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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector- Radio talk of treason threatens free speech
COLIN CAMPBELL
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
February 27, 2003
Like many others, I had the interesting experience Wednesday morning -- soon after dropping off my kids at school and turning on the car radio -- of hearing a famous voice use the word "traitor." He was talking about some opponents of the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq.
The speaker was Neal Boortz, and Boortz's humor and politics are such that sometimes you have to take him with a grain of salt. He loves to poke and mock and outrage all manner of liberals, peaceniks, dupes and weaklings.
But, like other right-wing talk show talkers, he has been pushing hard lately -- and in solemn terms -- for exactly the war the administration wants. And he has been painting the administration's critics and questioners as defenders of Saddam Hussein, and as unwilling to defend their country and their civilization.
On Wednesday, he used the word "traitor" several times. His show, as usual, was having a ball trashing Bush's critics. Amid floods of radio invective against a wide assortment of alleged appeasers, cowards, fools, anti-Americans and Iraqi sympathizers, Boortz's talk of traitors sounded like more of the same.
On the radio, these days, even the mildest and most knowledgeable questioners and critics all seem to be lumped together with the worst human garbage.
Too many of us have become coarsened to extreme talk like this. We've learned to take it and give it and expect it. We've learned to treat abuse as entertainment.
But in the recent past (and remember that the future tends to imitate the past), it was considered inflammatory to call one's political opponents "traitors." It incited violence and discord and the suppression of free speech.
Sean Hannity -- another right-wing radio talker, who used to be based right here in Atlanta before he moved on to greater glory -- has been defending the administration's plans and policies in the same abusive way -- and sticking even closer to the party line than Boortz. Hannity, too, is broadcast locally. He's on the same station, in fact, that carries Boortz: WSB, which is owned by the same company that owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
David Meszaros, general manager of WSB, told me Wednesday that Boortz's use of "traitor" was "just an opinion" and that it was aimed, in this case, at some people willing to be used as "human shields" against an American attack.
Earlier in the day, before Meszaros had gone back and listened to a recording of Boortz's comments, the executive defended him as "entertaining." Listeners "know the polarizing nature of Boortz," Meszaros said, and they know him as "very bright" and "very controversial."
Maybe so. But I think a tolerance for strong opinions can underestimate the dangers of certain commentators using the media to smear the patriotism of dissenting Americans in wartime.
It needs to be remembered that the administration's Iraq policies, its timing, its treatment of allies, its difficulties in making the case for immediate war -- and more -- have inspired many Americans to voice objections. Bush's critics, in facts, have included senior aides to the first President Bush, as well as retired military officers like Gen. Wesley Clark.
Will ordinary citizens dare to speak out in a [media] environment of relentless vituperation and talk of treason?
We're entering dangerous domestic territory.
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