Graham´s Gone Crackers

Please allow me to introduce the ugly little fellow to my left. His name is Michael Graham and he is the host of of a conservative talk show on Maryland Radio Station 630 WMAL. Now, I want you all to know that I am not calling Michael "ugly" because of his receding hairline, lame comb-over or silly, good ole boy grin. No, no, I think Michael´s soul is ugly. He´s a wanna be Rush Limbaugh that makes racist comments on his show and lists the quote "Every Day We’re On The Air, We’re Keeping Reagan’s Vision Alive" on his page of the radio radio web site.

Graham´s hate speech has managed to turn the national spotlight on him, which I´m sure he´s basking in. Well, live it up, Michael, these are your 15 minutes of fame. For the rest of you, check out the following article. You´ll find my commentary at the end.

Muslims Call Comments by WMAL Host 'Hate-Filled'
by Paul Farhi

A local radio talk show host touched off complaints from an Islamic civil rights organization yesterday after repeatedly describing Islam on the air as "a terrorist organization" that is "at war with America."

The organization, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), asked the station to take disciplinary action against Michael Graham, who hosts WMAL-AM's late-morning call-in program.

A station executive, Randall Bloomquist, said yesterday that Graham's comments were "amped up" but justified within the context of the program. He said the station, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co., had no plans to reprimand Graham.

The show host touched off the flap during a discussion of the Muslim community's response to recent acts of terrorism. Graham suggested the fault lies with Muslims generally because religious leaders and followers haven't done enough to condemn and root out extreme elements. "The problem is not extremism," Graham said. "The problem is Islam." He also said, "We are at war with a terrorist organization named Islam."

CAIR denounced the comments yesterday as "hate-filled" and "Islamophobic" and asked its members to contact the station's advertisers to express their dismay.

"It's amazing," said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR's communications director. "I talked with Mr. Bloomquist and asked him if he would reprimand someone who used the n-word on the air. He said yes. I asked him if he would reprimand someone who read [approvingly] from the [anti-Semitic] 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' He said yes. So I asked him if he would do the same if someone had called Islam a terroristic organization. Well, he said, it's all about context, but he never quite explained it to me."

Added Hooper, "The First Amendment allows people to be idiots and bigots. All you can do is embarrass people and have them defend their reputation. If WMAL doesn't feel embarrassed and doesn't want to defend its reputation in the face of anti-Muslim bigotry, then there's not much we can do about it."

Graham, who broadcasts locally, is one of several conservative hosts heard on WMAL (630). The station's daily lineup includes the syndicated Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity programs.
After rising slightly during the months preceding the presidential election last year, WMAL's audience ratings have fallen precipitously. Exact ratings for Graham's 9-11:45 a.m. time slot are unavailable, but WMAL's morning programming, which includes part of Graham's program, are off 25 percent since last year. The station overall has lost 41 percent of its core 25-to-54-year-old audience in the past 12 months, dropping from 158,200 individual listeners per week to 116,600.

Graham declined to comment when contacted yesterday, saying, "I'm saving all my comments for my show. You'll just have to listen." But in his weekly column, which will appear on WMAL's Web site today, he repeats the statement that "Islam is a terror organization" and makes the following analogy:

"If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 Scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization. If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror repeatedly turned to the Boy Scout handbook and found language that justified and defended murder --and the scoutmasters responded by saying 'Could be' -- the Boy Scouts would have been driven out of America long ago.

"Today, Islam has whole sects and huge mosques that preach terror. Its theology is openly used to give the murderers their motives. Millions of its members give these killers comfort. The question isn't how dare I call Islam a terrorist organization, but rather why more people do not."
Bloomquist said his station had received more than 100 e-mails protesting Graham's comments, many of them, he said, apparently generated by CAIR's e-mails to its members. He went on to defend Graham, saying, "Remember that this is talk radio. We don't do the dainty minuet of the newspaper editorial page. It's not 'Washington Week in Review.' It depends on pungent statements to drive it. Michael is rattling the cage. It's designed to start and further a conversation, and it has certainly done that."

Graham made waves earlier this year when he scuffled with Montgomery County police after he tried to attend an event for illegal immigrants while wearing a T-shirt that read "INS (I Need Border Security)." He also recently led a rally in front of The Washington Post's building in the District seeking the dismissal of Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff, who wrote a story that inaccurately reported on alleged abuses of the Koran in the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba (Newsweek is owned by The Washington Post Co).

Graham has also clashed with CAIR in the past. The group last year cited him in a campaign called "Hate Hurts America" for what CAIR described as implicitly advocating violence against Muslims.

Source: Washington Post, July 26, 2005

My favorite part of the story is where Graham justifies his unjustifiable statements with the Boy Scout comparison. It´s the perfect example of ultra-conservative spin. Bigots like Graham and Hannity and Limbaugh try to push their opinions and vision of the world by simplifying everything and flat out lying whenever possible. To learn more about these tactics, read Al Franken´s super excellent book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

First, Grahams comparison of Islam to the Boy Scouts is in itself demeaning. An increadibly diverse variety of people stretched across the planet should never be compared to small children learning the appropriate way to pitch a tent and sew a badge, and second, if the whole issue of terrorism was as simple as Graham makes it in his comparison, we would have flushed out all of the terrorists by now.

It´s not like governments or organizations or mosques or each and every Muslim individual know who the terrorists are. Part of being a terrorist is a secretive attitude. In most cases, such as with the suicide bombers in London, not even their families knew the plot they were hatching. So I ask you, Michael, how are the troop leaders gonna kick out the rotten scouts, when they don´t know which ones have gone sour?

I haven´t read the Koran, haven´t read the bible either, but I´ve read excerpts and know enough about both holy books to know that neither one of them defends terror or murder. However, they both have a fair amount about infidels and cleansing the Earth of such unscrupulous and unsavory characters.

And what mosques have you been to recently, Michael, where you´ve heard "terror" being preached? I seriously doubt Michael has ever even set foot in a mosque, so then he must have read or heard about this terror preaching from a credible source. Or, maybe he just made it up. After all, I read the news daily, and I have yet to hear of anyone finding a particular mosque dedicated to churning out terrorists.

Let´s face it, Michael, you´re wrong. There are about 1.200 billion Muslims in the world, and they can´t all be terrorists, and if they are, well, I think you´d better watch out.