When the Vulcan's Away, the Hosts will Play (but never Pay)

So I take a trip to Vulcan for a few days and when I come back I see the new PR person and program director for KSFO has gotten busy with promotion of the station and their talk radio hosts. Good for you!

I heard that while I was away the PR person got Sussman back on TV! I heard that Fox 2 KTVU and NBC 11 came by to film the "controversial" Sussman as the voice of "sane conservative reason" to those crazy Berkeley folks. I'm sorry I missed it. And of course the PR person must have counted on KTVU and NBC doing no research on Sussman and his other "sane" views like wanting to kill 10 million Muslims, his pro-torture views or even his greatest hit, demanding that a caller say, "Allah is a whore." Way to go PR person! You know that controversy sells! TV loves it! Advertisers, not so much.

Frankly I was getting tired of doing all the heavy lifting promoting your shows. I mean Michael Black said that I was getting him all sorts of juicy contacts so now I don't have to feel bad about writing the advertisers to alert them to Sussman's incitement of violence toward Muslims. So since I have his blessing, I'll continue to alert the advertisers while you promote Sussman and the rest of the programs.

Maybe you would like it if I thought bigger? I mean Michael Black's doppelganger said I should fry bigger fish. I'll start alerting advertisers about Melanie Morgan's calling for the death of Bill Keller if you like. Maybe I should write the New York Times like I did the LA Times when she claimed they doctored their photos. (BTW, did she ever do an on air correction? Like the LA
Times requested?)

Plus the "elite team" of sales professionals has to make so many new contacts to replace the dozen or so advertisers that have left that I'm sure they appreciate getting KSFO's hosts out there beyond the blogosphere. Just a quick tip though, be careful of who you promote to whom. If you want coverage in the LA Times, NY Times or Wall Street Journal they might not take to kindly to Melanie Morgan saying "Hang 'em". (audio link) But other than that, go crazy!

I mean I think that the big story for the WSJ would be "Right Wing Host loses a Dozen Advertisers Over Hate Speech." but that's just my opinion. That's the boring "financial consequences of hate speech" story. Yawn. Besides, you don't want to point out to people the REASONS why the advertisers pulled their ads. But hey, you guys are good at spinning I'm sure you could turn it to your benefit.

Because it's all about ratings baby! Promote that hate speech! Cash in on the rants of a man calling for the torture of an Iraqis by cutting off their fingers and then their penises! Hey I understand. You might not know how to Google key phrases. To use a favorite line of Rice and Cheney, "There is no way we could have anticipated" Sussman or Morgan would say terrible things (even though I've been writing about them for months)! When they say the next terrible thing while KTVU is in the studio or when you lose the next advertiser, or get an FCC fine remember, it isn't about YOU. You are JUST PROMOTING them. YOU didn't actually say it.


Like Black, you can tell yourself that you are just supporting "the conservative agenda." Or if you can't wrap your mind around that, you are supporting what you think is free speech. Or maybe you will use the new catch all phrase of the right, "We are at war! Terrible things happen in war!" Right, that totally justifies your hosts suggesting atrocities and promoting murder. (Even the ARMY doesn't think that war crimes are a good thing, but what does the Army know?). And when calling for the death of 10 million Muslims isn't enough, time to get specific and call for the death of American journalists as Melanie Morgan did this week. On the radio she just said, "Hang 'em!" (once again, the audio link)

Because as we have seen there are NO consequences to calling for the death of one person, a group of people or millions on KSFO. (And it appears the hosts never feel the consequences of losing advertisers, according to Black it is just the poor hourly employees and the sales people. I guess that the hosts hate them too since they don't care if what they say costs them advertisers.)

Now of course in the newspaper (SF Chronicle Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, June 29, 2006) she qualified her statement:

San Francisco talk show host Melanie Morgan believes that Times editor Bill Keller should be jailed for treason for approving the publication.

The maximum penalty for treason is death.

"If he were to be tried and convicted of treason, yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber," Morgan, whose show airs on KSFO-AM, told The Chronicle on Wednesday. "It is about revealing classified secrets in the time of war. And the media has got to take responsibility for revealing classified information that is putting American lives at risk."

Morgan of course was busy trying to smoke a stogie on the beach in Hawaii and probably didn't remember that her President has been promoting these programs since 2001. Nothing like ignoring the facts to get in the way of a nice juicy sound bite. As Morgan said on Hardball when Matthews pointed out that terrorists knew about this a long time ago, (as reported in WSJ reporter Ron Suskind's book.) "That doesn't matter to me."

Oh, and Melanie, if people who disclose this are guilty of treason does that mean Bush is too?

That terrorist organizations would be aware of international efforts to track their finances is not surprising, as Bush administration officials have publicly touted the government's capability to do so for years. For instance, shortly after 9-11, Bush heralded the establishment of a "foreign terrorist asset tracking center at the Department of the Treasury to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks."

On November 7, 2001, then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill announced
that the United States, along with an "international coalition," had begun "to
block assets, to seize books, records and evidence, and to follow audit trails
to track terrorist cells poised to do violence to our common interests." In a
September 10, 2004, statement, the Treasury Department disclosed "some of the many weapons used against terrorist networks," which included "following money trails to previously unknown terrorist cells." An April 2006 Treasury Department report similarly noted that the department "follows the terrorists' money trails
aggressively, exploits them for intelligence, and severs links where we can."

Even SWIFT's cooperation in these efforts was a matter of public knowledge. Indeed, a United Nations working group learned years ago of the Treasury Department's use of SWIFT and noted the tactic in a December 2002 report. The consortium's own website notes its "history of cooperating in good faith with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and appropriate international organizations, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), in their efforts to combat abuse of the financial system for illegal activities."

The Bush administration has repeatedly touted its role as one of the 29 nations working with the FATF "to deny terrorist access to the world financial system."

(Media Matters)

As is typical with this administration, when in doubt go after the messenger. And the right wing radio programs are happy to help.

On Hardball Morgan said, "There are certain responsibilities that comes with being a journalist." But as she knows, at KSFO there are NO responsibilities that come with being a radio host.

It appears that at the commercially supported broadcast radio station KSFO, owned by ABC/Disney, it is quite acceptable to call for the hanging death of Bill Keller and other journalists at the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal for writing about a program that the administration had promoted since 2001.