Right Wing Radio Week in Review: June 8 - 13

"I've said hello to Stephen Johns a number of times..."

Dennis Prager is on the board of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, the scene of a fatal terrorist attack earlier this week.

On Thursday, Prager remembered the Museum security guard who died in the line of duty. (Audio archives are members-only).

Because the shooter was a known "white supremacist," liberal commentators wasted no time blaming "hateful" conservative talk radio for the shooter's actions -- while ignoring the genuinely incendiary anti-Semitic remarks made that very day by Obama's mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (audio)

No matter that a quick Google search revealed that the killer's fringe beliefs spanned the political spectrum. As I wrote at Examiner.com, murderer James von Brunn was an anti-Christian, 9/11 "truther" who hated the Bushes and "the neo-cons" - not exactly stereotypically mainstream "conservative" positions. *

And hateful rhetoric is hardly confined to the "right side of the dial." Incredibly, this week MSNBC's Ed Schultz announced on the air that he wanted to "urinate on" conservative talker Hugh Hewitt, because he has repeatedly denounced the union/government takeover of GM.

Then, to the amusement of conservative blogger and media watchdog Mark Finkelstein, another MSNBC talking head named Mike Barnacle blamed "liberal media bias" on... "conservative talk radio," a theory Finkelstein called "absurd but creative." (But wait: I thought "liberal media bias" was a myth...)
 

* In an even stranger outburst, AlterNet.org's Andy Cobb unveiled a new video series devoted to exploring "conservative writings on the topic of sex." According to his AlterNet editors, Cobb chose Glenn Beck "as his first subject because of a chapter in his 2003 book The Real America: Messages from the Heart and Heartland in which Beck describes (explicitly) making out with his sister. Cobb has reenacted this scene in the video below."

Nope, I didn't watch it...
 

* Poor Glenn Beck certainly takes a lot of abuse. He talked about this when he sat down with 20/20's John Stossel, in an interview that aired on ABC Friday June 12. "You can get rich making fun of me," Beck told Stossel. "I know. I've made a lot of money making fun of me." (Video clip.) Not surprisingly, Vanity Fair panned Glenn Beck's Comedy Tour.
 

* Meanwhile, Mark Levin called David Letterman a "doofus looking freak" for making tasteless jokes about Sarah Palin's appearance and the imaginary rape of her 14-year-old daughter. "For a guy whose own features are that of an 83-year-old pervert in a raincoat on the street corner," Levin declared, Letterman should be more circumspect.

Levin also called Sonya Sotomayor "the most bigoted nominee since Hugo Black. There, I said it!" Newt Gingrich, Levin added, "was a phony and a has-been."
 

* Radio Equalizer noticed that, after studiously ignoring Levin's mega-selling book Liberty & Tyranny, they were lavishing attention on a new title by lesser "conservative" media maven Joe Scarborough.
 

* Accuracy in Media (AIM) issued a report called "The Plan for Government Funded Socialist Media," warning that "a socialist-oriented 'media reform' group with ties to the Obama Administration has called for new federal programs and the spending of tens of billions of dollars to keep journalists employed at liberal media outlets and to put them to work in new 'public media.'

"The group, which calls itself Free Press, is urging 'an alternative media infrastructure, one that is insulated from the commercial pressures that brought us to our current crisis.' "However, Free Press, at this May 14 summit, didn't say one word about the well-documented liberal bias that has contributed to the decline in readers and viewers for traditional media outlets and has enabled the rise of the Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio, and the Internet. Instead, Josh Silver of Free Press attacked the "bellowing ideologues" on the air and declared that, 'The entire dial is empty of local news in many communities.'"

Can you say "localism", boys and girls? It's a word to remember if you haven't heard it before. "Localism" is the new code word for the "Fairness Doctrine," and AIM is just one of the organizations concerned about this plan to drive conservative talk radio off the air. The AIM report is thorough to a fault, and makes for meaty - if depressing - reading. Highly recommended.
 

* Rush Limbaugh received the Talkers magazine 2009 Free Speech Award on, and delivered a brief but stirring speech you can watch and hear at NewsMaxx.
 

* Up and coming conservative podcast BrassBallsRadio just celebrated its first anniversary with a special episode hosted by Mark Steyn, which garnered an amazing 2 million downloads. Now the BrassBallsRadio team will be producing podcasts for Dr. Melissa Clouthier and Tabitha Hale, who can currently be heard on RFC Radio.
 

* Speaking of Mark Steyn: if you missed his recent two-hour broadcast with talk radio legend Milt Rosenberg, you can now download the audio free. * Did you know that conservative talk radio got its start in... Seattle?
 

* "Dear Mr. Liddy, don't tell 'the parrot joke.'" (Audio)