Watchdog Blog

Morton Mintz: On Going to the Talk-Show Hosts for Guidance

Posted at 4:59 pm, September 16th, 2008
Morton Mintz Mug

George J. Esseff, Sr., who describes himself ” as one of the world’s most successful Titanium entrepreneurs,” bought a full-page ad in the New York Times to publicize his “sincere recommendation” to the heads of the three largest television networks.

“If you truly want to restore the credibility of your News Bureaus by getting back to reporting the news instead of propagandizing issues, I suggest you require your news chiefs to get more in touch with the true cares, concerns and issues of the average American… and the way to do that, is to listen to Talk Radio!,” Esseff wrote on Sept. 16. “That’s right, people like Rush Limbaugh.”

That’s “average American” Limbaugh, right? The Joe Six Pack who owns five houses, one of which is “24,000 square feet”; its main guest suite “was designed as an exact replica of the presidential suite of the George V Hotel in Paris.” One of his half-dozen cars is a “Maybach 57S, which runs around $450,000 fully loaded.” His “newest airplane, a Gulfstream G550…cost him, he told me, $54 million.”

And that’s the Limbaugh who reports “the news instead of propagandizing issues”? Just 12 days before Esseff’s ad, Media Matters reported that the bloviator was continuing “to repeat [the] falsehood that Obama favors infanticide.’”

“There are plenty of well-qualified hosts from which to choose,” Esseff continued. “[E]ach of them has their hand on the real pulse of America and their focus on those issues and stories that matter most to every American, whatever their political beliefs or affiliations.”

Here are a few of right-wing bloviators whom Esseff did not name but who were quoted on Bill Moyers’ Journal four days before the ad ran:

MICHAEL SAVAGE:”Liberalism is, in essence, the HIV virus, and it weakens the defense cells of a nation. What are the defense cells of a nation? Well, the church. They’ve attacked particularly the Catholic Church for 30 straight years. The police, attacked for the last 50 straight years by the ACLU viruses. And the military, attacked for the last 50 years by the Barbara Boxer viruses on our planet.”

[Correspondent] RICK KARR: Political liberals aren’t the only targets of Savage’s wrath. Back when he had a cable TV show, he bashed gay men.

MICHAEL SAVAGE: “So, you’re one of the sodomites. Are you a sodomite?”

CALLER: “Yes, I am.”

MICHAEL SAVAGE: “Oh, you’re one of the sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How’s that? Why don’t you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis.”

RICK KARR: And earlier this year on his radio show, he targeted kids with autism

MICHAEL SAVAGE: “I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’”

PROTESTORS:”Fire Savage now! Fire Savage now!”

RICK KARR: That outburst prompted protests by outraged parents, and a few stations dropped Savage’s show. So did an advertiser. But Savage hasn’t apologized and he’s still on the air.

MICHAEL SAVAGE: “America is being overrun by an invasion force from Mexico that’ll soon take over the country[...]you psychotic liberals don’t even know you’re digging your own grave and throwing lime in there. All that’s missing is the worm from the tequila bottle to go with it.”

RICK KARR: Michael Savage isn’t the only right-wing talk-radio host who launches blistering, even violent, verbal attacks on people and groups he doesn’t like. Glenn Beck, for instance, fantasized about murdering a liberal filmmaker.

GLENN BECK:”I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out of him. Is this wrong?”

RICK KARR: Michael Reagan, son of the former president, suggested that people who claim that “nine-eleven was an inside job,” a U.S. government conspiracy, deserve to die.

MICHAEL REAGAN: “Take them out and shoot them. They are traitors to this country, and shoot them. But anybody who would do that doesn’t deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullet.”

RICK KARR: Neal Boortz went after victims of Hurricane Katrina.

NEAL BOORTZ:”That wasn’t the cries of the downtrodden. That’s the cries of the useless, the worthless. New Orleans was a welfare city, a city of parasites, a city of people who could not, and had no desire to fend for themselves. You have a hurricane descending on them and they sit on their fat asses and wait for somebody else to come rescue them.”

RICK KARR: Muslims are some of Boortz’s favorite targets.

NEAL BOORTZ:”It’s Ramadan and Muslims in your workplace might be offended if they see you eating at your desk. Why? I guess it’s because Muslims don’t eat during the day during Ramadan. They fast during the day and eat at night. Sorta like cockroaches.”

“By listening to Talk Radio, you’re listening to the voices of America, and you’d be wise to follow their lead,” Esseff told the network chiefs.

So maybe ABC should hire Michael Savage to inspire audiences on how to deal with autism.

Maybe CBS should hire Glenn Beck to meditate “about killing Michael Moore” or someone else he dislikes, or Michael Reagan to “pay for the bullet” a listener might use to shoot anyone who claims that “‘nine-eleven was an inside job.’”

But would Esseff have second thoughts were NBC to hire Neal Boortz to tell Hurricane Katrina victims that they are “the useless, the worthless,…parasites [who] sit on their fat asses and wait for somebody else to come rescue them”?. After all, he describes himself at his Web site as “a devout Catholic who has consistently used his wealth to feed the poor, build and maintain shelters for the homeless and make available medical services for those in need.”



6 Responses to “On Going to the Talk-Show Hosts for Guidance”

  1. Thomas says:

    It’s not true that Obama favors infanticide. Or at least, it isn’t clear that he does. What he favors is keeping infanticide legal in Illinois in some circumstances.

  2. Marat says:

    Thomas–

    You are the perfect moral argument for infanticide.

  3. Mark says:

    It is true that sodomy (anal sex between men) is the main cause of AIDS and kills people,. And it is also true, that America is beeing overrun by an illegal invasion from Mexico (20- 30 mio.). And few will dispute the fact that autism is highly overdiagnosed.

    Those were Michael Savage’s points. So what is your problem, apart from the fact that you don’t like him and his style?

  4. Jack Bumblaster says:

    What’s wrong with sodomy?

    Jack Bumblaster

  5. Felicity says:

    Actually, Mark, the primary mode of HIV infection worldwide is through sexual contact between members of the opposite sex.

    Also, autism has historically been under-diagnosed. Much of the recent increase in the number of reported cases is due to improvements in diagnostic practices.

  6. Mark says:

    Cut out the politically correct baloney Felicity!

    AIDS is a disease that originated and prevails in the male homosexual community because of promiscuity and filthy sexual pratices (anal sex).

    To the extent it exist among heterosexuals, it has primarily been transferred there via “bisexuals” practising same kind of sex.

    About autism. You are wrong again Felicity. The diagnostic practices are the same as they always have been: Subjective and un-scientific. Only todays cultural enviroment of victimhood and medicinal hysteria has changed the rate of diagnosis, because it pays and is worshipped.

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