A few weeks ago we wrote about the undue and disingenuous attack led by Barack Obama's Chicago HQ perpetrated against Chicago radio host Dr. Milt Rosenberg. Well, last week they did it again, raising their legions to attack the host and his radio station (WGN) and trying to have the unassuming radio host thrown off the air. And what was his "crime"? Rosenberg had the gall to actually interview two conservative writers who were investigating the life and history of the Obamessiah.
I live in Chicago and have listened to Milt Rosenberg many times. His show is one of the most intelligent radio shows in the country, filled with high concepts and serious guests. I also heard both radio shows being protested by Obama's radio brownshirts and there wasn’t a thing wrong with either of the shows. On the first, conservative writer Stanley Kurtz was invited on to speak about his investigation into the ties Obama has with American domestic terrorist William Ayers. In this case, Rosenberg offered airtime to the Obama campaign and it refused the offer. With the second program, Rosenberg had on David Freddoso, author of the recent New York Times best selling book "The Case Against barack Obama." In the later case, Rosenberg even had a lefty Obama apologist on air with Fredoso, there to counter his every anti-Obama comment.
Yet, the Obama campaign still tried to destroy Milt Rosenberg’s career by mounting an email attack campaign as well as urging calls to the station.
Well, Kansas TV critic Aaron Barnhart has written a spirited defense of Milt Rosenberg in his TVBarn column. He finds this Fascistic attack on Rosenberg to be "complete overkill" and it makes him worried about what Obama might do to dissenting opinion if he actually gets the power of the presidency behind him.
"I'm now a lot more worried than I was a month ago about how Obama will deal with criticism from the right should he be elected, because they ain't going away," Barnhart writes.
Obama says he will change Washington. That he will govern in a bipartisan way and get Congress unstuck. I want to believe him. But I think that this current wave of criticism is practice for the years ahead, and I am not encouraged by the Obama campaign's instinct to dump a pile of bricks on anyone who won't engage them on their terms. I mean, wasn't one reason Democrats liked Obama was that he represented a break from the partisan rancor of the Clinton years?
Ah, Barnhart is starting to have the wool pulled from his eyes. This "new tone" claim of Obama's is pure bunk as his wild-eyed radio oppression patrol proves.
Barnhart "finds troubling" the fact that Obama refuses to engage McCain in townhall styled debates, as well. Like the rest of us, Barnhart wonders what Obama is afraid of?
But, it is Obama’s immediate and vicious attacks, especially on someone like Rosenberg, that troubles Barnhart most making him worry about how Obama might deal with opposing opinions if he makes it to the White House.
And based on his behavior toward critics in the past two weeks, I'm starting to think that anti-swift-boat measures make up the entirety of Obama's plan for so-called media reform. No new ideas, just a reinstatement of old ones, like the Fairness Doctrine, but with more teeth.
Can we expect Obama to arrange lengthy prison sentences on trumped up charges like Democratic President Woodrow Wilson did to dissenting opinions in the media during WWI? Maybe we will see the FDR approach that wasn't much different than Wilson's? Whatever the case, this early start of oppressive attacks on opposing opinion out of the Obama campaign is not promising to freedom of the press or freedom of political speech.
Barnhart also has a nice full history of the two incidents from the Rosenberg show. If you are interested in all the details, check out his TVBarn piece.
