Randi Rhodes

On Thursday, December 1, several left-wing radio talkers viciously attacked Newt Gingrich, the GOP front-runner. There is a special toxicity level they reach when talking of the former House speaker.

Take Randi Rhodes, who mocked his appearance: "He always looks like a corpse that was pulled out of a lake! Every time I watch CSI and they pull somebody out of the lake, I think, hey, is that Newt? No, it's this week's murder victim. He's bloated and a massive mutiliated middle aged flesh curtain hanging!" Then take Mike Malloy, who compared Newt to an ax murderer and railed against his bad breath:

On Wednesday, liberal talk radio host Randi Rhodes found nothing wrong with Occupy Oakland protesters throwing rocks and bottles at police (and even Mother Jones confirms that). She seemed to ignore reality entirely, asking “If you conservatives are so against class warfare, why are the cops using warfare tactics against peaceful demonstrators?”

Some may have been peaceful, but the police didn’t fight back because the protesters were all “peaceful.” But Rhodes was on a roll: “Why warfare? Why rubber bullets or any kind of bullets? Why tear gas or any kind of gas? What is the justification for throwing these, uh, concussion bombs at women -- and children? I don't get it!”

On Thursday's edition of the Randi Rhodes radio show, the liberal hate was flowing. Rhodes suggested Rush Limbaugh was a racist for being offended by Obama's transparent scheduling-over-the-debate ploy, and she suggested he facially resembled the serial child-molester/murderer John Wayne Gacy.

She also agreed with Rep. Maxine Waters that the Tea Party should go to Hell -- and will, in the long run, since they are obstructing disaster aid for spending offsets: "I don't think Jesus said 'Let people drown'!"

The gay blog On Top reported that “comedian” Janeane Garofalo is the latest in a string of celebrities and activists suggesting Michele Bachmann’s therapist husband Marcus must be gay, including Cher, Jon Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld, and sex columnist/”It Gets Better” bully Dan Savage. Cher even said she wanted to strangle him.

This Marcus-is-gay line has also been a regular trope of liberal talk radio, from openly gay Stephanie Miller to Randi Rhodes to even Ron “Junior” Reagan, who knows something on this subject of aspersions from his ballet-dancing days.

... which helps explain why conservative radio continues to dominate the airwaves while Air America Radio, uh, went kaput.

During a recent appearance on Tavis Smiley's PBS show, enviro lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose "Ring of Fire" show ran on Air America, made what reasonable souls among us might construe as a questionable claim.

Here's Kennedy responding to a question from Smiley on how liberals can better hone their message (video clip after page break) --

On her Friday show, liberal talk radio host and that renowned economist Randi Rhodes – okay, she had no academic credentials and never went to college – but she insists that America urgently needs a second “stimulus,” but won’t get one because the Republican 2012 plan is “to starve you!...So be it, said John Boehner.”

The problem is the American people are getting hip to this - they're starting to figure it out, economists are writing about it, Wall Street Journal's written about it - the fact that we don't have a second stimulus is so ridiculously stupid, that we don't have any investment in our people.

Bush Derangement Syndrome never really went away. Nowadays it's directed at Sarah Palin instead.

A good example of Palin's uncanny ability to unhinge liberals could be heard on a recent Randi Rhodes' radio show.

Rhodes, who infamously derided Hillary Clinton as a "big f***ing whore"  during the 2008 campaign, was angered by Palin wearing a Star of David pendant during a stopover in New York City on her bus tour. (audio clip after page break).

On Thursday, liberal talk-radio hosts Randi Rhodes and Stephanie Miller each protested the one-week suspension of MSNBC host Ed Schultz for calling Laura Ingraham a “talk slut” on his radio show. Miller said of the S-word: “So, I wear it proudly. Some right women are soooo sensitive!”

It’s understandable Randi Rhodes might think this isn’t offensive. She was suspened by Air America for yelling that Hillary Clinton was a “big f—ing whore” in 2008. But she was really upset at the Schultz apology and suspension, insisting Schultz had used the word on her, too, and neither found it offensive:

You might think most rappers aren’t exactly Shakespeare, but left-wing radio talker Randi Rhodes was implying that connection on Wednesday when it came to the rapper Common’s "poetry" at the Obama White House. "He’s brilliant, he’s absolutely brilliant," she asserted. And conservatives would oppose Shakespeare, too:

Look, the conservatives, if Shakespeare were alive, and he went to the White House to get, you know, some sort of a reading, they would be outraged about him -- talking about killing his brother, and the father had to go, and a mother he slept with -- They'd be out of their fricking minds with this. They don't understand culture! Or literature!

Rhodes also asserted on Wednesday that it was somehow a Tea Party member that shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

It’s not enough for lefty radio host Randi Rhodes to say “Thomas Jefferson would bitch-slap Rush Limbaugh so hard.” On Tuesday, she insisted Ronald Reagan would be on Rush Limbaugh’s enemies list.

Rhodes played a clip of Limbaugh saying of the Left “I don’t look at them as just simple opponents. That’s the prevailing view inWashington. Yea, they’re just the Democrats. And they’re going to win some and we’re going to win some...No no. ..The American Left with their designs on this nation are [the enemy].”

