WMAL-ady Cured?
Disney may have evicted the (spirit of the) First Amendment from WMAL, but other stations take a different approach. For those of us in or near Southern California, he’ll be on KFI tomorrow night from 7-10, filling in for John Ziegler. Everyone else will have to wait until Monday.
August 25th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
xrlq what is your take on Prof. Bainbridges complaint of Graham’s hyperbolic statement about ABC evicting the first amendement? It happens so often I wouldn’t have noticed it had it not been pointed out–how embarrassing for me!!
August 25th, 2005 at 9:16 pm
He’s right on the law, of course, but I think he’s making a mountain out of a molehill. The spirit of the First Amendment is to promote the free exchange of ideas. By yielding to pressure from CAIR, Disney utterly failed in promoting that. Of course, since Disney isn’t a government (yet?), that doesn’t implicate the First Amendment, but the metaphor of “evicting” the First Amendment works for me. Public entities can’t “evict” the First Amendment. Private ones can, but generally shouldn’t IMO. That was the meat of Graham’s argument, I think. I trust (hope?) that he’s not dumb enough to think the First Amendment really covers his situation.
August 25th, 2005 at 9:54 pm
I wonder if intellectual laziness may be more at play here. Words are so often used inartfully in our politics and hyperbole has become so much the standard means of political communication, that I’m not sure that any of us is as carefully crafting our message as we did 10 or 20 years ago. I was SHOCKED to read Baindbridge’s critique because I was so lazy as to not be critically considering what was said. Emotional manipulation and misinterpretation and misrepresentation can all start from a failure to note what is actually said and TRUE and what is said and NOT TRUE. Though I was not incensed by the firing, I did think it was wrong. And at least part of my thinking it was wrong was this first amendment hyperbole. Embarrassing, but true. How many others THAT OUGHT TO KNOW BETTER are as lazy as I?Plenty I am afraid. Critical thinking and analysis have kind of taken a back seat to the extreme form of political communication we accept as the normal level of give and take–without much thought.
August 25th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
Graham will also actually be on with Bill Handel during the 8AM hour on Friday before his show that evening.
Ought to be interesting. CAIR tried to push KFI around in the past the same way that they have attempted to muscle so many other stations. Good thing KFI is showing some spine.
August 25th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
I’m more upset with Graham for ‘forcing’ WMAL to get rid of him, than I am with WMAL for giving CAIR a victory (which eats at my gut). I don’t see what else WMAL could have done. They offered to keep him if he apologized and he certainly made a very hateful statement. If he had left out, “We are at war with a terrorist organization named Islam”, he would be defensible. Most of the conservative defenses of Graham dishonestly state that he was fired for “linking” Islam with terror when in truth he called the entire faith a terrorist organization. That is a hell of a lot beyond “linking” and I’m dissapointed that some conservatives are taking an obviously dishonest approach in defending him.
Graham has been a courageous voice in the DC area against the apologist approach to dealing with Islamic terrorism and in calling moderate Muslims to task for not condemning those extremist clerics who they say don’t represent them. But you cannot call an entire faith, a belief system, a terrorist organization and expect an employer to fend off demands for an apology. Frankly, Graham should have been eager to apologize, unless he actually believes those words are true. And if he does then we are better off without him.
August 26th, 2005 at 5:31 am
If WMAL violated the ‘spirit’ of the First Amendment, then am I guilty of violating the ‘spirit’ of the 2nd Amendment because I don’t allow guns to be brought into the office? And guilty of violating the ‘spirit’ of the Fourth Amendment because I reserve the right to inspect my daughter’s bedroom (she’s 13 and lives at home) anytime I want?
August 26th, 2005 at 7:20 am
Steve: no and no. The spirit of the First Amendment is to promote the free exchange of ideas in the public square. Talk radio is an excellent format for that; it is far more analogous to the public square the First Amendment framers had in mind than it would be to label you as your daughter’s private policeman.
As to not allowing guns in the office, no, that doesn’t violate the spirit of the Second Amendment, either. Ig might, however, if your original policy was to allow guns in the office, and then you caved and reversed it after three angry old ladies who call themselves a Million Mom March pressured you to. Similarly, I wouldn’t say WMAL had “evicted” the First Amendment if their policy all along had been to run only shows by people whose opinions are acceptable to Michael Eisner. Ditto if Air(head) America ever fires anybody for the views they express on the air. In those cases, I’d say the First Amendment had never lived there in the first place.
August 26th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Mikern what are you talkin’? You know its bad enough that I screwed up the legal analysis, now I have NO WHERE to hide. Next time you have an epiphany based on reason and logic, just write it down on a piece of paper, put it under your pillow and leave us dummies alone. I was perfectly happy thinking I was merely lazy. I’m now starting to know how Howard Dean must feel all the time. ADMISSION TIME:O.K. you were right and I was wrong. Not all Moslems are terrorists and the Moslem faith is not a terrorist organization. Not all Moslems are terrorists and the Moslem faith is not a terrorist organization.Not all Moslems are terrorists and the Moslem faith is not a terrorist organization. There I’ve written three times. Sufficient Penance?
August 26th, 2005 at 11:47 pm
Right over my head, John. I know I’m missing something, probably obvious, because you’re very adept and generous with the dry wit and all.
