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Pushing Back Against Extremism

By TChris, Section Other Politics
Posted on Wed Aug 24, 2005 at 12:57:23 PM EST
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by TChris

Right wing extremists seem to believe that they are immune from the consequences of their crazed rantings. Not always, it turns out.

Washington, D.C. radio talk show host Michael Graham was fired on Monday after refusing to apologize for comments he made about Islam. On July 25, Graham said “We are at war with a terrorist organization named Islam. The problem is not extremism. The problem is Islam.” His station, WMAL, said he referred to Islam as a terrorist organization 23 times during that same show.

Graham can say what he wants to say, but his employer, a private business, doesn’t have to give him a forum to preach religious hatred.

Pat Robertson isn’t likely to lose his job for advocating the assassination of a foreign head of state, but his remarks have nonetheless triggered the “international firestorm” that they deserve.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel of Venezuela said: "This is a huge hypocrisy to maintain an antiterrorist line and at the same time have such terrorist statements as these made by Christian preacher Pat Robertson coming from the same country."

Ironically, Robertson’s rant may help President Chavez in his reelection effort.

While Robertson's lunacy has been widely and justly condemned, it’s unfortunate that some conservative Christian organizations “remained silent, with leaders at the Traditional Values Coalition, the Family Research Council and the Christian Coalition saying through spokesmen that they were too busy to comment.” Too busy penning their own extreme rants to condemn advocacy of political assassination?

< Roberts: Conflict of Interest? | Defense Shines at Tampa Professor al-Arian's Trial >

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    Pushing Back Against Extremism | 17 comments (17 topical)
    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#1)
    by swingvote on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:41 PM EST
    Been reading some of Graham's commentary on his firing and he's claiming that the topic of the show was chosen by the station. Don't know who to believe on that one. He's also claiming that his station had no problem with the on-air comments until CAIR started calling for his head several days later. Minus any internal memos, it's difficult to say whether that is true, but at the very least he has timing on his side; if the station had fired them on their own initiative, they probably would have done it earlier. I don't listen to him, so I can't verify how many times he may have said this on air, but the number doesn't seem inordinate in a 3 hour show if you're going to go down that road (meaning if you say it once you're likely to say it again and again in the course of the discussion). Can't argue with the fact that the station has the right to fire him; just hope that they did it out of their own disgust with what he said and not because they were caving in to an organization which really does have links to terrorism and a long history of refusing to condemn it (that being CAIR, not ABC). He says otherwise, I'm sure they'll deny it; we'll have to see how it turns out.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#2)
    by wishful on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:42 PM EST
    Robertson should be arrested and charged with the appropriate terrorism related crime that he committed. I think that the PATRIOT Act is even more rigouous in its treatment of such crimes than the laws it superceded.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#3)
    by cpinva on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:42 PM EST
    pat robertson can say pretty much anything he wants, and have no fear of being fired. that's the benefit of owning the company you work for. the odds are, you aren't going to terminate yourself. if mr. graham was truly a hard core conservative, he'd do what mr. robertson did, go out and have the taxpayers buy him his own tv station to rant on.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#4)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:42 PM EST
    justpaul - Here's some info re CAIR's legal actions in the past.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#5)
    by swingvote on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:43 PM EST
    Jim, I'm familiar with CAIR, as I've been following some of their antics for a few years. Which is why I think it's sad if it was in fact them who managed to get this guy fired. Islam may not be "a terrorist organization" but CAIR is an organization which sympathizes with terrorists and it hardly believes in free speech for everyone. Kind of the pot calling the kettle black on this one. It's too bad ABC caved when the conversation was just starting to get interesting. Had they stood their ground, we might actually learned something, instead of witnessing yet another example of political cowardice. Oh well, Ibrahim Hooper wins again.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:43 PM EST
    Good thing he wasn't a professor at a taxpayer funded university! -C

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#7)
    by cpinva on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:43 PM EST
    justpaul, what, exactly, might we have learned, had abc not "caved in"? that michael graham is a person preaching to his choir, for ratings points? geez, we already kind of knew that. that puts him in company with rush, ann, sean, et al. so what? as near as i can tell, he didn't have any original thoughts to contribute to the conversation, merely the same worn out rants. i'd hardly call that a learning experience.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#8)
    by swingvote on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:43 PM EST
    cp, We might have learned a few things about CAIR, which has a rather sordid history on terrorism issues. We might have seen a real dialogue emerge about the general failure of "moderate" islam to condemn the actions taken by extremists in the name of their religion. We might also have learned what really happened, as in: what he said, whether ABC did in fact support it before they decided to oppose it, and whether the decision to fire was based on anyone at ABC being offended or simply as kneejerk response to CAIR's crying foul. According to further reports, ABC has been flooded with calls and e-mails from his listeners complaining about his being fired, which would seem to bolster your claim that he was merely preaching to the choir. But if that's the case, why would ABC fire him? Wasn't he just securing his ratings and generating more ad revenue for them? (And it's worth noting that as of last report there have been no ad cancellations over this.) ABC has the right to employ or not employ anyone they want on their network, but if they made this decision to appease a group like CAIR, they should just shut down and stop broadcasting altogether; their "objective" credentials are gone. Imagine if this was Al Franken being kicked off Air America because he had offended a christian group. You might well agree that the station had the right to do it, but would you say it was correct in doing so?

