Welcome the era of free speech in the age of the new Republican Congress. Actually, not free speech, but free hate speech. We will now have every whacko bird in the U.S. vying to one-up the other guy who said bizarre and hateful things.
Yesterday it was Rep. Weber, today it's deadbeat dad and ex-Representative Joe Walsh, who hopes MSNBC and CNN editors who refused to show the Charlie Hebdo cartoons are beheaded.
Not content to stop there, he went all out on his responses to critical reactions.
I'm all for free speech, but let's not pretend it's noble to spew hate speech like this. It isn't noble, it's hateful. And stupid. And ugly. And divisive. And hopelessly self-serving.
Walsh belongs to the ultra-extreme wing of the Republican Party who hate all people who are brown and hates them more if they're Muslim. This is nothing more than an opportunistic slam at the networks who choose not to propagate more Islamophobia.
Walsh didn't single out other media outlets that aren't in direct competition with Fox News, but then, why would he? Whether CNN or MSNBC shows those cartoons or not has no bearing on whether there's another terrorist attack in the U.S. In fact, Walsh's words are more likely to spark an attack of the homegrown sort somewhere in the country than a failure to show those cartoons on the air will.
Can we charge a premium for allowing dreck like this to inhabit our taxpayer-funded airwaves?
[h/t Talking Points Memo]
Update: Silly us. It was all just satire. To borrow from a colleague here, I guess it would just be good clean fun to dish up Walsh's head on a platter too?
