Hate Radio

It's always instructive to watch the wingnuts lie.

Last week, Boston talk show host Jay Severin, a G.O.P. stalwart and veteran of several Republican political campaigns, said "I think we should kill them" while referring to Muslims.

Matthew Mills, the general manager of the station that employs Severin raised the purported defense that Severin would only kill all non-American Muslims, given the chance. According to Rabiah Ahmed: "[Mills] said that [Severin] wasn't talking about American Muslims, he was talking about Muslims outside the US."

According to the Boston Globe, Mills was lying.

The station, demonstrating the courage of its convictions, refused to provide the paper with a tape of the program. However, according to a transcript:

As part of his response [to a caller], Severin said, "I believe that Muslims in this country are a fifth column. . . . The vast majority of Muslims in this country are very obviously loyal, not to the United States, but to their religion. And I'm worried that when the time comes for them to stand up and be counted, the reason they are here is to take over our culture and eventually take over our country."

He said: "My suspicion is that the majority of Muslims in the United States, who regard themselves as Muslims first and not as Americans really at all, see an American map one day where this is the United States of Islam, not the United States of America. I think it pays to harbor those suspicions."

So Mills said that Severin was talking about Muslims outside the U.S., but Severin refers repeatedly to Muslims "in the country" and "in the United States."

Although the Globe does not a provide a complete copy of the transcript, it appears that nowhere before the "kill them" statement does Severin change the subject to foreign Muslims, or radical Muslims, or anti-American Muslims. In fact, the caller also refers to "Muslims in this country" right before Severin makes the kill comment.

A few weeks back, in a column bashing Air America, Severin claimed that liberals spent years "dismissing talk radio as a vast, embarrassing wasteland of doltish, bigoted, old, angry, overweight, religious white men named Chuck." Clearly they were wrong. In Beantown, talk radio is a vast, embarrassing wasteland of doltish, bigoted, old, angry, relatively slender, religious white men named Jay.

I'm going to make a special effort to praise Republicans who condemn this hateful bigot. If you see any, please let me know.

On the other hand, I'm also happy to give the spotlight to any bloviating GOP asswipes who stand up for Severin and decry "the crushing of dissent." (Link via Hesiod.)

Update: I've removed "like whores" from the end of the first sentence. Comparing Severin and his station manager to whores is disrespectful to whores.