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Those scientists who look for the effects of ozone depletion or acid rain waste their time studying things like frogs and trees, when the result of environmental degradation is obvious in American humans -- some skins are getting thinner every day.
For evidence, note the reaction of talk-radio hosts to President Bill Clinton's observation that acts like G. Gordon Liddy's explanation of how to kill a BATF agent might be contributing to a climate of hatred in this country.
The reaction from many thin-skinned talk-radio hosts was about the same as if Clinton had announced that he was suspending the First Amendment, revoking every license and stationing soldiers in control rooms, just to be sure.
They acted as though receiving presidential criticism was a novelty, when in fact it is an American tradition that extends back to the founding fathers.
Only 25 years have passed since Vice-President Spiro
Agnew (actually, his speechwriter, William Safire)
denounced the nattering nabobs of negativism
and
the effete corps of impudent snobs
on the television
networks that his boss, Richard Nixon, deemed too
liberal.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was so frustrated by conservative
editors and publishers, whom he believed were putting a
negative spin on everything their chattels reported from
Washington, that he took to addressing the public directly
through his radio Fireside Chats.
Sometimes Roosevelt personally denounced Col. Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, for his isolationism, opposition to the New Deal and accusations that Roosevelt secretly wanted to become a dictator.
To Theodore Roosevelt we owe the term muckrakers
for investigative reporters who find scandals. But
Roosevelt didn't mean it as a compliment. He was referring
to a character in Pilgrim's Progress, a man that could
look no way but downwards with a muckrake in his hand
-- that is, reporters so busy uncovering the horrors of
Standard Oil and patent medicines that they failed to
promote his Square Deal and Great White Fleet.
The Chicago Times gave this review of Abraham Lincoln's
1863 Gettysburg Address: The cheek of every American
must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, false and
dishwatery utterances of the man who has been pointed out
to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United
States.
Lincoln, in turn, allowed generals to close certain newspapers (among them the Chicago Times) and permitted his postmaster-general to deny mailing privileges to opposition newspapers. Generally he relented after a few days, after his point had been made.
Granted, Thomas Jefferson once wrote that were it
left to me to decide whether we should have a government
without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I
should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
But 20 years later, during his presidency, after
political campaigns wherein allegations of affairs with
Sally Hemings were common currency, Jefferson also wrote
that Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a
newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put
into that polluted vessel.
So it's nothing new for presidents to be criticized in the media, and it's nothing new for presidents to respond with criticism of their own. That right-wing talk-radio hosts now act as though they're being singled out in some unprecedented assault on civil liberties indicates nothing more than their ignorance of American history.
Unlike Abraham Lincoln and John Adams, Bill Clinton did
not prosecute commentators who offended him. Nor did he
send federal marshals to close their shops. He didn't even
threaten to bring back the FCC fairness doctrine,
which used to require broadcast outlets, on pain of losing
their licenses, to provide equal time to all political
viewpoints.
All he did was propose that some talk shows contribute to a climate of hatred which might embolden certain weak-minded mad bombers. As propositions go, it wasn't even as extreme as Newt Gingrich's observation last fall that, if you want more women to drown their children, then vote for those evil Democrats who encourage that sort of murder with their soft-on-welfare policies.
So let's forget the whining of the talk-radio industry. It's probably a last gasp from a phenomenon whose 15 minutes of fame are about over.
Why? Talk radio started as a sort of everyman's town
meeting. Daily it becomes more rabid and marginal. Rush
Limbaugh, whatever his other flaws, is a good entertainer.
But the focus has moved past Limbaugh to felons like G.
Gordon Liddy and Oliver North, to convicted child-abusers
and the like. Soon there will be hosts who quote often from
Mein Kampf
and threaten to gas offending
callers.
As that trend continues, talk radio will end up like professional wrestling -- so hyped that no one takes it seriously -- and the Internet will take over as the site for everyman's town meeting.
Instead of snapping at the President, the right-wing talk-show hosts should have felt flattered that at least one person still thinks they matter. They will soon be irrelevant, and they'll have brought it on themselves.
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