Passions are running high on the east coast and in America in general in response to the terrorist attack that occurred at the Boston Marathon on Monday. I woke up early Tuesday morning and turned on the Boomer and Carton show which airs on MSG as well as WFAN and was shocked but not altogether surprised by what the hosts had said about the fate of the bomber(s). Boomer Esiason, a former NFL quarterback and CBS football analyst and Craig Carton a sports radio personality have been paired on the air for over five years. Boomer calls for revenge against those responsible, but Carton takes it to a very dangerous and unnecessary level indeed.
Caller Joe: ...my question is what if we find out who and we'll go with the assumption that it is a terrorist attack.
Carton: I don't know how, this is my own personal feelings , I don't know how you view this as anything other than a terrorist attack. It's hard to have that conversation on this radio show because it's your own personal beliefs. I don't want any of this to be political. I have very strong beliefs that if you catch someone who did it, ahhhh, there's no trial and you kill them. And you're done with it. That's just how I feel and I know that goes against how a lot of people feel, but just my own personal sensibilities, Find out the person who did it, if you know 100 % for (garbled) and that's the person who did it. You end that person and that's it. It's very simple to me, but that's me and you get off on a whole different tangent which I don't want to go in that direction. I know that it angers a lot of people.
Boomer: I don't care who it angers, the fact of the matter is we're all in this together, we all have very passionate feeling s when it comes to this especially when you see those images. When you know there are going to be people that have lost limbs that are going to be living with this the rest of their lives, that lost an 18 tear old son. That terror, that post traumatic stress disorder is going ot be living with a number of those first responders and people that were right there so we want revenge we want to be able to hold somebody accountable for this and we want to make sure we get the right people. We extract the revenge that should be in the response to something so insidious as this.
Soon after another caller started talking about---you guessed it---Benghazi. I have listened to these guys at times early in the AM before work and I like the show for the most part because it discusses teams that I root for. Carton has always seemed like a pretty good guy who mixes in humor which is sometimes crass with his sports and while rough at times, I never thought of him as this callous or blood thirsty. (I believe his politics lean right while Boomer's run much farther right and it's not a stretch to say he's a member of the anti-tax/ tea party/deficit hawk conservative caucus.)
Earlier in the broadcast Boomer talked about his close friend being killed in the 9/11 attacks and that he had family and friends at the Boston Marathon attacks so when this happened it brought up all the old feelings from the past. He talks about vengeance and with his history you can see where that is coming from, (Justice should be the goal in any case. We're a nation of laws.) but I was simply amazed at Carton's call to have whoever did the bombings outright murdered with no trial, no charges being filed, no fuss and no muss. Just a quick kill and then move on to the Met score.
If we've learned anything at all since 9/11, it's that we need people in the media and not just in the political arena to act with decency, responsibility and restraint when it comes to hot button issues like this. After 9/11, Americans were much more inclined to want to go to war to have their revenge after listening and watching so many people beat the drum of revenge and retribution in the media that it helped fuel the rush to war in Iraq, a war that was based on lies against a country that didn't attack us and for what? What did it accomplish except more agony for so many others including the troops we sent there to carry out these wishes. I run this to remind Boomer & Carton and others populating our airwaves that you have to do a better job at not inflaming hatred and revenge. Our justice system is sacrosanct and should not be dismissed as an annoyance to getting what one believes is their own form of justice. Come on Craig, tone it down.
@cc660 Carton
