A few hard facts. America is a pistol-packin' land. Gunplay in America is commonplace as evidenced by the latest spate of shooting spree butchery. The greatest president in that nation's history was slaughtered by a bullet fired into the back of his head. In my lifetime, America has seen a president murdered, a presidential candidate murdered, the black leader of the country's civil rights movement murdered, a president wounded in an assassination attempt, a president who barely escaped an assassination plot in Blair House foiled only by good luck and the extraordinary heroism of the Secret Service, at least three presidents stalked by would-be assassins. There have been at least a dozen assassination attempts against American presidents, one in three successful, three of the four during the century just passed.
Why then would a major news organization broadcast blatantly and outrageously false accounts that depict their nation's first black president as a menace to American democracy, a quiet threat to the American way of life and, especially, the right to own guns, a man who won't stop until he has left America humbled and in ruins? Does FOX want Obama dead?
Now you won't hear Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly or the other denizens of the FOX clown car advocate or even sympathize with the idea of an assassination of the president. They would be slapped in irons if they did. But it's not necessary to expressly call for someone to be killed - to save the nation no less. Merely agitating for it is surely enough. Demonizing the president; deliberately warping his words and actions; making the lowest, most ignorant and gullible strata of their nation's society believe this man is plotting against them is surely enough.
Freedom of speech is cherished by the American people even if most of them don't really understand it's origins and meaning. But there must be some line to demarc free speech from encitement to sedition and murder. America truly needs to debate that question now before it's too late.
http://www.truthout.org/040909N
1 comment:
I don't think they want him dead; they just don't see themselves as responsible for the actions of anyone who listens to them. To them, it's all a stupid game.
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