A blogger called Spocko recently took on San Francisco’s local right-wing station, KSFO by drawing attention to some of their more – let’s just say “outspoken” – radio personalities. To be precise, Spocko provided advertisers with audio clips of some of their DJ’s riper comments, pointing out to Britesmile, for instance, that they might not want their product being pitched by someone who had just finished talking about tracking an emailer down and “doing something unpleasant to his cojones.” (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/cojonesbritesmile.mp3)
That was one of the milder examples. Other audio clips that Spocko harvested included Melanie Morgan suggesting that Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, be dug up (she died in 1994 from breast cancer) and “kill(ed) all over again,” (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/digupcarson.mp3) Brian Sussman telling a caller to prove he’s not Muslim by saying “Allah is a whore,” (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/bsallahis.mp3) and Melanie Morgan, Ann Coulter, and “Officer Vic” yakking it up over a supposedly hilarious imitation of NYT editor Bill Keller being slowly executed in a defective electric chair. (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/jokingkellerex.mp3)
Spocko’s blog was shut down after the ISP got a cease and desist order trumped up by KSFO’s lawyers. The reason given by KSFO is that the use of audio clips violated copyright, even though they fall within what is widely considered to be Fair Use. I think it’s more likely that the clips endangered his blog because they were effective. VISA and MasterCard had already pulled their advertising, and apparently more were considering doing the same.
There is, at least for now, a happy ending to this story. Another, braver, ISP picked up the account, and www.spockosbrain.com is back up.
This is only the latest development in what amounts to an ongoing, decades-long war waged by the right against the actual meaning of words, sentences, entire paragraphs. Anyone who has engaged in online political debates is probably familiar with the tactic of derailing a conversation about some offensive statement from Coulter or Limbaugh by attempting to sidetrack the discussion into an argument about grammar and syntax. “You’re twisting their words” is the usual complaint. Some of these attempts are so ridiculous that the listener or reader is forced to conclude that the right-winger is arguing in bad faith.
That, or they’re suffering from a bizarre cognitive deficit that prevents them from making the logical connections most of us figure out when we learn to talk. What other conclusions can you draw from one online discussion I took part in during which someone defended a poster who’d equated far left liberals and convicted murderers by saying, “there is not much difference between the two,” -- with the defiant challenge, “show me where he used the words ‘far left liberals’ and ‘murderers’ in a simple comparative sentence.”
I invite readers to apply this new rule of grammar about comparisons only being made in simple comparative sentences – one that renders the phrase “between the two” completely mysterious -- to any well known work of literature, fiction or nonfiction. Observe how even the works of the most lucid and straightforward writers become completely incoherent. Only Grammar School primers lisping “The moon is as round as a ball” retain their meaning.
By offering not just the written quotes, but audio clips to advertisers, Spocko short circuits this approach and a host of others commonly used by the right to defend indefensible statements. It’s one thing to insult liberal readers and broadly wink at fellow right-wingers by offering claims about what the writer or speaker meant that defy both grammar and common sense. It’s quite another to attempt it with some sharp-eyed advertising executive who’s not in the mood for playing games.
It’s one thing to insist that a written transcript in which KGO personality Brian Sussman describes how we should torture detainees – “I would say ‘First we cut off your finger, next, we go for your penis…” (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/bstorture.mp3) – is just an example of him horsing around. It’s quite another to hear the passionate, dead-serious manner in which he says it. Audio diminishes that time honored “just kidding” excuse because listening to these voices does not conjure up the image of a merry crew of Swiftian funsters nudging each other in the studio. The cackling bursts of hilarity that erupt are plainly inspired more by a sense of impunity than satire. These folks don’t sound like they’re joking at all when they say they want to see liberals/reporters/Moslems/UN peacekeepers hanged (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/mmhangem.mp3) or shot (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/skipthetrial.mp3) or blown up (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/coulterpeacekeepers.mp3) (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/bsgordonsyria.mp3).
And it’s one thing to offer the Coulteresque “I like yanking liberal’s chains” excuse to readers of a website or the viewers of a cable news interview. It’s quite another to hear Lee Rodgers announce, in the time slot in which you’ve bought advertising space “And once again, we’d like to express our gratitude to the self-hating liberals who can’t resist listening to this program, please keep the hate-mail coming...” (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/unpleasantthings.mp3) or Melanie Morgan saying “and I must say I appreciate the nod towards my execution comment in HUMAN EVENTS and Worldnet Daily column because it makes us a bigger bulls-eye for the left and that’s always a good thing.” (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/coultermorganex.mp3) The “We’re just looking for a little attention” wheeze is not likely to go over well with an advertiser who’s standing with you behind that bulls-eye.
So when the methods that I described above of defending these attacks are not feasible, what is left? Stomping the blog. Threatening legal action. Trying to silence someone, not for lying about what you’ve said, but for offering damning, verbatim examples of what you’ve said.
I used to comment on the habit some liberals and leftists had of eagerly declaring, in the wake of some outrageous statement by a right wing media figure, that the right wing was now “imploding” or “self-destructing.” These days the left seems to have learned its lesson about such false hopes, perhaps because there’s barely any frontier left for the right to penetrate when it comes to outrageous attacks on such basic American principles as freedom of speech and association.
It’s still unclear how far this Spocko incident going to go. It may, like many such kerfuffles on the blogosphere, disperse into swamp gas in the next couple of weeks. But it should be kept in mind that the right’s consistent reaction to being called on ugly, outrageous statements has not been to back down and apologize, but to stand their ground and up the ante. As a result the stakes are getting pretty high.
What makes this a matter for concern is not just the fact that KSFO broadcasts this hatred to millions of listeners every day, or even that their “shut up or we’ll hurt you” message to liberals and Moslems and anyone else they dislike is a steadily rising drumbeat from the right in America.
What makes this a serious matter, quite apart from the prospect of some crazy deciding to act on Officer Vic’’s statement about “sending a hit team to get” a photojournalist (
http://www.glcq.com/sprocko/vichitteam.mp3), is the fact that these threats could conceivably be backed up by the Bush administration.
The constitutional protections that, in the past, rendered KSFO’s kind of rhetoric more absurd than frightening have been steadily dismantled. We’ve already seen at least one American citizen, Jose Padilla, kidnapped, held for two years under highly secretive conditions, and tortured. Habeas corpus has been all but eliminated, the right to privacy, the right to peacefully assemble and demonstrate have all been seriously undermined. If we have not seen large numbers of Moslems or dissidents herded into detention camps – as some on the right are now openly and not-so-openly advocating – it’s because the administration has chosen not to act on the numerous provisions and signing statements that could conceivably make such an action legal. This could change if there is another major terrorist attack. Or possibly even if there is not.
I’ve always maintained that the right-wing’s war on language, the ridiculous seeming attacks on grammar and syntax, is a war against meaning, a war against truth. It’s a diversionary tactic intended to distract attention from a repressive agenda they embrace but have been – in the past at least – unwilling to state directly.
As that agenda comes more and more sharply into focus, it becomes more and more important for people like Spocko – people like us -- to call them to account for what they are saying. I would not want to see Melanie Morgan, Brian Sussman, Officer Vic, and Lee Rodgers silenced. I would very much like to see them forced into a serious dialogue about what they are saying, a dialogue outside the protective cocoon of their studio, where they can’t pick and choose which calls and therefore which arguments to take, where they can’t introduce the opposition with slapstick music, or turn off a mike, or end a conversation by hanging up.
And if the only way to do that is to force them into a dialogue with their biggest advertisers, so be it.
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