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#9)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:43 PM EST
    "Imagine if this was Al Franken being kicked off Air America because he had offended a christian group." That is an outrageous canard. Franken, like all genuine liberals, is tolerant of all religious expression. He would never insult any Christian qua Christian or any church. Also, like all genuine liberals, Franken knows the difference between genuine religious expression and cynical efforts by politicians and ideologues to hide behind the skirts of priests in order to deflect criticism.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#10)
    by swingvote on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:43 PM EST
    Tristero, So your love for Al Franken blinds you to even the conception of such a thing? Amazing. Use any liberal talk show host you wish, or any nonliberal talk show host, for that matter. If they offended Pat Robertson's organization by saying that they were all a bunch of relgious zealots and were directly responsible for Eric Rudolph's bombing of abortion clinics, and they were then fired for doing so after Robertson screamed murder, would you say their firing was a good thing?

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#11)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:43 PM EST
    I’ve been waiting for all the folks who thought boycotting the Dixie Chick’s violated their right to free speech to come rally round Graham on this thread. I’ll assume they missed it, so I’ll repost a couple of the more applicable posts in their absence. Ruth, in response to Mark Giselson’s “First they came for the Dixie Chicks, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a musician and I don’t like country music.”
    “and then they came for me, but there was no one to defend my free speech. The Neo's won't stop until we are all silenced.”
    They must have got to Ruth before she got to this thread. We got the original Niemöller quote from Andreas; in German no less.
    “…Als sie die Juden holten, habe ich nicht protestiert; ich war ja kein Jude. …”
    So Andreas, Als sie die konservativ einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein konservativ. Eh? I would have reposted some of the good Churchill stuff but the pure histrionics of comparing the Dixie Chicks boycott to the holocaust was hard to resist.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#12)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:45 PM EST
    SIX HUNDRED Rightwing White-Supremacist Terrorist Plots in the Last Ten Years Here's Robertson's (and much of Bush's) real constituency.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#13)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:45 PM EST
    Oh, it's only SIXTY. John Ashcroft called his list 600, and when they were looked at, they were almost to a one immigration fraud or petty crime. These are NOT petty crimes. They are domestic terrorist plots and actions by WHITE Americans. Sixty, six hundred, six million -- it's all in the sixes.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#14)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:45 PM EST
    PIL - 666 - The sign of the beast. No doubt about it. (Giggle) Thanks PIL, I needed that. Pigwiggle - Aw come on. You know that freedom of speech is only for those that agree with the Left. Trist - Sometimes you are even funnier than PIL.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#15)
    by Johnny on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:46 PM EST
    Use any liberal talk show host you wish, or any nonliberal talk show host, for that matter. If they offended Pat Robertson's organization by saying that they were all a bunch of relgious zealots and were directly responsible for Eric Rudolph's bombing of abortion clinics, and they were then fired for doing so after Robertson screamed murder, would you say their firing was a good thing?
    But he didn't, did he? This is a time when "What if's" do not apply... What really pi$$es wrong wingers off about Al Franken is that he is so nice... Even when he is making Bill O'Reilly poop his pants he is nice doing it. No, Al Franken is too smart to go off on a rascist rant. Bill Maher though.. Oh wait, he's the one who makes Ann Coulter look so smart... *rolls eyes* Wrong wingers only think the media is liberal because the visible ones are just better at what they do. This guy deserves to get fired, I guess... But probably not. The more he spews, the worse the wrong wingers look. Keep him on, wingnuts like him will only help America realize the extent to which hatred runs in the GOP. Yep. The likes of Pat Robertson, this clown, and their king, the unintelligable one... Fine examples of conservatives making news these days.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#16)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:46 PM EST
    Jim: "Trist - Sometimes you are even funnier than PIL." Even more of your WORTHLESS nonresponsive chuckling. Post substance, or go fly a kite.

    Re: Pushing Back Against Extremism (none / 0) (#17)
    by swingvote on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:46 PM EST
    But he didn't, did he? This is a time when "What if's" do not apply... The total lack of imagination in some people is truly amazing. Okay, Johnny, how about this? Michael Graham was fired because he offended a group of people. Assuming you think this is appropriate, which your comment implies you do, how many people does a talk-radio "personality" have to offend to justify their being fired? Is there a set number of people who must be offended, or does that number depend on who the people offended are and the topic which offended them? Should ALL talk-radio hosts who offend people be fired? Personally, I always thought it was the job of talk-radio hosts to offend people, and I also always thought that if you didn't want to be offended by them, you could simply not listen to them. Apparently I was wrong. Apparently, under the new regime, anytime a talk-radio host says something which offends me, or which would offend me if I was listening to their show, I have a right to demand that they be fired and the station is under an obligation to do so immediately. If this is not how it works, please explain why Michael Graham should have been fired for what he said. And before you descend into another rant about "wingers" and whatever other hobgoblins are infesting your mind, please note: I do not listen to Michael Graham. In fact, even though I live in the DC area, I had never even heard of him until this story broke. While I may be a "winger" compared to you, so are the majority of non-comatose humans, assuming your comment above is a representative example of your political stance (and I'll freely admit it may not be since I'm not really interested in pigeon holing you). Even if I am a "winger" compared to you (see above) I'm a "wanger" compared to many on "the right"; where that leaves me is an open question but one which has little impact on the discussion of whether this radio host should have been fired for the crime of offending the likes of the people at CAIR.

    Pushing Back Against Extremism | 17 comments (17 topical)