The Politics of Mean, by Dori Smith, September 30, 2005

On September 28, 2005, Talk Nation Radio aired an interview with Paul Waldman, a senior fellow at Media Matters. Waldman discussed the often extreme comments of conservative pundit Richard Lowry, editor of the National Review. Earlier in the month Lowry debated David Corn of the liberal Magazine, The Nation, in Connecticut.

Richard Lowry is often introduced as a scholarly figure on U.S. policy. In many of his debates and speeches though he does not focus on the facts of any policies or delve into scholarly analysis about the facts. He makes highly suggestive and mean comments and people take them to be jokes, his often conservative audiences laugh.

Before a sympathetic Republican student group for instance, Richard Lowry joked that he and his New York friends put “run Hillary (Clinton) run” bumper stickers on the fronts of their cars. The “joke” was that they might run her over or run her out of politics.

Lowry has also “joked” about Syria, where he said the “only exports –were
terrorism and pistachio nuts.” He “jokingly” compared Al Gore’s behavior to that of a “mean monkey,” and when bloggers raised the astonishingly militant idea of nuking the holy Muslim city of Mecca, Richard Lowry didn’t say this would be horrifying, instead, he had a long list of other cities Middle East that should be targeted.

It is the politics of far out far right mean, and Lowry is a veteran of high stakes combat.
His vitriol always comes down on the side of the hard Republican right, and often the Christian right, Bush’s political support network.

As we were preparing to post the transcript of the Media Matters interview the watchdog group put some shocking comments by Bill Bennett, who is also thought of as a scholar by many Americans. Bennett was Education Secretary under Ronald Reagan, but he told a caller to his right wing radio show aired by Salem Radio Network,
“[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”

Media Matters also helped call attention to Pat Robertson’s remarks that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be assassinated. The founder of the Christian Broadcast Network, (CBN) said: “You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. –It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war … and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.”

Media Matter’s Paul Waldman explained such purveyors of hate often fly under the radar and are not well monitored by mainstream reporters. “When {Robertson} made those comments about advocating the assassination of Hugo Chavez,” Waldman explained, “we put up an item about it on our web site and told reporters about it and most reporters probably don’t watch the 700 club so they would never have known, then it began to get some attention and Republicans felt that they had to distance themselves from him and he was discredited all over America.”

Robertson’s words have set off a firestorm of media activity and discussion on the internet, and the same thing is happening in the case of Bill Bennett, whose remarks have been heavily criticized by a variety of Democrats and even President Bush, according to Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

On CNN Live September 30, 2005, columnist Tom Oliphant said Bennett was opening a scab over an American wound left by racism. The question is, were his remarks intentionally divisive? Was Bennett intentionally provoking a controversy in order to call attention to his radio show and win over far right wing listeners? And perhaps most importantly, why have the Christian corporations airing programs by Bill Bennett and Pat Robertson not distanced themselves from their atrocious remarks?

When the BBC asked a spokeswoman for the Christian Broadcasting Network about Robertson’s remarks about Chavez she said: “We are at a time of war and Pat had war on his mind when he made the comments.”

Charles Mefford, Operations Manager at Salem Communications, which syndicates Bennett’s program defended him, said “we support his program,” and that Bennett would not be fired. Mefford said “liberal blogs distorted the news coverage” and asked me if I had watched Bennett’s remarks on Hannity and Colmes.

Here is what Bill Bennett told FOX’s Hannity and Colmes on September 30th
“–People need to follow the argument and the argument I was making here is entirely plausible. The causes of crime are very complicated. But there is a very big literature, as you know, about single parenthood in crime, about race in crime, and about poverty in crime. And we’ve been talking about all these things lately in the context of New Orleans and other things.”

Yet Mefford insisted that Bennett’s follow up remarks about aborting all of the black babies in America were “taken out of context,” and not at all racist. “He is not advocating [aborting black babies] at all,” Mefford explained. He said Bennett was merely “quoting a book,” saying, “these arguments about abortion need to be argued on the basis of morality, -this was a scholarly debate.”

Educators beware. The Salem Communications web site featuring Bennett’s program “Morning in America” has a link to his web page for K12, an educational resource for schools and those doing home schooling. Bennett is the founder of K12 and its web site features a picture of an African American child with the caption; “Every Child is Unique and Precious.”

At the moment purveyors of mean such as Bill Bennett, Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter, and Pat Robertson, are counting on a support network within the Bush Administration and various news outlets. They see the Republican FOX News network and Salem Communications as safe havens that will bring continued success for their right wing statements about America or Iraq.
Yet, as Americans continue to discover that the Bush Administration has ripped them off in the setting up of reconstruction contracts in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Baghdad; as the Iraqi people face civil war instead of the democracy Bush promised, the President’s approval ratings are sure to keep falling.

At the moment, the American people do not appear to accept the kind of rationales Bill Bennett offered on FOX about the people New Orleans, and hopefully, members of right leaning Christian audiences will start to see through the kind of mixed messages they have been given about morality by those who would move them farther to the right to support candidates like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.