Since I posted yesterday about Michael DelGiorno, the embodiment of irresponsible talk radio broadcasting, agitating parents with propaganda and sending them to your kids’ schools, I’ve heard from several conservative friends and acquaintances. They tell me they don’t have a problem with President Obama addressing public school kids next week and encouraging them, in the words of Republican Congressman Congressional Candidate Tim Gobble, “to work hard and stay in school to succeed.”

OK. I’ll buy that. A Tweet here, an email there, a random blog post, all saying that the loud voices you hear equating President Obama’s address and indoctrination don’t speak for them. And I totally believe them. I totally get that it’s a very, very, very vocal minority. But where are conservatives leaders on this? Why are they so silent?!

Are they silent because they are afraid they’ll have to apologize to Rush 24 hours later? Or are they so “disciplined” that they can’t even break ranks to condemn this over-the-top demonization of the President’s intent?

Where is Mitch McConnell? And John Kyl? Hello, Olympia Snowe? This would be a perfect time for Lamar Alexander to peak out from behind the curtain. What about John McCain? Or Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi, the ranking member on the Senate Education committee? What about all the elected Republicans who sponsored and/or voted for No Child Left Behind? I know Lindsay Graham has some humanity left in him. And David Brooks and George Will must think this is totally redonk.

Is it true? Are the inmates running the asylum? Are the most thoughtful and/or high-profile conservatives afraid to cross the cable news/talk radio cabal?

Edited: Tim Gobble is not an elected official, he is running for Congress in Tennessee’s 3rd District.

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Go ahead, Google Obama Youth. I dare you.

Go ahead, Google Obama Youth. I dare you.

Michael DelGiorno continues his irresponsible broadcasting today on 99.7 WTN, firing up parents of school-aged children by applying historically combustible rhetoric to President Obama, and then sending these highly agitated parents to your kids’ schools.

Next Tuesday, President Barack Obama will deliver a national address to the students of in public schools across the country to encourage the kids, as a letter from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan states on the Ed.gov website, to “challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.”

Age appropriate follow-up discussions and activities have also been set up for kids in grades K-6 and 7- 12.

And away DelGiorno goes. But not before prefacing his fear-not-fact-based harangue against President Obama’s address to classrooms with this:

“By the way, may I say that doing this, in and of itself…there’s nothing wrong with that if the President sticks to the text we are being pre-given. There’s nothing wrong with that. The motive? The real agenda? And oh, by the way, the real curriculum behind it? Might be troubling. Here. Follow the bouncing ball.”

The subtext is, of course, “don’t look at the facts, listen to my insinuations and snide tone and be very afraid because the bogeyman is out to get your children.”

So believing it his purpose in life to drag everything down into the gutter with him, DelGiorno then used a good portion of his 3-hour radio show yesterday to sully President Obama’s address. Sandwiched between words llike “Hitler,” “indoctrinating,” and “scary stuff,” he said the following:

  • Barack Obama was going to “seize control of the internet”
  • Barack Obama will “keep everybody’s name and archive them who speak ill of his policies”
  • “I don’t need the President to raise my kids”
  • The first time any president has “spoken in secret on the internet directly to people’s kids”
  • “Public education is not about education anymore it’s about indoctrination, and they (the Obama administration/Department of Education) prove it here”
  • “Students will accept Barack Obama as their Lord & Saviour”
  • “Does the speech make you want to do anything…besides kill yourself…”
  • “They’re going to make a whole freakin’ semester out of the President”

As you know from reading about his proclivity to falsely label President Obama the “antichrist,” DelGiorno lies to further his agenda (which, by the way, is to scare the living daylights out of his fellow Americans/Christians). He didn’t disappoint when yesterday he told his listeners that the President’s address will be broadcast to their kids directly to their classrooms – in secret over the internet – so parents won’t be able to watch it. Why not on TV?, he asked. Because, he said answering his own question, they don’t want you to know how they are indoctrinating your kids.

DELGIORNO: How do you feel, in general, about the President of the United States, while you’re at work, through a website and through the teachers, are going to talk to your kids…without you there…about something you don’t know what he’s going to do? About something you don’t know what they’re going to do in classroom? I thought it was interesting. He’s either really web-oriented….why not talk to them over television? Why the internet?
SIDEKICK: Or he views them much like the Muslims do, the Vanguard of the Future. [A nudge nudge wink wink to "socialism" and Hitler youth].
DELGIORNO: Takes a radical broad to say that. You got guts girl.
SIDEKICK: Thank you.

