You have to wonder when radio talk show hosts on the left and right make jokes about murdering political leaders or foes whether they have a mental problem — or a mental to begin with.
Don’t they read the PAPERS and see what kinds of crazy people we have out there? And I’m not just talking about the ones in Congress.
The latest person to cross a DEFINITE line that EVERYONE knows exists is Air America’s feisty talk show host Randi Rhodes. Out of all of Air America’s hosts she is the one who has the most extensive professional background — but also has come under the most fire from critics and moderates due to her strong positions. At times she sounds like a liberal Rush Limbaugh in a dress (don’t even TRY to imagine that..)
The furor centers on a skit (for which she reportedly apologized on the air today)on her show which apparently had a satirical gunshot warning to President George Bush. Rhodes broadcasts from West Palm Beach, Florida and the bit was produced in New York.
But the decision to air it was still D-U-M-B. Surely she KNOWS that if a junior high school student made any kind of joke about killing the President and someone reported it the Secret Service would be out to question the 7th grader.
According to reports, the Secret Service is indeed looking into the Rhodes segment. But, as legal expert Eugene Volokh notes, its unlikely to go anywhere as far as prosecution since it will likely fall under the area of “protected” speech.
UPDATE (added 4/28) A reader informs us that this is NOT the first time Rhodes has done this. He sends us this link from Jeff Jarvis’ Buzzmachine of May 13. It contains this section from a New York Daily News piece on the debut of the network and Rhodes:
Rock bottom came when she compared Bush and his family to the Corleones in the “Godfather” saga. “Like Fredo, somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw,” she said, imitating the sound of gunfire.
So this is apparently NOT just a case of something that slipped by in a piece by a production company in New York.
There has been the typical firestorm on weblogs today, with criticism from the right and mostly silence from the left or reminders about Ann Coulter’s assassination humor comments about President Clinton. The National Review points to suggestions after the Oklahoma City bombing by President Clinton that conservative talk radio fostered hatreds and perhaps violence.
Fair enough. But conservatives pooh-poohed the idea then that conservative talk show radio could motivate domestic terrorists or crazies.
So when it comes to the issue of trying to be funny by using suggestions of violence in talk radio we have Dumb and Dumber.
This is less a case for the Secret Service than some soul searching about how far the quality of political debate in this country has fallen. Anyone who even remotely jokes about murdering opponents or how nice certain forms of violence might be against those with whom they politically disgree is playing with fire.
There are a lot of genuine nuts out there — and not all of them are the radio talk show hosts and pundits on the right and left who over the past 20 years chose to suggest that the murder of political opponents could somehow be funny.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.