Thursday, May 22, 2003
Stuck in the Middle
Day five of Liberal talk radio and I have to give it up. The station I listen too has a midday host named Shelby LaPre that is absolutely venal. She is the liberal equivalent of Michael Savage. After her ennumeration of the srimes of the Bush Regime, also known as the "Bush Crime Family", I felt so drained by the invective that I had to turn it off (at Kristin's urging). LaPre asserted:
- Bush's grandfather was Hitler's personal banker.
- Bush's grandfather masterminded the assassination of JFK.
- Bush had Senator Paul Wellstone killed.
- Bush was responsible for the anthrax mailings to Congress to get the Patriot Act enacted.
- Recent flaps about SARS and Mad Cow Disease in Canada is an attempt to ruin their economy in order to make them pay for being against the Iraq War.
LaPre's continued assertions that the Bush administration is exactly the same as Hitler's Nazi party were very trying to listen to. That being said, I have noticed that most radio talk hosts are quick to call their opponent's viewpoints 'fascist' or to draw allusions to speeches by 'Hitler'. I think they are quick to make this judgment because in most people's minds nothing can be seen as more evil or antithetical to how they want to live their lives as Nazism.
Speaking of Micheal Savage, he is currently embroiled in several lawsuits with protestors who run a website against his show and political views. Savage claims economic interference in contacting advertisers to drop his show and copyright infringement (the protestors re-air his broadcasts). Although there seem to be legal arguments in these claims, his last claim takes the cake:
Respondent's savagestupidity.com domain name is confusingly similar to Complainant's registered MICHAEL SAVAGE trademark. The only difference between Complainant's MICHAEL SAVAGE mark and the disputed domain name is the replacement of the word "Michael" with "stupidity". The Respondent's domain name is also confusingly similar to the Complainant's themichaelsavageshow.com, thesavageshow.com, michaelsavage.info, and michaelsavage.biz domain names.
What? So would any domain name that pairs a word with Savage be a potential infringement of their domain name? This seems to be a violation of the use of the web for free speech. If their website name was mikesavage.com, I could understand, but this name seems significantly different in my viewpoint.
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