The truth is, the address will be available to anyone to watch on the White House website as well as on *Ta Dah* C-SPAN, which the last time I checked was TV. The address will also be streamed live online at C-SPAN.org, and on C-SPAN Radio (90.1 FM in Washington, D.C., and channel 132 on XM Satellite Radio)

The simple, easily-proven truth is easy to ignore when it can’t be used to further your fear-based conservative talk radio agenda, isn’t it?

Today, DelGiorno didn’t even bother prefacing his comments but he did add what I’m sure he thinks is a grand idea to his bile. An idea he so expertly pretended (like he pretends with all his ideas) to think up all on his own you could almost hear the fake light-bulb go on atop his head.

Instead of keeping your kids at home on Tuesday, he thought “spontaneously,” why not go to school with them? That’ll show ‘em (meaning principals and teachers), he said.

So DelGiorno is firing up parents with insinuations – that the government is trying to indoctrinate their kids into a Socialist Hitler-like Obama Youth (as I heard one parent-caller today describe it), that he is making them pledge their allegiance to the President (instead of the country), and that the government wants to whip up blind allegiance in you kids in the same way terrorists want to whip it up in theirs – and then sending them in that highly agitated state to your kids school.

Oh, have I mentioned that DelGiorno’s kids go to private school so he won’t have anything to worry about on Tuesday?

More irresponsible broadcasting from Michael DelGiorno and 99.7 WWTN. Listen to the whole clip here:

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UPDATE:
History from Mark Brown of NoChaser and more from Woods at Pith in the Wind and TNDP chair Chip Forrester.

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What Michael Delgiorno says on a daily basis on the Nashville powerhouse talk radio station 99.7 WTN is so offensive that it can make your insides ache. If you’re a patriot, you know it is offensive. If you’re rational, you know it’s offensive. If you’re a real Christian, you know it is offensive.

Yet, day after day, week after week, he gets away with calling the President of the United States the ‘antichrist.’

These are just two instances of many. First, on August 19, 2009 he said:

MICHAEL DELGIORNO: Like I said, he’s the most failed one-term president or he’s the antichrist. But I can tell you this right now, he’s pro-Palestinian, he’s anti-Israel, he’s anti-Christian. That much I know for sure.

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Then, on August 20, he said:

MICHAEL DELGIORNO: Ken, on dating.
CALLER: I was just going to say that even if Tommy is a complete moron all he’s gotta do is the exact same thing Barack Obama did and he’s in the saddle.
MICHAEL DELGIORNO: Ice cream? Oh, I’m thinking literally on his first date with Michelle.
CALLER: Heh heh heh heh.
MICHAEL DELGIORNO: Take her for ice cream and reveal that he’s the antichrist.

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I’ve been trying to analyze why this is especially offensive and also work on a message to counter it, but I had nuthin’.

So I asked several friends of mine who self-identify as Christians.

One friend suggested I read “Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession (Paperback)” (it’s on my wish list) of which publishers weekly wrote:

While the word “antichrist” – the figure who ushers in the apocalypse of Christian end-time – appears but briefly in the Bible (1 and 2 John), the term has been all too frequently used throughout history by one group as a means of vilifying another group that appears to threaten the accusing group’s worldview. Fuller, professor of religious studies at Bradley University, argues that naming the antichrist became a prevalent custom in the U.S. first because of the Puritans’ apocalyptic tradition and subsequently because of feelings of vulnerability fanned by Native Americans and later by waves of immigrants who seemed to threaten the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. Fuller robustly explores the writings of those who at various and sundry times have railed against Catholics, Freemasons, and Jews (and even rock music and bar codes, for that matter) and seen them all as signs of the beast from the sea. He offers cogent psychological and sociological explanations for the hold of the idea of the antichrist upon the American imagination. If those explanations do not seem quite conclusive, however, it is because the extraordinarily arcane reasoning in naming the antichrist, so ably discussed here, ultimately itself escapes explanation.

So that made me feel a bit better. I mean, if a professor of religious studies can’t explain it then how can I?

