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SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED (AGAIN)

By Charlie Sykes

Story Created: May 18, 2009

Story Updated: May 18, 2009

Truly extraordinary story about the Obama campaign's attempt to intimidate and bully WGN into not airing a segment with writer Stanley Kurtz, who has been documenting Obama's ties to the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers.

 

Last night Chicago's own Milt Rosenberg hosted Kurtz for the duration of his WGN 720 show. The Obama campaign declined Rosenberg's invitation to have a representative appear with Kurtz on the show. Rosenberg has made a podcast of the show available for download here.

JOHN adds: This is another in the series of near-daily "Democrats vs. Free Speech" stories. It is noteworthy that the Obama campaign's email to the candidate's acolytes says, "At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies," but fails to disclose that the radio station invited a representative of the campaign to appear on the show. Barack Obama hates debate, but loves bully-boy tactics.

 

Listener emails:

 


The WGN incident is just the latest demonstration of the left's new favorite tactic.   You don't need to go to WGN or Obama to see this happening.   Right here in Wisconsin you see it in the coordinated campaign by the left to gag WMC.  Soglin, Riley, Doyle, Faulkner, One Wisconsin Now, and others are trying to shut down WMC for representing their members' pro business agenda.   OWN is now bombing harassing e-mails into WMC member companies calling them all sorts of names and accusing WMC of "lowering the debate" "ruining the tenor of political debate in Wisconsin" etc (sound familiar?)

The most significant thing to notice about the current anti WMC attacks is that  - like the Obama tactic last night - none of them focus on the message/agenda, they just want to bully\gag\punish the messenger.   

That's because  they know they can't beat the message.  The left's only hope is to gag the most effective purveyor of that message in the state.

This is dangerous almost neo-facist stuff, and it is being adopted as the #1 option in the left's playbook nowadays.  And it's not happening by grassroots or coincidence.  It is by finely orchestrated design.  Again.  It is dangerous stuff.

***

Another email:

 

 

Charlie,

 

I tuned in to your show after you had already begun talking with a caller about the WGN incident, so I missed the preliminary discussion and was not sure whether or not you’d heard Milt’s show yourself.

 

 

 

I am an occasional listener to “Extension 720” (and have been since I was a kid growing up in the 1980s), and I just happened to catch last night’s show, not knowing in advance what the subject was going to be.

 

 

 

Your caller’s description of what happened was entirely correct. Obama supporters poured in to repeat their canned assertions about Kurtz being a liar and to complain that he was given air time (especially during weeks of supposed inconvenience to a campaign whose headquarters were located, according to Milt, within a quarter-mile of the studio). Although Milt tried to get them to be specific about the facts they were disputing and to engage in discussion, they robotically stuck with the script. Milt would then ask Kurtz to respond, and he would say something like, “I think the caller’s words speak for themselves.” They did, indeed. It was hilarious, but chilling when one considers how an Obama campaign that does this sort of thing might act as an Obama administration.

 

 

 

I believe you called Milt a class act and your caller referred to him as a gentleman. Something that people who have never listened to his show might assume is that he is just another “right-wing talk radio” host. For their benefit, I think it needs to be stressed that he is a university professor who has for decades been doing a show intentionally set up to resemble a classroom on the airwaves, with topics ranging from Shakespearian plays to the histories and cultures of various countries around the world. As bad as the Obama campaign’s tactics would have been in any setting, they seemed utterly bizarre in the highbrow context of “Extension 720”. ...

 

 

 

Sincerely,

Eric Obermeyer

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