On June 27, following a news item about President Bush's denunciation of the Times story on financial tracking of suspected terrorists via the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications ) bank consortium, Morgan sputtered, "Get 'em! Yes, hang 'em! Yeah!"
Two days later, her sidekick Rodgers became exasperated with the Associated Press for reporting that antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan and others had begun a hunger strike. "Why don't you dopes at the Associated Press do the world a favor? Commit mass suicide!"
"Oh, Lee!" tittered Morgan.
The hilarity continued on June 30 when Morgan clarified her position. For the sake of listeners who wondered why she kept calling for prosecution of the New York Times but not of the other newspapers that had published stories on the SWIFT tracking, she explained that they're all traitors in her mind.
"I'm going to say this one more time," she barked peevishly. "Yes, we're picking on the New York Times, the poor defenseless New York Times. But I don't care if it was the New York Times or the L.A. Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. All of you people are equally guilty of treasonous behavior!"
By then Rodgers had gotten plenty fed up with all the criticism of his co-host, and he issued an ominous warning. "God Almighty," he muttered. "The day will come ... The day will come when unpleasant things are going to happen to a bunch of stupid liberals. It's going to be amusing to watch, it's going to be very amusing to watch." Morgan cackled as if on cue, "Heh heh heh."
[snip]
Then she and her crew came up with a new position regarding what should happen to those journalists whom she deems traitors. Not what should happen, actually, but how it should happen.
"I really do believe that anybody who publishes classified information that results in a charge of treason should be fried! Fry 'em! Trial, conviction, death penalty!"
At that point one of her co-hosts cheerfully interjects, "You originally called for the gas chamber ... but we kind of like Ole Sparky," meaning the electric chair. To shrieks of laughter from Morgan, he launched into a gruesome description of execution by electrocution: "Their hair would go up and everything, smoke, electrical jets shooting out of their eyeballs ... We'd take Bill Keller, put him in the electric chair -- after a trial -- and then fire it up." He then launched into a series of oral sound effects -- buzzing, screeching, hissing and blubbering sounds meant to simulate the high-voltage end of the Times editor.
Nice. Real nice. And this from the "values" people.
UPDATE: Here is the kind of stunt this sort of talk encourages:
Police and environmental workers responded to The New York Times offices today after an employee in the postal services department opened a letter addressed to the newspaper and saw a powdery substance he believed to be suspicious, the police said.
The incident unfolded at about 12:35 p.m. on the eighth floor of the newspaper’s West 43rd Street offices as the mailroom worker opened the white, business-sized envelope with no return address and saw what he later described as a white powder, the police said.
The letter had a postmark from Philadelphia, the police said, and contained an editorial published by The New York Times on June 28 titled “Patriotism and the Press,” with a red “X” written across it, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. Mr. Browne said the substance had yet to be identified but that it was later deemed to be beige in color, not white.
Shortly before 5 p.m. an announcement was made over the Times public address system saying that the powder had been found to be “nonthreatening and nonhazardous.” According to field tests conducted by the Department of Environmental Protection, the substance was preliminarily identified as corn starch, though further analysis will be done at the city Health Department’s laboratory, as the protocol requires.
This time it wasn't a hazardous substance. Next time whoever handles a piece of mail sent by a right-wing lunatic egged on by the likes of Melanie Morgan may not be so lucky.
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