Update: I’d like to partially retract my introductory notes to this guest post, to scale back the vitriol in the first paragraph. As Collin and Matt have pointed out, we don’t know if this was deliberate, and I ought to give them the benefit of the doubt. That was Matt’s intention, which I stand by. Thanks for keeping me honest, guys.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We’re fools to expect much better from right-wing talk radio. I just thought that Limbaugh and his counterparts wouldn’t sink so low as to openly – not accidentally – equate Barack Obama, a sitting senator, with Osama Bin Laden.
Well, that line has been crossed, and apparently more than once. Below, please find a guest post by Matt, a good friend of mine and the proprietor of wavedash.net. If this practice is as prevalent as Matt indicates, Barack Obama ought to ask McCain to denounce these radio hosts for trying to win a campaign with racism. After all, let’s take McCain at face value.
Matt lays out the facts for us in this letter, which he wrote to Mark Davis, one of the offending hosts:
I’m concerned.
I was driving in to work today, and while trapped on the Tollway I flipped to the Mark Davis show. Mark was segueing in to a discussion about Barack Obama’s staff turning away two headscarved women.
It’s worth talking about, and though I’m an ardent Obama supporter, it was refreshing to hear you analyze the decision in a way that didn’t immediately sling charges of racism and hypocrisy. Yet for all of the intelligent discussion, you introduced him as Osama Bin Laden.
To paraphrase, your introduction went: “Ok, so lets talk about Osama Bin Laden. Apparently two headscarved women were turned away…”
Don’t most radio shows have a buffer to remove instances of swearing and other FCC-regulated blunders? Though I was only in the car for the next ten minutes, there was no acknowledgment, no retraction, no apology. And if you do have that few-second buffer to dump a mistake, that makes the oversight all the more pernicious.
Even more troubling, when I flipped to Limbaugh on Monday, he did the same thing. He introduced Obama as Osama without so much as a blink.
Perhaps you’ve had a deluge of emails complaining about this all-too-common slip. But I’ve always respected the Mark Davis show for what I consider a high standard in intelligent conversation. I’m shocked that I would hear two respected radio hosts stoop to such a low level in the same week. The names are close and psychological priming makes fools of us all, but your show is a professional production. That mistake should never happen in a serious discussion. Perpetuating the Osama/Obama flub, even with a coy “oops” or sincere apology, poisons the well and disqualifies any discussion it appears in.
Making the mistake months ago, when even CNN was guilty, is different than continually committing the same error.
It’s June. Almost July. If a host can’t get Obama’s name right after so many months, what other mistakes is he making and not correcting? If it has reduced to petty name calling hidden behind veiled Freudian slips, then your show no longer poses value to a liberal like myself who listens intently to the other side.
I hope this was a rare occurrence, and that I simply chose the wrong day to tune in.
I hope that John McCain hears about this and takes the time to denounce it. It’s smears like this that cost McCain his candidacy in 2000 – remember the black baby? – and, having promised to run a clean campaign, this incident is iconic of the very evil that he decries. It’s also a good chance to either (1) make McCain look like a hypocrite if he refuses to condemn the hosts, or (2) drive a wedge between McCain and the talk radio crowd. Win, win for Barack Obama, but the situation is already a lose for America.
Thanks for the guest post, Ames. Though I feel the need to point out my… even handedness. As this was a letter directly to Mark Davis, I didn’t want to give any openings for ad hominem attacks. Who knows, maybe he’ll respond?
But, for more bad news, check out this post by Kos on the very same subject. Posted today, even.
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/19/121824/334/618/538402
Posted by Matt | June 19, 2008, 4:18 pm“this incident is iconic of the very evil that he decries. ”
Uh, that’s IF it was done on purpose. WHICH we don’t know. In the average live radio or television show, there is so much going on that all kinds of things get misstated. If you pay attention, flubs like this are all over the place. But nobody gets bent out of shape most of the time because they aren’t usually on things that people are so sensitive about.
