Coleen Rowley: "...Just Denounce the Pacifists for Lack of Patriotism..."

How uncanny that exactly 40 years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated during the Vietnam War (and some think possibly because of his opposition to the Vietnam War), we would turn on our radios to hear a Twin Cities radio host re-applying the principles of Hermann Goering to plans for the upcoming anti-war march on the Republican National Convention (RNC). If you listen (here), you won't hear anything resembling "Minnesota Nice" on Chris Baker's show yesterday, the program that comes on before Rush Limbaugh's. His vitriolic, denouncing rants came in bursts between interviews with a Minneapolis Assistant Police Chief and Minneapolis Police Federation President John Delmonico as to how the right-wing radio host "can't stand these protesting varmints", "these spitting, frothing at the mouth lunatics", including his opinion that "protesting is an industry funded by billionaires and communist organizations (and) they are well coordinated and incredibly dangerous."

Baker's tirades were sparked by a Star Tribune newspaper article that reported apparent disagreements between Minneapolis police officials as to whether police officers patrolling at the time of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul should be armed with riot helmets, chemical spray and Taser guns for use on protesters.

The radio talk host demonstrated little effort to engage in legitimate debate on these issues and soon transcended from merely disparaging remarks to something far worse, coming very close to, if not crossing the line, of basically inciting violence against those he called the "stinky protesters."

After Delmonico agreed that "one of the (protesters') main missions is destruction," Baker added, "You must have order, you cannot have a civilized society without order and if that means cracking a few skulls, so be it...a good ole boy network is what you need and hand out some ax handles."

The absolutely worst tirade, however, comes towards the end of the program after the interviews with the police, when KTLK host Chris Baker lets go with this ostensible incitement to violence: "So we've been talking about police protection during the upcoming convention when all those stinky protesters are coming. There seems to be a big debate over whether or not police officers will be able to wear helmets, carry shields, use pepper spray and tasers on this crowd. You know, I'll tell you what works on a crowd like this--a machine gun, that always works very well."

"Mow 'em down, baby!" excitedly adds Baker's co-host "Jordan".

It doesn't take an expert on the First Amendment to recognize that suggesting the "good ole boy network" hand out ax handles and machine guns be used to mow a crowd down comes close to inciting violence...[Open in new window]
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I hope the next FCC Commissioner isn't a 'crony'. There are so many weak & damaged minds out there listening to the spew of 'snarling heads' on radio & TV. The nuts & the doofusses (doofii?) really make public life dangerous. The nuts believe this shit, the doofii, raised on MTV, think shit-disturbing & violence for no reason is 'funny'. With their night-sticks, ax-handles & baseball bats, you don't have to be Freud to get the picture. Whether they actually do or not, they 'think' they have little penises. Jacking these people up with incitements to violence is like yelling fire in a crowded theater. It's just not covered by the first amendment to the constitution.
Start with Rush & O'Reilly & work down to the grade z bottom-feeders like the guy in this article; get them off the public air-waves. In no sense are they serving the public good.