
Senate candidate Rand Paul stomped on the head of a female protester
is not an isolated example. Here are six actual terrorists inspired by
Fox News. They have killed six Americans and wounded six others
between them. (Seven, if you count the woman who took a sneaker to the
skull from Paul's man):
Charles Wilson: Sentenced to prison last week for repeatedly
threatening to kill Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). His cousin, in a
letter to the court, said: "While his actions were undeniably wrong
and his choices were terrible, in part they were the actions of others
played out by a very gullible Charlie. He was under the spell that
Glenn Beck cast, aided by the turbulent times in our economy. I don't
believe that Charlie even had the ability to actually carry out his
threats."
Byron Williams: Arrested while driving to the HQ of the liberal
non-profit group The Tides Foundation carrying numerous guns and body
armor, intent on killing everyone in the office, before moving on to
do the same thing at the ACLU. Williams confessed he views Beck as a
"schoolteacher" who "blew my mind." The would-be killer admitted that
Beck "give[s] you every ounce of evidence you could possibly need" to
commit violence. He awaits trial in jail.
Jim David Adkisson: Killed two people and wounded six others in a
shooting attack at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church
in West Knoxville, Tenn., in 2008. Adkisson was inspired by Fox
commentator Bernard Goldberg: "This was a symbolic killing," Adkisson
wrote. "Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate and
House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill
everyone in the mainstream media. But I knew these people were
inaccessible to me." Goldberg is the author of 110 People Who Are
Screwing Up America (and Al Franken Is #37). UPDATE: See Bernard
Goldberg's response below.
Richard Poplawski: Charged with killing three Pittsburgh police
officers who responded to a 911 call about a family dispute at his
mother's Stanton Heights home in April 2009. Polawski "loved Glenn
Beck," according to his mom.
James W. Von Brunn: Fox itself was reportedly in danger from white
supremacist Von Brunn who was arrested after opening fire at security
guards, killing one, at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
One of his targets was apparently a "Fox News location." One of Von
Brunn's pet issues was President Obama's birth certificate, a "debate"
that got plenty of air on Fox.
Greg Lee Giusti: Arrested for threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
whom Beck himself has said he would like to poison. Giusti's mom said:
"Greg frequently gets in with a group of people that have really
radical ideas and that are not consistent with myself or the rest of
the family, which gets him into problems … I say Fox News, or all of
those that are really radical, and he, that's where he comes from."
Beck spends a lot of time intimating that one day the federal
government's jackbooted thugs will come for us all, at gunpoint. It's
actually the other way around: Beck's own viewers are the gunmen who
want to kill those with whom they disagree. (And note how it's law
enforcement officers and security guards who are mostly taking bullets
from Fox's viewers.)
I'm not saying Fox supports terrorists. I'm saying Fox inspires them.
In an email to BNET, Goldberg gave this response:
I am not writing to defend FOX. Rather, I'm concerned only with the
shallow comments that have been written about me.
You say that "terrorists are inspired by Fox." Don't we need to know
more? Don't we need to know why more people don't kill people in
church — if a book is so provocative? Isn't it interesting that only
one person in the whole country committed violence?
Here's my humble suggestion to you, Jim: Be honest about why you wrote
the piece. You hate Fox News, is my guess. You hate conservatives, or
at least think they're inferior in some important ways. So you find
ammo to support your biases — even if you have to round up a bunch of
crazies to make your point.
What if I went out and killed 20 people because your column deeply
disturbed me? Would it be fair to say that YOU inspired violence?
It's a serious question. The answer, of course, is no you didn't. The
more likely reason for the 20 killings is that the killer is nuts.
Beyond that, an intelligent journalist might have gone a step further.
He might have wondered what should we do in a free country about books
that "inspire" one person — in this entire big country of ours — to do
something terrible? Should we ban those books? What if someone reads
the instructions on a box of Betty Crocker cake mix and kills
somebody? Should we ban the sale of the product?
My point is that crazy people do crazy things — and it's terrible. But
there's nothing in my book that would lead a normal person to do such
a thing.
I'm troubled by what journalism has become in this country. It's too
bad that you seem to be part of the problem. I'm guessing you're a
bright guy. You can write more intelligently, and more deeply, than
you did in this case.
You got all the quotations right about the killer in Tennessee and my
book, but I was taken by how shallow your piece was, at least as to
how it pertained to me.
The book in question hit No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list.
Hundreds of thousands of people read it. Yet only one committed any
kind of violence after reading it. One!
Does this tell you a little something about that one person? That
perhaps he was unstable?
More important, I'll bet you can't find one sentence in the entire
book that would "inspire" a sane person to commit violence. I'll also
bet you never read my book.
As I say, I think you are one of those (many) journalists who don't
think deeply. I'm guessing you allowed your ideology to trump anything
resembling honest journalism.
You are just one of many, many people on the web to write about the
church shooting in Tennessee. But I'm guessing you're the only one who
went to Columbia. You should know better.
Related:
An Assassin Poses a Question for Fox Advertisers: "Killing People,
Right or Wrong?"
More:
http://m.bnet.com/blog/advertising-business/6-lunatics-inspired-by-fox-news-and-glenn-beck/6399
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment