BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
In one of those stories that, in the end, has all the policy implications of a White Sale at Macy’s, it seems that conservative radio talk show host Alex Jones appeared on the television talk show of British transplant Piers Morgan on Monday night.
The topic was Jones’ leading the petition to have Morgan deported because of Morgan’s heavy hand on the topic of gun control. Continue reading
BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
Freedom of speech and press keep the blood flowing through public discourse. But sometimes they are not all they’re cracked up to be.
A good example is Dana Milbank’s column in the Washington Post May 2, in which he excoriated House Republicans for not getting anything done. “It’s another recess week for our lazy leaders,” he wrote. “They are planning to be on vacation—er, doing “constituent work”—17 of the year’s remaining 34 weeks, and even when they are in town (Washington) the typical workweek is three days.”
Milbank is way off base on several counts and on balance, contributes more to the ignorance of his readers than their enlightenment, which you would think would be one of the key tests of whether a responsible news outlet prints or broadcasts anything broadly categorized as news or news commentary. In other words does what is printed or broadcast contribute to the public good; that is more the education than the entertainment of the people the media are trying to help govern themselves? Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
This will be a test. A civility test. I want to talk about this Rush Limbaugh v Bill Maher business of using really bad words to describe people they don’t agree with.
This is not a discussion about contraception or Obama-care or Women’s reproductive rights or free speech.
It will be a discussion about civility. Of which we are in dreadfully short supply these days.
Those of us who are professional political hacks – Republican and Democrat – have been taught since kindergarten that the way to win is to draw the starkest possible distinction between your candidate and your opponent.
If your opponent says it’s dawn, you claim the man was probably up partying until all hours and can’t tell day from night. If your opponent says it’s a nice day, you turn it into a full-blown attack on his belief that global warming is killing baby seals. Continue reading
BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
If Rush were my Mother’s child, she would have washed his mouth out with soap, smacked his butt with a ping pong paddle and sat him in the corner for some quiet time with the Catholic missile to read.
But Rush is no child. He is a powerful voice in and for conservative America who influences both thinking and behavior.
Limbaugh, on Feb. 29th, called a female law school student, who testified at a faux hearing on Capitol Hill in support of insurance payments for contraception, the equivalent of a “slut” and a “prostitute”.
Limbaugh went way beyond the bounds of civility, maturity, simple human decency and most importantly, Christian behavior. Continue reading