Montel Williams

As he appeared as a guest on Friday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, moments after decrying Rush Limbaugh's recent "slut" comment, liberal talk radio host Montel Williams defended his infamous suggestion that Michele Bachmann should kill herself by decapitation as being unrelated to the recent Limbaugh matter.

While he was discussing his encounter with a wounded American soldier, he bizarrely brought up Limbaugh as if to suggest that the conservative host's strong words were a dishonor to the people who fight to defend the country. Williams:

"Rush Limbaugh needs to choke to death on his own fat," deranged left-wing radio show host Mike Malloy hissed on his February 18, 2009 program.

Michele Bachmann should "slit [her] wrist!" Montel Williams told his Air America radio show audience in September 2009.

"We ought to rip [Dick Cheney's heart] out and kick it around and stuff it back in him," MSNBC's Ed Schultz blustered on his February 24, 2010 radio program.

Those are just three examples of left-wing hate that the mainstream media haven't denounced while accusing conservatives like Sarah Palin of engendering violence in the wake of the Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shooting.

"Have you ever heard any reporter... denounce these examples?" NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell asked Fox News' Sean Hannity after watching the montage during last night's "Media Mash" segment on "Hannity."

[For the full segment, watch the video below the page break or listen to the MP3 audio here.]

Editor's Note: NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell issued the following statement and provided evidence on the double standard of blaming conservatives for the tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona while repeatedly ignoring left-wing media outbursts wishing death upon conservatives:

The so-called ‘news’ media have zero currency in this debate because we have documented the Left using hateful, vicious language far worse than any conservative. Their attacks on conservatives are untrue and utterly hypocritical. If they really cared about the effects of political rhetoric, they would have gone after any number of those left-wingers who have directly incited violence – starting with the man with the world’s biggest audience: President Obama. After all, he did say, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

But that would be a ridiculous charge. And besides, the media aren’t really concerned about violent rhetoric. This is part of a much more insidious and calculated campaign to criminalize conservative thought.

Next they will ramp up support to regulate free speech on radio airwaves and the like. They want to illegalize opposition to liberal thought and are willing to accuse, indict and prosecute anyone who stands in the way of that Socialist goal.

Here are some lowlights of the left-wing media’s death wishes:

The so-called “news” media have spent much of the past two decades demonizing the rhetoric of conservative radio talk show hosts as mean-spirited, divisive or a menace to civil discourse. But these same journalists — who gleefully castigate Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and other conservatives — are silent about the vile and vicious rhetoric that spews from the Left’s leading radio talk show hosts.

Since late 2007, the Media Research Center has collected numerous examples of the outrageousness of left-wing radio hosts. And, unlike the Left — which attempted to smear Rush Limbaugh with phony quotes — readers can find an audio or video of every one of these quotes (46 in all) posted at our Web site: www.MRC.org.

MRC’s new report includes examples of over-the-top rhetoric from left-wing hosts Mike Malloy, Stephanie Miller, Randi Rhodes, Ron Reagan, Jr., Ed Schultz and Montel Williams, all of whom currently or at one time broadcast to a national audience on either the Air America network or via XM and/or Sirius satellite radio. A few of the choicer examples:

The Radio Equalizer blog is hot on the trail of left-wing talk radio bringing out the weirdest scenarios to shift the blame for the Fort Hood shooting onto the Islamophobic prejudice of the American people. Montel Williams is really starting to fit into the ludicrous Air America radio family: he suggested on Monday that the Fort Hood backlash against Muslims could be so great we would put Muslims in internment camps like the Japanese under Franklin Roosevelt:

WILLIAMS: We pulled something like this back in World War II when we decided to round up all Japanese Americans and put them in internment camps. This is something that I think before we can blink, the [anti-Muslim] rhetoric, Doc, could get out of hand. What do you think?

Perhaps he's auditioning for a part on MSNBC: The place for Michele Bachmann bashing.

Air America host Montel Williams stepped away from his mild-mannered World Series of Poker playing, Big Orange prescription drug bus driving and medicinal marijuana advocacy roles to fire a salvo at Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., encouraging her to stab herself on his Sept. 2 radio show (h/t Radio Equalizer Brian Maloney):

WILLIAMS (1:30:32): Michelle, slit your wrist.
Go ahead... or, do us all a better thing [sic].
Move that knife up about two feet.
Start right at the collarbone.

Air America radio host Montel Williams displayed a brain cramp last Thursday on the Sonia Sotomayor nomination. He suggested the Constitution protects the right of the president to nominate Supreme Court justices and "doesn’t have to get it cleared from Congress, Senate or anybody."

Montel at least suggested his awareness that there is such a thing as a Senate confirmation process (without recalling it was created by Article II of the Constitution). He also suggested Sotomayor’s critics from Gingrich to Buchanan were racists who might want to go back to the days of segregation. Here’s his Constitution-mangling quote:

People seem to forget that this is one of those things that's protected by the Constitution of the United States. The president has the right to select who he wants. [He] doesn't have to get it cleared from Congress, Senate or anybody...No president before this has come under this kind of scrutiny...before the committee hearings even begin.

Former daytime TV talk show host Montel Williams debuted on Air America Radio on Monday, a network so desperate they’re hiring a man who boasts of how he was a long-time Republican, and now says he can’t stomach either party. But Air America’s trying to draw attention to Montel as he begins his (perhaps short-lived) talk-radio run with a demand that former Speaker Newt Gingrich "Shut up" before he starts a nuclear war. Montel played audio of Newt Gingrich on Greta Van Susteren’s show on April 1, saying he would do whatever it takes to take out North Korean missiles, and offered his own fractured rebuttal:

When you come out that ignorantly and try to threaten to put America in a position that we are now riling people towards nuclear war, I gotta tell you, shut up!...

[Gingrich] said, 'I'd bribe someone' [to prevent a missile launch]. This is the leader of the Republican party...Here is your leader telling you that he wants to do business the way he knows how to do it, and that's bribe, break the law by entering another country's airspace, start another war on his own....

If you're a Republican and you are proud of Newt Gingrich and what he just said, you need to go check yourself in, right now, to a hospital...and figure out whether or not you can get put on something...Newt, shut up!

On Wednesday’s "Your World" on FNC, host Neil Cavuto talked with talk show host Montel Williams about the election and asked if Williams was backing anyone, to which Williams responded: "You know, I'm into the election year, but I got to tell you I'm -- here I'll do something controversial, so it'll get us both fired. But I'm sick right now of the way the media is attempting to control this election rather than just report the news." [audio available here]

Williams' condemnation of media went further: "People keep being called or claim to play a race card, when it's really us in the media that are playing the race card, trying to bait people to play into the race card. I'm sick of some of what I feel is some of the most divisive politics that I've seen in the last 20 years."

Cavuto again attempted to find out if Williams was supporting any particular candidate, but instead Williams articulated his responsibility as an influential television personality not to endorse anyone: