Blast of Cold Water -

Blast of Cold Water - Regis Sabol is left-wing pundit with a long portfolio.

He's also apparently been under a rock for a while. I found this article on Fraters Libertas - an article in an online 'zine Mr. Sabol edits.

Just about any city with an AM radio talk show boasts a few Rush Limbaugh disciples. The guys I ran into in Erie, Pennsylvania, were Limbaugh wannabes. They had the same flapping jaws but not half the intelligence.

Because I don’t listen to talk radio, I didn’t know what I was in for when I called Jeff Johns at WJET 1400 Talk Radio to get publicity for MoveOn.org, a national anti-war organization.

That sets things off for me. Mr. Sabol - supposedly a pundit dealing with the events of the day - seems to be unaware that AM talk radio has become a province - really, the major mass-media presence - of the right, and certainly the only place where the "conservative street" finds a voice.

Mr. Sabol, as Fraters points out, is a mover and shaker behind "Move On", which the Fraters' Saint Paul described as well as anyone ever has:

”Move On” is the group that formed back in 1998 with a single purpose, to support the right of older, married male employers to shag their young female interns while on the clock. Their first case concerned a gentleman named Bill Clinton. (Unfortunately for lascivious, immoral, aging men everywhere, "Move On" never moved on to find a second case to defend.) In an effort to easily distill their message to Congress and the American people on how Mr. Clinton should be punished, their official slogan back then was “Censure and Move On” (many in their constituency of lascivious, immoral, aging men preferred the slogan “Zip Up and Move On,” but that never really caught on with the media consultants).

So we have a guy whose organization's entire M.O. is to forgive the oopses (intern-banging, genocide) of...whom? Anyone opposed to Republicans, I guess.

Sabol, like a sheep to the wolves, was shocked...shocked, I tell you - to find out that conservative talk show hosts didn't learn argumentation in grad school seminars:

We weren’t more than two minutes into the interview when Johns asked if I thought it was all right for Saddam Hussein to gas his own people. What the hell does this have to do with the MoveOn petitions, I thought.

Bear in mind, we're getting the entire context for this exchange from one of the participants, one with whom I'm sure I disagree on most issues. But I can think of three possible answers to his question:

1. Mr. Sabol is used to the media with which he deals being uncritical, sympathetic, even sycophantic to his cause. It's likely the only interviews he's ever given are with NPR affiliates, Pacifica stations, and major networks staffed with Clinton supporters and Democrats, who'd be perfectly willing to uncritically pass on word of "MoveOn's" petitions without question or comment, or
2. Mr. Sabol is crying crocodile tears. He set up this interview in full knowledge that he was going to be running into "right wing attack dogs", and he wanted a patented "I'm in the belly of the beast" article with which to titillate his Volvo-driving, "No War In Iraq"-sign-displaying, dictator-appeasing readership, or
3. Mr. Sabol isn't the brightest light on God's christmas tree.

The interview continued - but really, we all know where this is going, don't we? Innocent lamb lost among the right-wing wolves, yadda yadda. The two talk show hosts tried to tie him to anti-American activities - fairly or unfairly, read the article and judge for yourself.

It's more interesting, really, to note his adjectives used for describing the hosts through the rest of the piece:

• "Joe McCarthy would have been proud. "
• "I could see these guys at work in a KGB interrogation room" [Actually, liberal gab host Geraldo Rivera perfected this form of interview...]>"these right-wing media whores" [As if "MoveOn" isn't entirely a product of media prostitution]
• "Sadly, America has a long tradition of airwave demagoguery. The Jew-hating Father Coughlin drew millions to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930’s and 1940’s. His more contemporary avatars are Paul Harvey and, the most successful of them all, Rush Limbaugh, who has made Hitler’s theory of the Big Lie his stock and trade. [Comparing Harvey and Limbaugh to Coughlin? Indeed? Let's leave aside the Internet truism that once Hitler is invoked, the argument is illegitimate - isn't that big talk for someone who two breaths earlier was whining about "McCarthyism"?]
• Millions of his benighted followers believe that if Rush said it, it must be true, no matter how outlandish the lie. "
• "Like carriers of the bubonic plague, right-wing radio gunslingers have crawled out of some primordial slime to attack any hapless caller or guest who disagrees with them or, foolishly, attempts to reason with them." [Open note to Mr. Sabol - when have "you" ever tried to "reason" with "us?"]
• "They are fascistic yahoos of the first stripe "
• "appealing to an audience that is, at best, gullible or subscribes to right-wing dogma, especially when it is served up with venomous mean-mindedness. " [So unlike the intellectual giants who chant "MoveOn! MoveOn!", regardless of the facts]
• "These vermin hone their skills at the Goebbels School of Radio Broadcasting." [Oddly, this form of talk radio was "pioneered" by the likes of Tom Leykis and Alan Berg. Goebbelsish, perhaps - and on Mr. Sabol's side of the fence]
• "Their great role model is Joe McCarthy, the alcoholic demagogue who was drummed out of the United States Senate after inflaming the great Red Witch Hunts of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s and leaving a bloody trail of ruined lives. " [Perhaps it's time to expand that Internet truism to include references to McCarthy - especially two, disconnected references in the same article]
• "The two local yokels "
• "My country right or wrong. I thought we’d settled that defense at the Nuremberg trials after World War II. " [Perhaps Mr. Sabol needs to be reminded - the First Amendment applies as much to "yokels" in Erie, Pennsylvania as it does to, say, Robert Mapplethorpe. Nuremberg didn't settle any "free speech" issues - other than the "yokels'" right to speak as freely as Mr. Sabol]
• "slathering attack dogs"...

...and so on.

And while Mr. Sabol professes shock at the type of communication that "right wing talk radio" uses, MoveOn itself is behind some pretty shabby, emotionally-manipulative propaganda that would have done proud any authoritarian Minister of Information.

I guess the only response is to advise Mr. Sabol to follow his own group's advice: When you're facing something that you find repulsive, wrong-headed, obnoxious, evil, ugly, and "benighted", well...

...just "Move On".

Posted by Mitch at January 30, 2003 09:30 AM