Then my friend said:

DelGiorno’s attitude is responsible for 2,000 years of religious warfare. During the Reformation, Martin Luther called the Pope the Antichrist, sparking a feud between Catholics and Protestants that lasted for centuries. The Pope, in response, excommunicated Luther.

A certain subgroup of Evangelicals are rabidly Zionist, believing that the restoration of Israel (with the Old Testament borders!) is essential, and that all non-Jews need to be cast out of the region.

To get honest about this… Fundamentalist Christians are interested in starting a war on Islam, and they are afraid and angry that Barack Hussein Obama is trying to stop them.

This kind of religious elitism divides Christians, and creates the kinds of schisms, divisiveness, and hatred that is condemned repeatedly in Scripture.

So DelGiorno is part of a elitist fringe group of extremist faux-Christians who will stop at nothing to further their own agenda, which is to more quickly usher in the second coming (the rest of us be damned.) Or, as as Josh Marshall puts it, “because its existence will hasten the apocalypse when God will vanquish the Jews en masse in hellfire and turn Israel into a vast evangelical theme park is to usher in the end of the world and ensure that they go to heaven at the expense of the rest of us.”

Fringe? Check. Extremist? Check. Selfish? Check. Un-Christian? Check. Elitist? Check, check and double-check. Mr. DelGiorno is all of these.

But how does he get away with it? And any theories on why his advertisers are irresponsible enough to still support him?

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How does Jon Stewart know that Fox News is full of liberals now? Because the liberals of Fox News – Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly, et. al. – told him! According to the relentless Fox, Liberals do all of the following:

1) They attack and undermine a sitting President – even in war time!
2) They impose their values on everyone else
3) They are against free speech and try to silent the opposition
4) They make themselves out to be victims (call the Wahhhhmbulance!)
5) They are the mainstream media

Hello pot? Meet kettle.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
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Not a loveable little fuzzball.

Not a loveable little fuzzball.

Or so said 99.7 WTN’s Michael Delgiorno on Friday:

“Reid coined the term in a speech in an energy conference in Las Vegas with Al Gore and Bill Clinton this week and then repeated it in an interview with Politics Daily. ‘Such evil-mongers are using lies, innuendo, and rumor to drown out rational debate,’ Reid said, ‘Oh it was original for me to come up with the term. I maybe could have been less descriptive..but..and I don’t know if you’ll ever hear it from me again..’ How about we heard it once? Reid worked in the word one more time during the interview. ‘I feel I haven’t done anything to embarrass my children,’ he joked, ‘Except maybe call someone an evil monger.’ If you don’t agree with Barack Obama, if you don’t agree with Harry Reid, if you don’t agree with Nancy Pelosi, if you have read what they have not read, if you do believe in a republic, and if you don’t want a socialist nation, or if you reject this health care reform, the leader of the United States Senate thinks you’re evil…I mean…I sub-titled my book, ‘The Only Thing Shocking in Life is the Truth.’ I’ve been watching Fox, MSNBC, CNN, all morning long – not a peep. Not a peep. And if you don’t stop a leader of the United States Senate from calling you ‘evil’ for disagreeing today, good luck stopping them when they come to arrest you or kill you.”

I’d like to ask Michael what he means exactly by “stop?”

Now, if he had simply kept with the “If you don’t agree with…” theme, the word “stop” in the phrase “stop a leader” could merely mean calling them on the phone and complaining about their use of the word “evil-monger” to describe someone (like Michael, by the way) who uses “lies, innuendo, and rumor to drown out rational debate.”

But he didn’t stop at “If you don’t agree with…”. He escalated his rhetoric by throwing in the words “arrest you” or “kill you” into the mix.

He is literally telling his listeners that if they continue to disagree the next step Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and anyone who wants healthcare reform are going to take is to “arrest” and/or “kill” them.

And just how does Michael think his listeners will be able to “stop” someone from arresting or killing them? By picking up the phone and complaining? Probably not. Arming themselves? Yes. Taking pro-active measures? Perhaps.

We’ve recently seen examples of irresponsible gun ownership. There was more today in Phoenix. This is an example of the irresponsible fearmongering Delgiorno broadcasts every day of the week for three long hours.

It’s nothing if not a lethal combination and he, and his advertisers, should be ashamed.

