Translation:
I have nothing substantive to contribute, so I will try a weak and desperate diversion as a last resort.
Nice try though, but it hasn't worked the last few hundred times it has been tried on me.
Posted on 06/21/2007 8:20:20 AM PDT by Roberts
Michael Savage vs. Brian Lamb.
Sounds like the unlikeliest of media showdowns, right?
Well, it's happening right now, it's bloody, and Lamb is winning.
First, some quick background. Talkers magazine recently awarded Savage -- a radio host whose talk show I enjoy -- a Freedom of Speech award. Savage did not pick up the award in person at a gathering in New York. Instead, he sent a speech on DVD. C-Span cameras were at the conference and covered parts of it but not the taped Savage speech.
How did Savage react? By selling a DVD of the speech on his website with these messages: "See the Speech that C-Span Banned!" and "See the Speech Too Hot for Left-Wing C-Span!" He even posted a list of C-Span phone numbers and e-mail addresses, including that of C-Span president and CEO Lamb.
And, like a mighty river, the Savage-driven anger is flowing into the network.
Rather than sit back and take it, Lamb decided to make the skewering public on the June 15 episode of "Washington Journal."
Lamb's weaponry was both brilliant and simple: the e-mails themselves. He quoted the outraged masses, sparing none of their vitriol.
Here's some of what Lamb read on air, according to closed captioning:
"Here's one from Col. Tom Haggerty. He says, 'The little man Lamb' -- me, he is talking about -- 'the dry, stone-faced little man.' Signed, Col. Tom Haggerty. This one from, let's see, Argulario, it says, 'Did you really turn off the free speech award when he was to talk? How dare you? Are you a Nazi and a Stalinist and probably a homosexual, and I don't appreciate your agenda.' This is from a fellow named Jim Lewis: 'As a taxpayer, I'm demanding that you air the freedom speech by Dr. Savage. I pay your salary, and you have no right censoring programs based on your political beliefs. When can I see the time slots and promos for airing of his speech. I will await your responding. I would hate to lead the effort of the removal of you people who have offended not only me but many other Americans.'"
And this one: "I am outraged at your cowardice. It is even an act of cowardice or something much more sinister. Perhaps you are a neo-Marxist, neo-Leninist. I do not expect a response from one that is, at best, a weakling and, at worst, an enemy of our republic."
Hardly a coward, Lamb did respond -- by calmly stating facts:
"We are not a taxpayer organization," said Lamb. "We have told our audience that many, many times. We get no federal funds, state funds, local funds. We get our money from you. You give us a nickel a month when you pay your bills, and that's how we operate here. And the decision to not carry the speech was made by our programming department, our vice president of programming, Terry Murphy, and the reason was that Mr. Savage does not appear in person. He sent a DVD of an 11-minute speech, and we have offered him, in lieu of that, an opportunity to cover a speech he might make -- the same speech, if he wants to -- if he gives it before an audience out there in the Bay Area where his program operates."
I wrote about Lamb's reaction on my blog, praising him for doing something few other media personalities would have had the nerve to do: quote venomous words about themselves. The posting generated a good number of comments. Notably, it produced an outpouring of support for Lamb from conservatives.
An example from popular blogger Don Surber: "Unbelievable. How do you criticize Brian Lamb? A more aptly named journalist there is not in America. To say there is a bias at C-Span is to turn the Right Movement back to the 1960s, when it was a bunch of tennis-shoe-wearing grannies in a tinfoil hat complaining about fluoridated water."
Another wrote, "Michael Savage is an embarrassment to conservatives. C-Span is a national treasure. Indeed, they do not cover every nutter's speech, but they do their best to cover a broad array of parts of the national discourse. How dare Savage set his listeners on Brian Lamb."
Savage could not be reached for comment.
Lamb said Wednesday that he continues to receive hate mail from Savage supporters and is considering doing another show about the fight this Friday.
"On almost every count, they're wrong. That's why I did this. ... To have every single one of them say 'you must be defunded' is totally devoid of fact," Lamb said. "I just want our audience to know what people are saying in their e-mails and their vitriol, and everyone who reads the blogs knows the vitriol."
"Why" is the real question. I'm not sure if C-Span is covered by Arbitron ratings or not, but I would imagine that their normal ratings have to be virtually zero.
C-Span is lucky that cable and satellite subscribers don't have the choice of a-la-carte programming, because if we did, they wouldn't be able to stay in business.
Not until Wiener came on-board on talk radio did you get this kind of fratricide.
Like the Rudy clowns who were booted off this forum, my wishes are for all of you Wiener sycophants to either see the light, or take your threads honoring a socialist loving, faux-conservatism somewhere else.
As just another Bush-bot you should seriously consider just staying down there with your mentor and fellow RINOs and forgot posting to a conservative website.
Translation:
I have nothing substantive to contribute, so I will try a weak and desperate diversion as a last resort.
Nice try though, but it hasn't worked the last few hundred times it has been tried on me.
I didn't get that impression at all from watching the clip on Youtube. Mr Lamb explained many times why they decided not to air the speech as Savage didn't actually give a speech, but rather sent in a DVD both to the awards banquet and C-Span. And it appears to me this whole brouhaha was designed by Savage to get people to buy the DVD of his 11 minute speech. I'd never heard of Mr Lamb before, but he seems to be a fairly decent type of guy. And as for reading the worst of the worst emails, conservative talk show hosts are just as guilty.
As I said, I have seen C-Span run 2 hours of PowerPoint presentations, and they always show DVD mini-films at political events. His explanation was nonsense.
You can’t say on one hand that Savage is a publicity seeker who will do anythign for attention and ratings and then claim that he was offered free air time on C-SPAN and turned it down. Yet that is exactly what you’re saying.
Why would C-SPAN offer him air time? Taht simply doesn’t make sense.
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