We’ve known Rory O’Connor for sometime and admire his work — and his determination.

A lot of liberals dismiss the right-wing shock jocks with disdain. O’Connor takes them seriously — and at their word. That is how he came to write this provocative book about the top ten purveyors of hate speech on the airwaves.

As our readers know, BuzzFlash has been a big supporter of progressive radio, which is slowly but surely finding an audience.

Meanwhile, however, we have a whole slew of right-wing beasts of the airwaves whipping up bigotry, intolerance, and hate. O’Connor explores their malicious and eroding impact on American society.

O’Connor is an award winning television and print journalist.

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BuzzFlash: Shock Jocks, Hate Speech & Talk Radio, America’s 10 Worst Hate Talkers and the Progressive Alternatives. Let’s start off with this as a devil’s advocate. If you take someone like Michael Savage, or, Michael Weiner, he’s got several million people listening to him. You and I and anyone who is probably reading this find him totally repulsive and obnoxious. But the owners of radio stations, will say: Hey, millions of listeners can’t be wrong. What’s your response to that?

Rory O’Connor: My response to that is that sometimes millions can be wrong. He’s the third most listened-to shock jock out there, but I also would say to the owners who are distributing him that they must be concerned about their sponsors and the advertisers opting out of Savage’s show as a result of the disgust on the part of some of his listeners and some of us who wish he would refrain from the type of vitriolic speech that he engages in.

I think, economically, there are reasons for the distributors to be concerned as well.

BuzzFlash: Do you think someone like Savage actually believes what he’s saying? He used to be a liberal, and now he just says outrageous things. I get the feeling sometimes when I read about what he says, that, like Ann Coulter, he premeditates these things to shock, and draw in more of an audience, to draw more publicity. How much is this him calculating that he can improve his paycheck by drawing the listeners, versus him really expressing a viewpoint? [Read more...]

Shock Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio

June 16, 2008 12:56 PM A year ago, much of America had to at least pay a moment’s notice to the “scandal” that was generated by the racist comments from radio talk show host Don Imus. His vicious comments were directed at the Rutgers women’s basketball team and ended up getting the popular talk show host fired. However, within a year, Imus was back on the air with another radio network with little industry scrutiny. So how does someone like Don Imus, who called the college students at Rutgers “nappy headed hoes,” get back on the airwaves?Rory O’Connor answers this question and many others in his in his most recent book, Shock Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio. O’Connor’s book takes a look at what he identifies as some of the worst examples of hate speech on talk radio in the US today. The author identifies Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, and Hugh Hewitt as the worst proponents of hate speech on radio. O’Connor says that one of the reasons Don Imus is back on the air is because hate speech is so much a part of the talk radio in this country. In fact, hate speech has in many ways become the norm for talk radio, a fact that is reflected in the popularity of the talk show personalities already listed. Imus was pulled from the air primarily because of the exposure his comments of the women’s basketball team generated. This exposure caused advertisers to pull support for the show, but the same type of hate speech was being broadcast at the same time on hundreds of other radio stations across the country.
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The email alert read “Breaking from Newsmax.com,” the conservative online news site that also publishes Newsmax Magazine. One item in particular caught my attention: Special: Will President Obama Ban O’Reilly, Rush?

One click, however, reveals this “breaking” news is simply old wine poured into a “special” new anti-Obama bottle: a ridiculous recycled report entitled “Talk Radio’s Last Stand,” offered with a subscription to Newsmax magazine and a “Dynamo Emergency World Band Radio” — all for just $35!

Leading hard-right conservatives, led by their talk radio “shock jock” shock troops, have been worrying aloud about the supposed return of the long-defunct Fairness Doctrine ever since their stunning success last year in defeating bi-partisan immigration reform. The latest salvo is the Newsmax report, headlined “Battle for Talk Radio: Powerful Foes Want to End the Gabfest,” which cleverly combines the usual talk radio tropes of pugnacity and victimization. The text of the “special offer” supplies the details:

“The 2008 election has yet to be decided, but one thing is clear: If the Democrats win the White House, expect an all-out attack on talk radio. Political talk, as we know it, could end. If they win, Rush, Imus, Savage, Beck, and dozens of other major hosts will be muzzled by using federal regulations to control political talk. So, what’s their plan of attack?”
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AlterNet
The Most Savage Shock Jock of Them All
By Rory O’Connor and Aaron Cutler, AlterNet Books
Posted on May 23, 2008, Printed on June 4, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/86237/

Who is Michael Savage? On its surface the question seems obvious: he’s a 66-year-old nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host whose program, The Savage Nation, airs five days a week from its home base of KNEW in San Francisco. He’s the founder of the Paul Revere Society, which, according to its mission statement, aims to “take back our borders, our language, and our traditional culture from the liberal left corroding our great nation.” He’s a former MSNBC cable television talk host who was fired after four months on the job after he told a phone caller, “You should only get AIDS and die, you pig.” He’s also the third most popular radio talk show host in America, whose weekly audience of more than eight million listeners is surpassed only by Limbaugh and Hannity.

Dig deeper, however, and the question of who Savage is, and how truly savage he is, becomes far more complicated. “Savage” isn’t his real name; it seems to speak to his heightened sense of masculinity, his aggression, and his antipathy toward minorities. Born Michael Alan Weiner, “Savage” is the child of Russian-Jewish immigrants. He earned two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in nutritional ethnomedicine from that liberal bastion the University of California, Berkeley. He’s written two dozen books, five as Michael Savage and an additional 19 under his given name, on medicine, the subjects of which range from maintaining a healthy diet to breaking a cocaine habit. But by any name, he professes to know what’s good for you.
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