Media Matters Enjoys Censorship Victory Lap

GLOATVILLE USA

Media Matters Goons Relish Victory Over Free Speech







More obnoxious than an eco-friendly Sun Chips bag, the sound of Media Matters celebrating its victory over free speech ought to alarm radio listeners everywhere. After finally bagging its first talk show host, Dr Laura Schlessinger, the fringe-left censorship activists took time to gloat.

Listen as the organization's Eric Boehlert makes clear bumping off Laura is just the beginning in light of talk radio's "summer of hate". Who's next: Rush Limbaugh? Sean Hannity? Mark Levin? Any number of others?

From yesterday's Randi Rhodes Show:

RANDI RHODES (33:33): So let's go to that 'special interest group's' senior fellow, Eric Boehlert, from Media Matters; you bastard! How dare you silence her! (laughs)

ERIC BOEHLERT: (laughs)

RHODES: (laughs) What is the deal with her? For a relationship expert -

BOEHLERT: Yeah -

RHODES: She doesn't really take any responsibility for her behavior, doesn't she?

BOEHLERT: No - she seemed to have uh packed up and gone home very quickly -

RHODES: Yeah, for her long-term contract that's expiring a year and a half after she signed it!

BOEHLERT: Nobody took away her First Amendment rights, all right; she had the First Amendment rights to say whatever she wants on TV and TV and radio; and if she wants to uh suggest that people not marry out of their race and suggest black people have a chip on their shoulder; and suggest black activists are trying to serve racial discord in the country; she did in that long diatribe - she did all those things, not to mention the n word - she has every right to do it, and Media Matters and people who are offended have the First Amendment right to-to highlight that, and to highlight that to advertisers. Look - you know - conservatives love to talk about the free marketplace and how it cures everything!

RHODES: Yes! I pointed that out!

BOEHLERT: We should leave everything to the free marketplace - well, we did

RHODES: We did!

BOEHLERT: She was losing advertisers a lot, and at a pretty rapid pace, so the free marketplace came to work in this case.

RHODES: Eric, you know, at Media Matters, you track a lot of hate speech, you know, and you keep an eye on it, and you let everybody, you know, listen to clips and uh -

BOEHLERT: Yeah; we don't doctor things like Andrew Breitbart and what not!

RHODES: Oh, and by the way I must tell you that Radio Equalizer (whoever the hell Brian Maloney really is) uh is saying that you are a far-left parasite and giving you credit for winning this battle by default because, he said, conservatives strangely close - chose to sit out the fight now - now why would that be? (laughs)

BOEHLERT: Right. Not many people came to um, Dr. Laura's aid, that's for sure; I mean, we saw a couple of right-wing bloggers I think, because they are instinctively anything that Media Matters does they are opposed to, so they sort of instinctively came to her side. She's not part of the right-wing blogosphere in terms of politics and stuff; but, as you say, the right-wing stuff seeps into her show, she's been notoriously sort of anti-gay over the years...

RHODES: Right!

BOEHLERT: Um, so that's really the problem. Oh it's so offensive, she must be giving an - have an advice show and she's just like taping these sort of hateful, race-baiting talking points that we've seen popping up all over the place this summer. And now we've gotta hear this on an advice show?

Are conservatives ready to sit out the next battle and watch this happen all over again? Let's hope a key lesson has been learned.