At any rate, I wasn’t addressing what you said. Just giving my view on Graham. And I feel terrible for him. We need more like him. But we also need such rare and courageous voices to maintain their value to us by thinking twice before misspeaking. (And I’m think he did, but would not admit it.) Graham at WMAL was a more powerful voice than wherever he goes now.
August 27th, 2005 at 6:21 am
Is the spirit of the 1st amendment to “promote the free exchange of ideas in the public square” or is it to allow the public to exchange ideas in the public square without fear of government retribution? Did the founders feel the free exchange of ideas needed ‘promoting’? Or was their intent to make sure the people could voice their opinions free of looking over their shoulder for government agents?
Just because a privately owned facility provides an excellent format for the free exchange of ideas doesn’t impose an obligation on the owner of that facility to do so, in law or in spirit. There are way too many restrictions already placed on private enterprise for anyone to suggest burdening them further by imposing ‘in spirit’ restrictions on their behavior.
And your ‘only if Eisner likes it’ comment is spot on. Every radio and TV station has an implicit (if not outright explicit) policy of not putting on the air someone who causes more trouble than the station is willing to put up with and the talent (even the likes of Howard Stern) knows their ability to stay on the air and speak their mind is conditioned on their not going too far. Either Graham forgot about this policy or he didn’t know that he was crossing the line or he knew and just didn’t care. His refusal to go along with WMAL’s conditions for returning suggests makes me think it was the last.
I don’t think WMAL should have kicked Graham off the air. Like most talk radio, he was preaching to the choir and you could probably count on one finger the number of regular listeners who were upset by what he said. That said, WMAL had every right to do what they wanted, both in law and in spirit.
August 27th, 2005 at 9:48 am
MikeM:
What WMAL could and should have done is exactly what real talk radio stations like KFI do when CAIR complains about its hosts: tell CAIR to pound sand, and wait for at least one non-terrorist to complain before even thinking about suspending the guy with pay or asking for a much narrrower apology than they did.
Steve S.:
It was both. There’s little point in keeping speech free from government intrusion if at least some private outlets don’t allow free speech voluntarily. Privatizing fascism may well be consistent with the scope of the First Amendment, but it sure hell isn’t what the framers imagined when they enacted it.
You seem to be confusing scope with spirit. The scope of the First Amendment was narrower still, as it applied onky to the federal government. Yet no one in his right mind would argue that the intended purpose of the First Amendment was to keep fascism at the state level (though some would argue this about the Establishment Clause).
Who said anything about “obligations?” I heard a little over half of Graham’s show on KFI last night, and he never dropped so much as a hint that the Constitution obligated Disney to do anything at all. He did suggest, and I wholeheartedly agree, that a company as limp-wristed and terminally P.C. (these were they guys who had to censor Aladdin too, remember?) should not be in the business of talk radio.
August 27th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
I’ll agree with you on that last point. It seems silly for a company which invests so much in their image to go for a medium that, by its very nature, is designed to be confrontational and p*** people off.
August 27th, 2005 at 8:38 pm
Mikern– That was not a riff. Your comment was spot on. Right now there are Moslem Iraqis fighting along side our guys, risking their own lives. It is most certainly wrong to condemn them all as terrorists. And certainly not all Moslem sects advocate terrorism. Some advocate terrorist activities and maybe even the majority do, but not all. The statement by Graham was factually dead wrong. There is a more serious point to be made and that is that OBL was and is desirous of creating a religious war. The U.S. is in the midst of trying to transform the conflict into either a political fight over the form of governance in Iraq and the middle east or transform the conflict into a tribal conflict between moslem sects.(a cynic might say “divide and conquor”). What the U.S.does not want is a religious war.(in part because that would unify opposition to the U.S.) Graham’s comments come very close to achieving one of OBL’s desires. It was and is a major mistake to support Graham’s condemnation of the Moslem religion from the U.S. point of view. The logical result of supporting Graham’s statement would be the belief that to eliminate terrorism, we need to eliminate the Moslem religion.. I don’t think anyone is willing to go down that road. Therefore I can’t support Graham’s statement at all. You were right and I was wrong.
August 27th, 2005 at 9:41 pm
“There is a more serious point to be made and that is that OBL was and is desirous of creating a religious war.”
Check dart. More than anything, it was Bush’s response after 9/11, in recognition of the above point, that made me realize that he was the right man for the job. He immediately saw the need to separate, very publicly, our actual enemies from the billion or so possible recruits. The Islamists were hoping for a jingoistic response. What they got was a wise measured response followed by a lesson in what governments that host terrorism can expect to reap for their duplicity.
I despise CAIR. I read LGF daily and am aware of their attempts to pass themselves of as moderate voices speaking for mainstream Islam. They are apologists who attempt to give legitimate cover to extremist voices and Graham was doing an excellent job of exposing that. I wish he could still be at WMAL.
PS: I could tell you weren’t ragging me. It is just that you are so self effacing and so generous with your praise, that I keep anticipating a blindside.
August 28th, 2005 at 8:53 am
I don’t live on the East Coast, so I don’t know what Graham said in context. I can say that judging by his show Friday night, he fully understands the difference between the moderate Muslims who do not support terrorism and the fringe ones that do. FWIW, he expressed little patience with the idiot caller who recommended all Muslims be interned.