Defining Hate Speech In Society Today

If there was ever any doubt that the mainstream media is biased towards a liberal agenda, the reporting by their pundits in the aftermath of the Arizona massacre which claimed six lives and left congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in grave condition, proves that they are utterly bereft of journalistic integrity. Almost immediately, they named Sarah Palin and conservatives as the ones responsible for the shooting and claimed they generated a climate of hate with their political speeches. Clearly these reporters, celebrities and leftwing bloggers either have a poor understanding of the term "hate speech"; they have very poor memories or are just plain hypocrites.

I am dedicating this entire column of samples of real "hate speech" to the lamestream media so they can distinguish it from legitimate political discourse in the future.

There is a website containing images of real hatred towards President George W. Bush at leftwing rallies. I defy the tea party critics in the press to compare the signs at those rallies with the ones at http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621

Some of these signs include:

I'm here to kill Bush (Shoot Me); Kill Bush Bomb His F***IN House; Save Mother Earth Kill Bush; Hang Bush For War Crimes; Bush Is The Disease Death Is The Cure; Bush the only Dope Worth Shooting.

This link also shows Bush being decapitated; a guillotine brought to a protest with Bush's head in the basket; Bush being hung; Bush being burned in effigy; and an image of Bush being assassinated.

Compare the non-existent uproar to these anti-Bush signs to the media outrage over the Obama Joker t-shirts.

There was even a feature film imagining his assassination which film critic Roger Ebert praised in his review:

"Death of a President," the documentary-style speculative fiction about the assassination of the 43rd President of the United States, is seamless, intelligent and maybe even necessary to an understanding of George W. Bush's role in the world today, and his place in the wider scope of history. Especially when public awareness of the facts about his administration lags so far behind what has already been documented."

Comedienne Rosie O'Donnell was just one of the celebrities who frequently used the F-bomb at Democrat rallies to describe President Bush when he was in office.

No one in his administration was immune from criticism by leftists. Comic strip artist Aaron McGruder loathed National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and portrayed her as an Aunt Jemima.

The blog The Daily Kos was noted for its vitriolic comments and after an assassination attempt on visiting V.P. Dick Cheney failed, someone commented, "better luck next time."

Palin's critics obviously forgot this little ditty from actor Alec Baldwin who said this about a sitting U.S. senator: "If we were in other countries, we would all right now, all of us together would go down to Washington and stone Henry Hyde to death."

When White House Press Secretary Tony Snow announced that his cancer had returned, Daily Kos commentators remarked, "The world would be better off without him."

Liberal talk radio host Mike Malloy was vicious in his assault at conservative Glenn Beck and told his radio audience, "I have good news to report. Glenn Beck appears closer to suicide. I'm hoping that he does it on camera... given his alcoholism and his tendencies towards self-destruction, I am only hoping that when Glenn Beck does put a gun to his head and pulls the trigger, that it's on television, because somebody will capture it on YouTube and it will be the most popular little piece of video for months."

While hosting the White House Correspondents Association dinner in 2009, Wanda Sykes said about Rush Limbaugh: "I hope his kidneys fail, how 'bout that. He needs a good waterboarding, that's what he needs."

Remember Air America - the hotbed of liberal vitriol? On September 3, 2009, Montel Williams suggested on the Brian Maloney program that Congresswoman Michele Bachman should kill herself.

How about this sweet message from New Hampshire Democrat State senator Timothy Horrigan who posted on his Facebook his wish that Sarah Palin had been on the plane that killed Alaska Senator Ted Stevens?

Even Playboy magazine joined the hate campaign by publishing a list of ten conservative women they hate to love. Regretfully, I'm not on it but Michele Bachman is.

Racists and anti-Semitic remarks are routinely ignored by the media when uttered by Democrats or left wing organizers.

New York City Council member Charles Barron expressed his resentment towards whites at a reparation rally in 2002: "You know, some days I get so frustrated I just want to go up to the closest white person and say, 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing,' and then slap him, just for my mental health."

Spokespersons from the Nation of Islam are vehemently anti-Semitic and feel free to utter these outrageous statements:

"I say to Jewish America: Get ready... knuckle up, put your boots on, because we're ready and the war is going down... The real deal is this: Black youth do not want a relationship with the Jewish community or the mainstream white community or the foot shuffling, head-bowing, knee bobbing black community... All you Jews can go straight to hell." - Quannell X, National Youth minister for the Nation Of Islam, New York Daily News, October 17, 1995

"The Jews don't like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that's a good name. Hitler was a very great man. He rose Germany up from the ashes." - Louis Farrakhan, 1984

It's ironic that Republicans can be demonized as mean-spirited yet celebrities like Sean Penn and George Clooney can mock Alzheimer's victims Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston.

There are thousands of examples of egregious hyperbole against conservatives that make Republican critiques pale in comparison and an educated student of politics can research them on the web.

Nevertheless, media pundits like those on MSNBC and the major networks continue to use the Tucson massacre as an excuse to silence political debate. This is in spite of the news that the shooter Jared Loughner was a left wing psychopathic nihilist who had absolute no connection to the tea party or Sarah Palin and never listened to conservative talk radio. He had been obsessed with Rep. Giffords for the past three years and his threats to her had been ignored by the police department headed by that Democrat sheriff who mouthed off against conservative "hate speech." Two days before the assault, someone posted this on the The Daily Kos: "My Congresswoman voted against Nancy Pelosi! And is now DEAD to me!"

Naturally the site removed the post while it continued to rail against conservative hate speech.

I hold little hope that this bias will end but on the slim chance that poor memory is at fault, I suggest my readers copy this column and send it to MSNBC. Perhaps it will jog some sense into their anchors:

MSNBC
NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10112

Alicia Colon resides in New York City and can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com and at www.aliciacolon.com