I’ll admit to being (blessedly) ignorant of right-wing talk radio. I’ve listened to Dr. Laura a handful of times and had to shut it off before I ripped my own ears off my head. So I have no idea who Jim Quinn is, beyond what Wikipedia tells me — which means I know he’s a conservative radio-guy, and that the stations that run him are owned mostly by Clear Channel (and Christian Voice of Central Ohio).
I also know that John McCain also went on his show, ostensibly as a way to court conservatives. And what are the conservatives who listen to Jim Quinn hearing?
Well, in addition to calling the National Organization for Women the “National Organization for Whores,” Quinn had this to say about Philadelphia Daily columnist Fatimah Ali:
I’ll tell you what, folks, it’s the great depression. It’s bread lines, soup kitchens. Fatimah Ali, writing in the Philadelphia Daily — you know, Fatimah, what’s your real name? Come on, seriously. I mean, get an American name, will you, if you want to be an American. You don’t suppose she’s a liberal black Muslim, do you? I’m just curious.
I realize that to a lot of us (myself included), Quinn is just one of the many bigoted and irritating men who dominate right-wing radio. And I know it’s not considered particularly polite to point out that a lot of conservatives who listen to (and believe what they hear on) right-wing radio are bigoted assholes — after all, it’s an election year and we’re supposed to be coddling those precious conservatives who may just have a change of heart and vote Dem (and we’re supposed to do it by pretending that they represent The True American Experience, while white-washing the bigotries that underlie their political views).
And so we have a major-party candidate for the highest political position in the country going on a show that relies on racism, sexism and general bigotry to maintain its audience. We have a candidate going on that show explicitly to shore up votes from that audience. And no one seems to find this unusual precisely because, in GOP-land, it’s not unusual.
But it’s really, really wrong. And as long as the corporate media and the right wing are obsessing over Obama’s pastor and where he went to school when he was 7, it might be worth our time to point out who Republicans are associating with and actively courting in the political arena.
Well, there was that whole John McCain/James Hagee thing. For whatever reason, it just doesn’t get the same kind of traction in the MSM. Of course, Hagee and others are white and tend to be a bit older and play that sort of grandfatherly aspect. Jeremiah Wright? He’s just an angry black man. Each fits so neatly into a stereotype that it becomes an easy narrative to excuse some and not others.
More rightwing nonsense,
mediamatters.org:
This makes me feel sick to my stomach.
How can McCain justify his position to the middle-ground floating voters, when he appears on these shows to court the fundamentalist demographic? I wish this kind of thing got more publicity. It certainly deserves more than Jeremiah Wright.
The problem is that pointing this out to people would make little difference to the election. Republicans tend to fall into one of 2 camps: the fiscal conservatives/foreign policy realists OR the right-wing nutjobs. The first camp is fully aware of the second camp and is happy to use the second camp to win elections. Maybe it’ll change this time around, but I doubt it. McCain isn’t stupid – he is betting that whatever marginal numbers of potential Republicans in the first camp he might win over by not catering to these cretins, he will gain much more support in key swing states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida (all of these states are full of rednecks) by pandering to their crazy sensibilities.
Radio does give a lot of lee-way. If those comments were made on television, there would be a lot more attention given to the white supremacist remarks.
I could hardly listen to the speeches of RNC, let alone right wing radio.
For some reason, conservatives can get away with this kind of hate talk because, for some reason, being full of hate has become a tenet of the philosophy. It’s like, liberals are accepting of different kinds of people, so conservatives have to be the opposite and hate everyone who doesn’t look or sound like them. Democrats don’t have to stoop to the level of Republicans, but they can borrow something from the Republican playbook. The Democrats really have to juxtapose John McCain with this Quinn guy in the same way Republicans try to pretend that Rosie O’Donnell is practically a member of the Democratic controlled Congress.
[...] Yet another reason why I won’t be voting McCain/Palin Jump to Comments So McCain goes on John Quinn’s show, to court conservative votes. Who is John Quinn? Why, he is the guy who told a journalist to “get an American name.” [...]
RE: McCain’s courting of right-wing white bigots on Quinn’s show and elsewhere.
McCain apparently believes that his only chance of beating Obama in November is by galvanizing white racists to get out and vote. McCain himself is no longer a plausible candidate for any voter, whether on the issues or on the basis of his character. McCain is obviously too old, he’s out of touch on domestic issues, and his courting of the Christian far-right has alienated moderate Republicans and independents. So the race card is all he has left to play.
In other news on Yahoo! AP, McCain once again cited Sarah Palin’s command of the Alaska National Guard as evidence of her foreign policy experience. Sarah Palin has already turned his campaign into a joke. What a sad end for McCain.
See, it’s *patriotic* to be a xenophobe: the far right can always drape itself in the flag and does so quite sincerely. They really believe they are the real deal. And since we live in a nationalistic culture, attacking people draped in the flag is something the MSM (and most centrist liberals) don’t do. The xenophobes attack people whom they designate “enemies of the American people” or some such formula, and therefore the MSM (and most centrist liberals) don’t defend them – that would be unpatriotic. The centre left expends a lot of energy on claiming the flag and flourishing their patriotism. It’s a good way of ensuring that Change never actually happens.
The right starts with this inbuilt advantage: most human societies are hierarchical, tribal, belligerent as their default positions. Anyone whose social ideal runs in opposite directions has to fight twice as hard just to be heard, and will never be heard without some kind of subverting qualification.
“liberals are accepting of different kinds of people”, which is why so many of them attack McCain as being “too old” and Republicans as “rednecks”.
Straight from this thread.
“Liberalism”, thy name is hypocrisy.