The letter talks about “continually committing the same error,” which is silly because it sweeps over the fact that it’s being done by different people. Nobody here is on a campaign to conflate a Senator with a terrorist, though I know plenty of liberals who love to imagine that stuff like that happens within the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
For Heaven’s sake, Ted Kennedy committed this same mistake. Was it evil then? No, because he wasn’t trying to compare Obama to Osama. Well, neither is anybody else.
The “if you don’t know Obama by now, when will you get it right?” argument isn’t persuasive because, in every case, the speaker knows who Obama is and who Osama is. It’s not a question of genuine mental confusion. It’s a slip of the tongue, which is brought on by a moment’s inattention and the fact that the names are one letter apart.
Posted by Collin | June 19, 2008, 4:39 pmI mean the right-wing radio talk shows already say very extreme inappropriate things. I’m sure you can find a list a mile long for Rush or any of them. I mean this just came out from Limbaugh’s show saying the New Orleans were whining http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/19/limbaugh-black-katrina-victims-%E2%80%98whined-and-moaned%E2%80%99-white-iowa-flood-victims-are-%E2%80%98backbone-of-america%E2%80%99/
And these slip ups are going to continue to happen. Especially since Obama is a favorite target. Just today: http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/19/121824/334/618/538402
I haven’t decided if all of these are on purpose or part of a strategy, but it really shouldn’t be happening this often.
Posted by oneiroi | June 19, 2008, 4:47 pmFor here, I’d reargue Matt’s points – kennedy was then, this is several months later, and radio shows have filters. If it was a mistake, they should’ve canned it.
Posted by Ames | June 19, 2008, 4:54 pm“Kennedy was then” – I already argued against that point and your reply is nonresponsive.
“If it was a mistake, they should’ve canned it.” Fair enough, but we don’t even give them a chance to explain themselves before we shout “evil” and “slander.”
I just reread the opening paragraph to this entry and I have to add that it’s representative of what most consistently disappoints me about this site.
First, ad hominem language like that above really doesn’t fit with the idea of a measured (scientific?) analysis of facts.
Second, the writing on this site jumps to conclusions that aren’t adequately supported by evidence. We take examples of a limited set of distinct people, each once committing the same mistake, and out of that we construe a trend that is “consistent” across “right-wing” talk radio (when it’s more accurate to say it’s consistent across the media). We don’t wait to determine whether these statements were intentional or give the host the opportunity to explain or apologize before we start crying “evil” and “slander.”
The fact that this site features an exclusively “progressive” viewpoint exacerbates each of these tendencies. When you’re surrounded by people who may disagree with you, you cautiously advance with points that stay within the evidence that supports them. When there’s a good chance your audience already agrees with you, you feel freer (pun intended) to go beyond the careful thing to say. And beyond that, it’s preaching to the choir.
You can certainly do that, but it’s turning me off.
Posted by Collin | June 19, 2008, 5:04 pmThat’s sage advice. And I like that you read and comment, so I take it very seriously. I don’t want to be too preaching-to-the-choiry, so thanks for the candid criticism. I’ll start to be carefuler.
I do think that it’s within the evidence for this one, though: especially for Mark Davis to go for the whole long name – Osama Bin Laden – connotes either willful blindness or intent. And maybe Limbaugh’s not actually that bad, but as a former Savage listener, I’m used to expecting these people to cross all kinds of lines.
Posted by Ames | June 19, 2008, 5:16 pmCollin, you’re right. Matt agrees too. I’ve written up a partial retraction. Thanks for keeping me honest :-)
Posted by Ames | June 19, 2008, 6:02 pm“Carefuler”? If you insist on making up words, Ames, please do so properly; that’s “carefuller” to you.
Posted by Radioactive afikomen | June 19, 2008, 6:52 pmForgot the smiley-face on the end. Just pretend there’s one there, kay? : )
Posted by Radioactive afikomen | June 19, 2008, 6:53 pmThanks Ames! I was bracing myself for a serious flaming so thanks for being receptive. Didn’t mean to be harsh – I wouldn’t have said anything if it weren’t already a great blog I already liked.
Posted by Collin | June 20, 2008, 9:17 am