OKC Bombing Memorial
The 1995 attack was one inspired by hate speech politics
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First of all we must remember that hate speech does threaten lives of their target and similar people. In particular, I'd like to remind people of two instances in which hate speech resulted in one or more people taking action to kill or attempt to kill persons targeted by the words or similar person(s) to the subject of the speech and in one case many other people.
Just last year, after a period of hate speech aimed at our President, Barack Obama, a young man with mental problems was inspired to shoot at a White House window, apparently in the hope that the bullet would enter the interior and find the president. According to the reports the bullet broke through the outer decorative window, but was stopped by a second layer of glass that was bullet proof (the two layers are the solution to keeping the building looking like it should from the outside while protecting our commander in chief, his family, and staff inside). The shooter did not know that the president was away on a state trip at the time and appeared to be very intent on killing someone within the White House in any case. Right wing talkers acknowledged that fact quickly enough as they passed a bogus story that the shooter was an integral part of the Occupy DC crowd, a guess that was disproved by federal investigators, though still not accepted by many on the right.
A more serious case happened in 1995 when a young man who had heard for 2 years that something needed to be done to pay back "federal agents" for the disastrous confrontation at the Branch Dividian compound in Waco, Texas. in 1993. You may have heard about the solution the young man decided on. It's called the
bombing of the Oklahoma City Alfred P Murrah federal building and killed 168 or 169 people most of which were not federal agents involved in the 1993 action nor Ruby Ridge incident also cited by Wikipedia as inspiring the attack and, in fact, included children in a day care center that Timothy McVeigh knew of according to news reports surrounding the bombing. For some reason his partner Terry Nichols never seems to have faced a threat of full justice for the bombing, but McVeigh was executed in 2001.
Still, there are many more instances in which hate talk seems to have been followed by violence and murder aimed at similar people. After decades of listening to hate rants against the IRS, a man in Austin flew a plane into a local IRS office. Just weeks later, a young man exited the subway train to the Pentagon and tried to kill the guards and enter the building in attack mode. That young man had visited Austin after the IRS plane bombing incident apparently in solidarity with the man who flew the plane though he didn't know him. Another man attacked the holocaust museum in DC killing a guard about the same time as the other attacks. A strain running through these men was that they seemed to have listened to a lot of right wing rhetoric about the evils of the government and certain minorities.
So what should we say about Rush Limbaugh's attack on a young woman who had gone on TV talk shows to tell us about her friend who needed birth control pills because the hormones contained in them would keep cysts from growing on her ovaries, but couldn't afford to keep paying $1200 a year for the product. The young woman did not complain about needing pill coverage for herself, only to protect a friend's health. (The friend who did not receive the treatment she needed via insurance from her Catholic University became unable to continue the treatment because she was a student and couldn't afford the cost. The lack of the hormonal treatment led to a large cyst on an ovary, removal of the ovary, a poor prognosis for child bearing, and the young woman exhibiting signs of entering menopause at the age of 32.
But Rush Limbaugh said that Ms. Fluke, the woman who went on talk shows and tried to testify before Congress wanted pills for herself, for having sex, and that she was having so much sex she couldn't afford protection, therefore Ms. Fluke wanted us to pay for her birth control and that made her a slut, and American citizens her pimp. Then Mr. Limbaugh demanded sex tapes from the young woman in pay back for providing her birth control.
Of course, that rant is ridiculous, and makes one wonder what Mr. Limbaugh is doing, if anything, with his young wife. I don't mean to make fun, but there are simple facts that you would think that any man would learn from a wife if they have marital relations.
Birth control pills must be taken 3 out of 4 weeks, and then a break week without pills is inserted to promote a menstrual period. It does not matter if the young woman has little sex or a lot of sex, the pill schedule is the same. You cannot stop taking the pills because you are taking a few days or weeks off from sex. You must follow the plan even if you are having no sex for a while to keep from developing hyper fertility preceded or followed by heavy bleeding.
I don't want Mrs. Limbaugh to get in trouble if she is being badly controlled by her husband and finds it safer to ask for money by saying she needs more birth control because they have so much sex, but I do know that Rush is not likely to be reading my blog so I will say that the idea he has of how birth control is achieved very wrong.
But mistaken as he is, he is piling on so much dispersion that it is likely to push some unstable person to attack Ms Fluke or another young woman acting in the attacker's mind as a surrogate. As I showed above, attacks on surrogates have happened repeatedly after the right had demonized individuals or groups that were similar to the people attacked.
So, we have Limbaugh verbally attacking young women and putting them at risk of physical attack by his followers.
But who can stop him?
It turns out that Mitt Romney can stop Rush Limbaugh because Bain Capital into which Mitt Romney is likely to have a lot of money invested owns a substantial portion of a company that employs Rush Limbaugh. The Republican primary candidate earned 42.7 million dollars from Bain Capital in 2010 and 2011 according to the tax returns he released to the news media. Info from
Celebrity Net Worth . Though his title is "Retired Partner" for the company, the amount of remuneration he received says he has a lot of money invested in Bain Capital. When you have that amount of money in a company, you can control what it does by threatening to withdraw your dollars from their enterprise.
Mitt Romney therefore can control Bain, but how does Bain control Limbaugh's boss?
According to American Dream Blog which appears to be a Libertarian publication, "Bain Capital
is one of the primary owners of Clear Channel".
According to
Wikipedia on Clear Channel
On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel announced plans to go private, being bought out by two private-equity firms, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners
for $18.7 billion, which is just under a 10 percent premium above its
closing price of $35.36 a share on November 16 (the deal values Clear
Channel at $37.60 per share
(The American Dream blog used the same excerpt. I followed their example.)
More from The American Dream:
The deal was finalized in 2008. Today, Bain Capital is still one of the primary owners of Clear Channel.
and Wikipedia itself reports at above linked site:
On July 24, 2008, Clear Channel held a special shareholder meeting,
during which the majority of shareholders accepted a revised
$36-per-share offer from Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners.The company announced on July 30 that it would offer shareholders
either $36 in cash or one share of CC Media Class A common stock for
each share of Clear Channel common stock held.
The two latest excerpts above are important for those who might think that there is no reason to believe that Bain can control Clear Channel talk show hosts despite being a primary owner of the station. Notice that the work done on acquiring an interest in Clear Channel was set up to get control of the station with many important right wing pundits just about the summer of 2008 when Mitt Romney was hoped to be in the leading candidate in the Republican primary, and heading for the 2008 general election.
Therefore, Bain and it's powerful "Retired Partner" bought enough interest in Clear Channel to control the speech of the pundits on the station, an immensely valuable asset for someone who wants to be president.
So tell Mitt Romney to have a talk with Rush Limbaugh. Young women deserve a contrite public apology from the talk show host, and if they don't get one. Mitt Romney should have the man fired. The former Massachusetts governor intends to wield power to control speech at Clear Channel or get rid of hosts that won't be controlled for his personal uses. He should do the same for a young woman who is not a candidate and has been put in danger along with others of our sex by a hate filled pundit.
Mitt Romney holds the key. If he won't use it for women, then we need to know that, since he wants to be our president. Everyone needs to know whether Mitt Romney will stand up to Rush Limbaugh and have him apologize or, if he doesn't, will fire the man who hates and endangers women.
