Agression Dominates the Airwaves
Saul Landau
TNI Website, 19 July 2005
W. Bush seems to have inspired not only political extremism in action, but in words
as well, especially on the radio. If you want to hear cruel and mean words just
tune into prime time AM radio. The "John and Ken Show", an afternoon talk
program in Los Angeles, targets "illegal immigrants" and praises vigilantes who
hunt them down. Both John and Ken stopped just short of calling for the immediate
castration of Michael Jackson during pre trial and trial days in the preceding
months.
Mean spiritedness of mouth, however, pales before some really vicious deeds. For
centuries, sectors of peaceful and kind Americans have cohabited with another group
whose pent up aggression has awaited only a tiny provocation for release. The ire
emerged in its full ugliness during the late 17th Century witch trials in Salem
Massachusetts as sexually repressed Puritan elders discovered that the Devil had
infiltrated their Zion in the Wilderness - through the genitals of course.
Although the Puritans failed to spread their mission everywhere on the continent, in
their theocratic attempt to build a sin-free world so that Christ could return and
redeem humankind, they did leave a lasting legacy. Religion, repression, empire and
violence have fit well together ever since as a leitmotif in US history.
For two plus centuries, millions of slaves experienced the cruelty of masters and
lieutenants who routinely beat and raped their work forces and separated families
- all justified, the men of God explained, by the Bible. After slavery, the new
apartheid rulers regularly lynched blacks and effectively segregated much of the
country - deeds again condoned by sections of the politicized clergy who
interpreted segregation as God-given.
Malice took center stage in the personae of the military during the century plus of
Indian wars, imperial battles with "enemies" who possessed inferior military
technology. US officials learned a lesson not fight tough foes with advanced
armaments in the 1812 war to annex Canada from England.
Under commands from the War Department, US troops massacred tribes and stole their
land. The US invasion and occupation of Indian lands stands as a cruel and
aggressive imperial model. (Indeed, both President Bushes criticized Saddam Hussein
for doing similar deeds in Kuwait in 1990.)
US soldiers carried out massacres when they occupied the Philippines (1898-1932). US
occupation armies in Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua behaved in similar fashion.
What could have been crueler than the World War II dropping of nuclear bombs on two
Japanese cities, the fire bombing of civilian populations in Germany and Japan?
And the ugly side of the American face showed out of uniform in recent bombings of
the Oklahoma Federal Building and countless abortion clinics - not by fanatic
Muslims, but by home grown, US-army trained young men.
The cruel deeds also find their reflection on the airwaves. The nasty talking addict
Rush Limbaugh wanted to jail other addicts and give the death sentence to dealers.
Listen, but only once, please, to the homicidal ranting of Michael Savage and the
Puritanical orthodoxy of Dr. Laura, who posed naked for the camera while living in
sin - a situation she deplores for other women. But these political potty mouths
pale before the recent folksy wit of perennial radio talker Paul Harvey.
At 86 and fresh from signing a ten year $100 million contract with Disney-ABC, this
radio perennial personality apparently decided that the time had finally come for
him to articulate a point of view that he felt certain his listeners would share.
On June 23, he said on his daily ABC radio show: "I've been choking on something
for weeks. Let's get it up and get it out, for what it's worth. After the attack
on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill said that the American people and this is a
direct quote: `We didn't come this far because we are made of sugar candy.' That
was his response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. And that reminder was taken
seriously and we proceeded to develop and deliver the bomb even though roughly
150,000 men, women and children perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With a single
blow, World War II was over."
Did he get your attention? Now for the application of history to the present, Harvey
labeled New York's September 11 Pearl Harbor. Winston Churchill was not here to
remind us that we didn't come this far because we are made of sugar candy. So
following the New York disaster we mustered our humanity, we gave old pals a pass
even though men and money from Saudi Arabia were largely responsible for the
devastation of New York and Pennsylvania and our Pentagon. We called Saudi Arabia
our partners against terrorism and we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq
and we kept our best weapons in their silos. Even now, we're standing there dying,
daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our
terrorist enemies, more moral, more civilized. Our image is at stake, we insist.
Harvey did not pause for his traditional transition to a commercial.
He continued: "We didn't come this far because we are made of sugar candy. Once
upon a time we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving smallpox
infected blankets to Native Americans. Yes, that was biological warfare. And we used
every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever and we
grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves."
A lightning course on how the United States became a great nation! "And so it goes
with most great nation-states, which feeling guilty about their savage pasts,
eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately
dominated by the lean, hungry, up and coming who are not made of sugar candy." Paul
Harvey - Good Day.
Harvey made a case for slavery, genocide and nuclear and biological warfare as
legitimate methods with which to build "our" great nation. On Disney-owned
stations, which syndicate Harvey to over 1,000 radio stations with an estimated
audience of 18 million! Disney-ABC has not informed his listeners that Paul Harvey
served in the US Army Air Corps from 1942-44 and was discharged via Section 8 -
mental illness.
What a transformation from Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy! Disney drew these
family-friendly animals without genitals - to make them unthreatening, or protect
children from the knowledge that even animals have them? He even drew white gloves
over their paws - for purity or to cover up the fact that paws are not exactly
hands.
In 2004, Michael Moore tried to distribute his film Fahrenheit 9/11 through
Disney's subsidiary Miramax, which was also the principal investor in the film.
The New York Times (May 5, 2004) reported that a Disney executive said since "Disney
caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore's film...could
alienate many" it would not allow Miramax to distribute the movie.
The Disney executives have thus far not seemed concerned about Paul Harvey's
endorsement of a variety of what several treaties define as crimes against humanity
and war crimes - slavery and targeting civilian populations with nuclear and bio
weapons. Nor do Disney executives fear that censuring Harvey might offend millions
of those mean spirited people who listen to his folksy and reactionary platitudes.
Consider the 17 hours a week of prime time slots given to Limbaugh and Dr. Laura.
Count the hours given at prime time to angry right wing ranters and ravers like
Michael Savage, Al Rantel, Larry Elder, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North. Indeed,
these extremists almost monopolize the talk show time. On AM and FM religious
stations, fundamentalist preachers dominate; their politics dovetail with the more
secular mountebanks on non-religious radio. Ironically, the talk show hosts chime in
as one loud chorus in their complaint about "liberal control of the media."
As liberals waxed eloquent in their condemnation of the US tortures of Iraqis at Abu
Ghraib, Limbaugh suggested that the prison guards were "just having fun" and
"blowing off some steam." Limbaugh's idea of "harmless fun" included
sodomizing prisoners, attaching wires to the fingers, toes, and penis of another to
simulate electric torture and raping children. Like fraternity and sorority parties
at fun-loving campuses, the MPs at Abu Ghraib just played around as a male soldier
raped a female prisoner.
Imperial aggression, from the Puritans' notion of spreading the Word to George W.
Bush's spreading-democracy-everywhere, coincides with cruel and illegal behavior.
It also jibes with dangerous and close to the surface feelings of millions of people
in this country. In the name of God and goodness, our soldiers, ordered by their
political leaders, have done terrible things around the world. The least articulate
of these psychopaths wait for words from "authorities" like Paul Harvey and the
other charlatans of AM air time to tell them that God, democracy and greatness all
justify their urges toward homicidal violence.
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