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What you won’t see on national cable news:

H/T: No Chaser

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99.7 WWTN’S Nashville Michael DelGiorno spends his entire show – that’s 5 days a week for 4 hours a day – telling his listeners that President Obama and Democrats everywhere are “dangerous” and will ruin the country, make them all broke, and get them all killed. He says that the President coddles terrorists, abandons our allies, and is “probably” a muslim (whom he, of course, coddles as well). He said, on August 10th, while filling in for Ralph Bristol, that they are all going to get “slaughtered by this idiot in the White House.” It is fearmongering at it’s finest and it is unyielding.

Complicit in President Obama’s master plan to “ruin” the country are all of us “idiots” who drive around with Obama bumper stickers on our cars:

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“I’m serious I’m wondering who are these 85% of democrats that still support this president…Can I talk more on the people’s level…Let me just talk street talk…When he was elected only like 3 out of 10 of us really vetted this guy, understood who he was, where he came from, what the stands for, what he planned to do, the dangerous people that molded him…So when you were driving around with your Obama bumper sticker only about 3 out of 10 of us knew how freaking stupid you were but now 6 out of 10 of us know how stupid you are. Seriously do yourself a favor, it will keep you from getting a few #1 signs and a lot of filthy looks. It’s one thing to be dumb and partisan and destructive to our country – just take the bumper sticker off will ya? Cause things could escalate from town hall meetings right to the streets. You don’t want to be stuck with that idiot’s name on your car. That’s the ultimate clunker.”

Thanks for looking out for us, Mike. But if things “escalate from town hall meetings right to the streets” and even one car with an Obama bumper sticker is damaged, or one person driving a car with an Obama bumper sticker is hurt, you will have to answer for it.

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First, straight talk from Frank Rich (“The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers“), about what happens when “legitimate ideological beefs” with President Obama are drowned out by the “rhetoric of purgation and annihilation:”

The question, Shepard Smith said on Fox last week, is “if there is really a way to put a hold on” those who might run amok. We’re not about to repeal the First or Second Amendments. Hard-core haters resolutely dismiss any “mainstream media” debunking of their conspiracy theories. The only voices that might penetrate their alternative reality — I emphasize might — belong to conservative leaders with the guts and clout to step up as McCain did last fall. Where are they? The genteel public debate in right-leaning intellectual circles about the conservative movement’s future will be buried by history if these insistent alarms are met with silence.

It’s typical of this dereliction of responsibility that when the Department of Homeland Security released a plausible (and, tragically, prescient) report about far-right domestic terrorism two months ago, the conservative response was to trash it as “the height of insult,” in the words of the G.O.P. chairman Michael Steele. But as Smith also said last week, Homeland Security was “warning us for a reason.”

No matter. Last week it was business as usual, as Republican leaders nattered ad infinitum over the juvenile rivalry of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich at the party’s big Washington fund-raiser. Few if any mentioned, let alone questioned, the ominous script delivered by the actor Jon Voight with the G.O.P. imprimatur at that same event. Voight’s devout wish was to “bring an end to this false prophet Obama.”

This kind of rhetoric, with its pseudo-Scriptural call to action, is toxic. It is getting louder each day of the Obama presidency. No one, not even Fox News viewers, can say they weren’t warned.

Don’t read the rest at night, it’s nighsweat/insomnia inducing.

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Media Matters has been listening to every hour of Rush Limbaugh’s show (so you don’t have to) and today reports that during the second hour of today’s show he “officially” resigned as “titular head of the Republican Party.”

But then, during his third hour, he took up the mantle again by making a crude Bill Clinton joke:

“I’m just gonna tell you, if I was named envoy to Haiti, I’d quit government. Envoy to Haiti? You can’t even pick up a prostitute down there without genuine fear of AIDS. This is not Clinton’s place.”

Just when he thought he was out…

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A Glenn Beck Drinking Game

Huffington says it’s not a good idea. Might be if the lovely ladies from The View are involved.

But then, things go ZOMGY as Goldberg calls him a “LYING SACK OF DOG MESS,” which is hilarious. Then Walters freaks out on him for claiming to be a reporter and yet not bothering to check his facts. And really, it just gets even more bonkers from there. Honestly, if you were to take a drink every time Beck comes off as totally disingenuous, you will require a new liver by the end of the segment. DO NOT DO THIS, OBVIOUSLY.

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