Boston talk-show host Michael Graham (we’re not related) was shocked and appalled by Jack Beatty, a liberal writer at the Atlantic Monthly and former book reviewer at Newsweek. Beatty’s a weekly news analyst on the WBUR show On Point, distributed nationally by National Public Radio to more than 150 stations. Looking back at the week in review on Friday, host Tom Ashbrook brought up the case of Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl, captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan and videotaped pleading for his release. While NPR correspondent Liz Halloran said the clip was heart-rending, Beatty went Cheney-bashing:

We have to hope that he is treated better than we have treated people we have taken prisoner in Afghanistan. We have to hope that he’s not essentially given indefinite detention, or as Lindsey Graham said this week about people in Guantanamo, ‘locked away forever.’ We have to hope that despite the worst efforts of John Yoo and Dick Cheney and others, he is not tortured, because we tortured.

The NPR-distributed talk show On Point from WBUR in Boston – which airs nationwide on 169 stations –  took up “Angry America” as a topic on Monday, illustrated on the show’s website with pictures of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage. Host Tom Ashbook summarized that radio talk could lead to violence: “Lately, the language on air in the age of President Obama, economic bust, and big government bailouts, has been particularly hot – and hot when sales of guns and ammunition are surging.”