Hatred's Silent Abettors

When police searched Jim Adkisson's home after he entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church bent on killing they discovered the following books: "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio host, Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by Bill O'Reilly.

Beside them was a four-page letter in which the killer explained that he was targeting the church on account of its liberal teachings. That he believed all liberals should be killed for ruining the country, and that "every institution in America" was being destroyed by the liberal media. And since he "could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."

That is how the story was first reported in the Knoxville News yet to add a second layer of irony when the news appeared in the NYTimes not a single reference was made to the shooter's reading list.

Lets take a look at the sort of invective that the NYTimes chose to ignore even though it was directly responsible for Mr. Adkisson's disturbed world view.

Sean Hannity:"there are things in life worth fighting and dying for, and one of 'em is making sure" that House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA) "doesn't become the speaker."

Mr. Savage: "I'd hang every lawyer that went down to Guantanamo"

"Bring in 10 million more from Africa. ... They can't reason, but bring them in with a machete in their head"

Mr. O'Reilly: You want to blow up San Francisco ... go ahead!"

Mr. Limbaugh:"the Islamofascists are actually campaigning for the election of Democrats"

"They’re [liberals]hiding in the shadows, and they are lurking there, and they’re around and the odds are that many of them are in the school system."

"I say we round up all the drug addicts and gas them."

Prosecuting the Abettors

After the Rwandan tragedy in 1994 a tribunal determined that the media was largely culpable for inciting the genocide. Print journalists and radio hosts were tried and convicted yet here we have an act of political terrorism and our major newspapers along with the T.V. networks choose to ignore the obvious.

Here are some of the latest fruits owed to our right-wing polemicists:

Town struggles with fallout from immigrant's fatal beating

Boy's killing labeled hate crime

Extremists declare "Open Season" on undocumented workers

FBI Arrests Domestic Terrorist, Christian Nationalist

White Supremacist Group Infiltrated

Bomb-maker talked of Obama, Clinton assassination

WMD Plot Uncovered In East Texas:

Taken separately such cases might be viewed as predictable in a country this size. But since in every case the victims coincided with the very people the haters consistently target one would think that the supposedly "liberal" media, having been slandered as Anti-American, would want to shed a little sunshine on exactly how these home-grown thugs and terrorists acquire their distorted opinions.

I realize the press has come to meekly accept the Bushes' Big Lies. But seeing that the Times itself has a bullseye on its back one would think they would want to expose these overpaid vermin who strangle all attempts at intelligent political discourse by demonizing their critics.

Of course, when you're no longer all that interested in reporting the inconvenient truths the more smoke being blown into the public's eyes makes it that much easier to please your equivalent corporate masters.