The Spocko/KSFO battle hits the MSM

...and miracle of miracles, USA Today not only gets the facts straight, but doesn't immediately dismiss the blogosphere as a bunch of drooling lunatics (unlike the very right-wing talk radio hosts Spocko is battling).

The First Amendment flap was debated Sunday on CNN's Reliable Sources. Dan Riehl, a blogger critical of Spocko, said some of the radio hosts' comments "were blown out of proportion or misrepresented" in the complaints to sponsors. Mike Stark, another blogger and a Spocko ally, said: "The way to fight free speech that you disagree with is to engage in more free speech. And that's exactly what Spocko did."

Examples of commentary that riles the bloggers:

•In November, morning co-host Melanie Morgan said of then-incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat: "We've got a bull's-eye painted on her big, wide, laughing eyes."

•Evening host Brian Sussman in December referred to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who has a Kenyan father and a white American mother, as a "halfrican." In October 2005, Sussman asked a caller to prove he wasn't a Muslim by saying "Allah is a whore."

•In October, host Lee Rodgers warned "enemy" Muslim nations: "You keep screwing around with stuff like this, we're going to kill a bunch of you — millions of you."

Spocko is battling people that represent the most lunatic of the lunatic fringe of the right; people who blithely advocate murder and genocide to score cheap political points. The problem is that the less-lunatic fringe ("less lunatic" defined as being given credibility on mainstream television programs) is only marginally less toxic.

When Ann Coulter says that "Basically, um, it is like California with Baghdad as LA with Hispanics, white and blacks. “You have the Crips and the Bloods in Baghdad. That’s where all the fighting is", she's not advocating killings -- this time. But advocating extermination is not unknown to the Coulter oeuvre, given her infamous comments in the past about killing leaders in Muslim countries and converting them to Christianity; and expressing a wish that Timothy McVeigh had blown up the New York Times Building instead of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. John Gibson of Faux News joins the KSFO lunatics in spreading a lie invented by the Moonie Insight magazine that Barack Obama attended a Wahabbi madrassa as a child.

Spocko's letter to KSFO advertisers, which is reproduced here, doesn't threaten boycotts if the advertisers don't pull their ads, it simply points out the kind of views that their advertising dollars are promoting. It's perfectly legitimate. The right just can't stand it when its opposition is effective, because they've become so spoiled from the opposition's haplessness during the last decade.

Well, guess what, folks. We've been working out getting in shape and now we're buff, rested, and ready.