CNN Advocates Killing Howard Dean-- They Should Lose Their Broadcast License

CNN anchor Lou Dobbs has apparently gone insane. Or was he drunk yesterday when he called for the death of Howard Dean (below) or when he distorted what Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer said about disruptive teabaggers keeping citizens from having discussions with their elected representatives? Dobbs is a divisive ratings whore, willing to lie and slander anyone with his self righteous Know Nothing rants to drive his sinking ratings up. CNN should be ashamed. They should also lose their broadcast license for inciting violence, assassination and murder.



This morning I watched the Senate's resident dingbat, Missouri Democrat (ugghhh) Claire McCaskill at a town hall meeting demonizing something she apparently doesn't understand, single payer health insurance, after some Dobbs or Limbaugh or Beck-fueled constituent got up and started raving about the slippery slope to socialism. Imagine if Missouri had a senator who could explain what the health insurance racket is and how single payer health care reform could benefit them and their families instead of using Insurance Industry talking points straight from the GOP playbook. But then, of course, Ms, McCaskill-- only in office for a couple years-- has already scooped up $352,900 from the Medical-Industrial Complex and another $71,339 from Big Insurance... plenty of reasons to not try too hard to understand what single payer actually is. She sounds a lot like a Republican, even like an imbecile like Peter King (R-NY) who calls reform "radical" and validates Insurance Industry anti-health care memes. King assures his listeners he wants "some" reform while the Insurance CEOs and their lobbyists and astro-turf outfits are acknowledging that their goal is "no reform at all."

It's funny that the corporate media-- more, except in Fox's case, for ratings than for an ideological agenda-- is propping up the Republican jihad against health care reform, spreading partisan fear and smear and inciting people to violence.

It is this broader context that makes CNN's decision to lend its good name to the birther conspiracy so egregious and so dangerous. With the blessing of the network, Lou Dobbs has given the smear an unparalleled level of credibility by reporting it as an ongoing and unresolved story. His coverage is part of a career spent advancing prejudicial, anti-immigrant, and conspiratorial right-wing canards. He has also portrayed Obama as a "socialist" and compared him to fascist dictators. Again, this from a "journalist" with a prime time show on CNN, the self-described "most trusted name in news," a network that has publicly advocated its political neutrality and commitment to serious, fact-based reporting.

There isn't a single progressive issue that isn't in danger of being overwhelmed by this right-wing campaign and its central narrative. Health care reform is a socialist takeover. Restructuring bankrupt companies is a ruse designed to give the government direct control over the economy. Obama's speech in Cairo was part of a "Muslim apology tour" that shows how eager he is to blame America first and how unwilling he is to defend it (he is, after all, a false Christian, important to those who irrationally fear Islam). In the absence of any new legislation involving gun ownership, Democrats are still supposedly committed to overturning the Second Amendment which will further support tyranny. New environmental regulations and green energy promotion represent an encroachment upon personal liberty, an excuse for more federal power and higher federal taxes, all based on the myth of global warming. No matter what progressive issue you pick, conservatives are working to turn it into nothing less than sedition, carried out by an illegal president who is actually a traitor. The conservative media is their megaphone, with the mainstream media all-too often following suit.

The future success of every progressive initiative will be impacted by what information the American people receive. We must respond forcefully, swiftly, and collectively to counteract the distorting and dangerous impact of the right-wing noise machine whenever and wherever it appears. And we must demand integrity from mainstream news organizations. If there is any doubt about what progressives are up against, consider the fact that last week, Dobbs officially abandoned his self-appointed "Mr. Independent" label. "What do you think you're doing Barack Obama?" he said on his radio show, accusing the president of promoting "mindless, churlish, un-American nonsense." He continued: "I'm moving from being an independent, sir, to being absolutely opposed to any policy you could conceive of." Yet just days earlier, he had told Don Imus that CNN president Jon Klein and "all of the folks at CNN are just terrifically supportive."

If we can't even prevent CNN from functioning as a right-wing propaganda organ, then we have no hope of ever getting a fair hearing on any issue.

Conservative goals and tactics will not change on their own. The Right will keep doing what works. Whenever the increasingly prevalent right-wing cry of "I want my country back!" is heard, progressives must understand what is behind the words, and realize that unless they act, we will lose the greatest opportunity in a generation to redefine the American political landscape.

So while Eric Cantor's and Mitt Romney's Republican Party rebranding effort of a few months ago has flamed out entirely, the Republicans have learned they don't actually have to do anything remotely proactive-- just throw bricks at whatever the president wants to accomplish and count on the deranged penny-media nuts to blow it up into national outrage. Every single CNN employee should feel ashamed of what their company is doing to America. And, as Paul Krugman noted Sunday, explaining that the GOP doesn't have to do anything but obstruct and demonize: "We do know, however, what Republicans in opposition have been saying-- and it boils down to demanding that the government stop standing in the way of a possible depression."

Charles Pierce put it all into perspective in his brilliant book, Idiot America:

This long, slow march from the debacle of the Goldwater campaign of 1964 through the triumph of Ronald Reagan and, ultimately, the consolidation of power under George W. Bush from 2000 to 2008 depended in everything on how tightly the movement fasted itself to popular irrationality from economics to fringe religion. The movement swallowed whole the quack doctrine of supply-side economics, adopting it with almost comically ferocious zeal... [And i]n June 2007, a Gallup poll found that 68 percent of the Republicans surveyed said that they did not believe in evolution at all. And this was the ascendant political power at the time.

Movement conservatism was so successful that it drove its own media, particularly talk radio, and conservative media fed back the enthusiasm into the movement, energizing it further. The movement's gift for confrontation was ideally suited to media in which controversy drove ratings, which then drove the controversy, and so forth. The more traditional media joined in, attracted, as they always are, by power and success. The more the movement succeeded politically, the tighter it was bound to the extremes that helped power it.

Here's Obama in New Hampshire today. CNN and MSNBC carried it live. Fox, never wanting facts to get in the way of their reporting, didn't. I especially liked this line in the beginning: "I don't think government bureaucrats should be meddling [with your health care decisions] but I also don't think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling." The audience seemed to appreciate that too.