August 30, 2007 12:06 AM UTC

I want Gunny Bob's head on a pike!

• 3 Comments
• by: johne

That would be the headline 850KOA radio host “Gunny” Bob Newman would expect me to write were his rantings actually true.  Following in Bill O’Reilly‘s footsteps (background here and here and here), Gunny attacked attendees of the YearlyKos Convention weeks ago here and here comparing us to Nazis, the KKK, and Muslim terrorists. 

“Gunny” Bob Newman on his August 2 broadcast called the 2007 YearlyKos Convention a “convention of hatred and intolerance,” adding, “If you want to see hate, urged violence, bigotry, racism, and intolerance in general, and anti-American speech, this is the event.” Newman then called the convention, organized by the Daily Kos blog, “bigger than any KKK, Nazi, or Muslim terrorist gathering … that has ever occurred”

He further said

If we ignore these growing, this growing radical segment of our society, they could and likely will become a force of hatred, intolerance, and bigotry that helps one of their supporters seize the White House in 2008. And may God have mercy upon us if that happens.

He goes on through his broadcast continuing to call the DailyKos and YearlyKos organizations hate groups.  Bob, do you know what hate group really is?  He must as he cites Nazis and the KKK.

I’d like to contrast that with an except of Markos‘ keynote speech on Sunday:

I’m given a great deal of credit for our movement’s success.  But let’s be brutally honest -what I’ve done is… build a website.  Let me say that again -my chief accomplishment the past five years has been building a website.  I simply provided a safe haven for progressives to meet … and then a beautiful thing happened.  Without my planning or prodding, You started organizing.  You started talking to each other and deciding, on your own, to take charge of your politics.  You began a conversation about the direction of our country.  Scorned and ridiculed (when not downright ignored) you continued to speak to each other.

Oh, my bleeding ears, you can just feel the hated and bigotry dripping from his mouth.  But, let me contrast that yet again with another man’s words:

[from Mein Kampf]

“If at the beginning of, or during, the [1st world] war 12,000 or 15,000 of these Jewish corrupters of the people had been plunged into an asphyxiating gas…the sacrifice of millions of soldiers would not have been in vain.”

January 30, 1939

The nations are no longer willing to die on the battlefield so that this unstable international race may profiteer from a war or satisfy its Old Testament vengeance. The Jewish watchword “Workers of the world unite” will be conquered by a higher realization, namely “Workers of all classes and of all nations, recognize your common enemy!”

another nice tidbit:

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord

on p. 60

Yep, I bet that Adolph was really loved by his mother.  So, which one of these is not like the other?

Normally, I ignore Gunny Bob as I have to believe people listening to his show are smart enough to see through him. However, this time I must speak up.  Let me explain why.  You see, my grandparents met in Germany during World War II.  This occurred because both of their native countries of Poland and Russia were decimated from Hitler’s invasions.  My grandmother’s hometown of Irmina is no longer on the map. With no jobs, no money, and no food, their only option was to get on cattle cars to go to German work camps which were really little more than slave camps.  My Grandparents met there, having to first speak to each other in German, not knowing each other’s languages.  After the Germans were defeated, my grandparents were married and fled to Aachen, Germany where my mother was born.  Five years later they obtained sponsorship and immigrated to the United States.  A little more background is here. So, I exist because of the fascism of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party, and I will never forget that.  For “Gunny” Bob Newman to call me a Nazi is just sick and shows his utter ignorance of history.  Mr. Newman, if you want to call me a Nazi, say it to my face. 
–Note, I’ll be sending him a copy of this diary

Speaking of history, let’s take a little walk through some of the other things Gunny has said on his show:

There’s this gem that got citizens outraged and calling the show’s advertisers causing him to lose a few:

I want every Muslim immigrant to America who holds a green card, a visa, or who is a naturalized citizen to be required by law to wear a GPS tracking bracelet at all times. And the FBI and the NSA should monitor their phones and their emails, all communications — electronic — at all times, as well as bug their places of work and their residences. If they don’t like the idea, or if they refuse, throw their asses out of this country. All mosques and community centers as well as Muslim organizations must be monitored.

Then continuing the Nazi theme regarding some Amendment 44 supporters who interrupted a news conference (oh, the humanity!):

Oh, it was ugly on the west steps of the Capitol today. The fascist druggies stripping the governor and some of our finest law enforcement officials of their First Amendment rights, with brownshirt tactics that reminded me of the old newsreels of the Ku Klux Klan back in the ’30s and ’40s, that reminded me of Nazi Germany and Hitler’s rise to power in the ’30s.

I’m sensing a theme here and I think Senator Dodd put it best in his rebuttal to Bill O’Reilly:

“You ought to be far more candid with your viewing audience here and tell them your real objection here is the idealogy of DailyKos.

Though, perhaps Gunny Bob is right.  After all, there’s this picture of Markos Moulitsas heiling his feline hate supporters when he was on the Colbert Report:

Let’s remember, I’m not calling for someone to wrap duct tape around Gunny Bob’s mouth.  He’s as free to spout his opinions as is the guy wearing a sandwich board at the corner of Lincoln and 17th  Street ranting something about Hillary Clinton and aliens.  What I’d like folks to remember is that KOA and Clear Channel are making a profit off of his words on our public air waves.  The FCC licenses these frequencies and that FCC is part of our government.  That’s not Gunny Bob’s government, not Clear Channel’s Government, but the government of, by, and for the people, all the people of these United States.  Do we want to allow this station to continue to operate in such a fashion?  KOA has already had to apologize for Gunny Bob once.  He also lost some advertisers as mentioned above.  I was happy to participate in that effort, but we’re clearly not done if his moneyed bosses have not yet put the fear of God in him.  Again, Gunny is worried about hate speech of liberals like me and others who attended Yearlykos with the type of rhetoric he’s throwing around?  What color do those kettles and pots come in again?

I’ve been working on this diary for a while now, but now that others are speaking out, I had to finally post something.

House Rep’s David Balmer (R) and Morgan Carroll (D) had the following to say in a recent letter to the editor at the Denver Post:

Bipartisan call for dignity, respect in political debate

More and more, political talk show hosts have been calling people they disagree with “Nazis” or likening people to the “KKK” or even “terrorists.”

Making such comparisons dilutes the memories of genocide, ethnic cleansing, lynchings or hate crimes. To do so disrespects the lives, the suffering and the deaths of too many tragic victims of hate and intolerance in history.

There is no doubt that the First Amendment gives broad protections to political speech. Nevertheless, just because we can say something doesn’t mean we should. We join together to ask for dignity and respect for divergent opinions in policy debates.

Go read the whole well thought out piece.  It’s worth the quick read.

Even local pundit Mike Rosen is sick of tossing the word Nazi around:

when people throw that term ‘Nazi’ around loosely, sometimes they make fools of themselves.

He also said:

gratuitous comparisons to Hitler and Nazis always annoy me, because they trivialize the seriousness of what Nazism was all about.

However on a previous radio show Rosen compared Michael Moore to Joseph Goebbels, but hey no one’s perfect right?

Tomorrow in part two I’ll document Gunny’s advertisers and some of the other very interesting things he’s had to say.
Cross posted at SquareState