Rhodes insisted “You know, it's a good thing Ronald Reagan's not around because he'd be on Rush's enemies list.because that was Ronald Reagan's quote. 'Make your political opponents just your opponents. They’re, not your enemies,' okay? They’re just Americans who you disagree with."

There are different layers of liberal outrage over the demand to see Barack Obama's birth certificate, and leftist radio host Randi Rhodes took it to ridiculous lengths on Thursday. Somehow, these demands "wounded" black Americans in a way the Ku Klux Klan "never aspired to," even if this metaphorical wounding is a much lighter sentence than the death sentences the Klan handed out:

Now that we're done with the birther thing, and we have insulted an entire population of the American people - we have just absolutely wounded, you know, African Americans...we have wounded black Americans...we have wounded the President, we have wounded his family...we've wounded an entire population of the United States of America in a way that I don't think the Ku Klux Klan ever even aspired to, okay.

People are so devastated by what Donald Trump did, and the things that he said, and the racism of the Tea Party, and they've been frustrated for a very long time with whites who refused to accept or acknowledge that the Tea Party had been acting in a racist manner, that they were using covert and overt racism, they were using, uh, you know, things that were right in your face and the basketball reference...and all the other, you know."

CNN's Carol Costello re-aired a biased report she did in 2009 about liberal efforts to push localism to limit the influence of conservative talk radio. During the report, Costello omitted the left-of-center source of a statistic she used, that 91% of talk radio is apparently conservative. She also tilted towards localism by playing three sound bites in favor of the proposal, versus two against it.

The CNN anchor introduced her report, which originally aired on the October 21, 2009 edition of American Morning, by noting that "House Speaker John Boehner told the National Religious Broadcasters Convention he and other Republicans are working on a bill that ensures the Fairness Doctrine will not be revived, ever. Boehner says it's important because the Fairness Doctrine silences ideas and voices."

Costello then gave only two brief indications that her report was over a year old. She stated that "The controversy over the Fairness Doctrine, or as some like to call it, localism, boiled over a few years ago as progressives fought for what they call a fighting chance to have their voices heard." Actually, the Fairness Doctrine and localism are two separate issues, something she actually acknowledged during her original introduction to the report: "It’s unlikely the Fairness Doctrine will return, but there is something else many liberal talkers are fighting for: localism." In addition to this, a graphic flashed on the screen for only seven seconds: "Original Airdate 2009" (see below).

Liberal radio host Randi Rhodes attacked Rush Limbaugh Friday for an argument which he never made – namely that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid never privately practiced law. Limbaugh, in fact, affirmed that Reid practiced law – for two years.

Smearing Limbaugh as a "fat freak," Rhodes criticized him for making facts up about Reid. "After [Limbaugh] said he did his research, he came back on the air and said that Harry Reid has taken bribes, and has insider trading information," Rhodes ranted. "Harry Reid was a lawyer for 18 years!"

Limbaugh, on his October 15 talk show, investigated Reid's background to discover whether he had indeed made a living off of investments and a private law practice before he came to Capitol Hill. Reid recently defended himself against allegations by his opponent Sharron Angle who wondered openly how he had risen to his current wealth and power from lowly beginnings.
 

Liberal talk radio host Randi Rhodes rejoiced on Wednesday over victorious Tea Party candidates Carl Palladino ("a seriously creepy, creepy guy") and Christine O'Donnell ("you've got the anti-masturbation paranoid creationist lawyer where we could pick up a seat"). But Rhodes decided to go scabrously nasty and personal against O'Donnell, complete with flagrant virginity mockery:  

By the way, Christine O'Donnell. It comes to my attention, uh, Deb tells me that Christine O'Donnell is not married....she's an unmarried woman. Hymen check! [plays popping noise] She'd better be a virgin! Right? With all this vitriol about sex and sexual thoughts and lust and not masturbating and it's wrong and what am I doing in the room...

I know she had a boyfriend. I know she did because her then-boyfriend -- then campaign manager -- purchased her house when her house was in foreclosure for her! Uh, do you think he did it with lust in his heart?

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:

While lefties are foaming at the mouth over what Republican Senate candidates like Sharon Angle and Rand Paul have to say, they're not quite willing to publicly embrace or defend the antics of their own duly elected nominee, South Carolina U.S. Senate Democratic nominee Alvin Greene. That is, they weren't until now. 

On the Aug. 17 broadcast of her radio show, Randi Rhodes went to bat for Greene. According to Rhodes, the indiscretions that brought Greene indictments, in which he allegedly showed obscene photos to a University of South Carolina student and then talked about going to her dorm room, weren't really that bad. Although it's not clear if Rhodes was being serious, and it's difficult to tell, she claimed he was "sharing a wonderful moment of pornography" with this student and bewildered why such an approach warranted criminal charges.

"Let me tell you - you know my candidate for Senate in South Carolina is Alvin Greene," Rhodes said. "I left off where he was supposedly indicted for you know sharing a wonderful moment of pornography with a girl who was over 18 in a college library - in a college library where he had attended college by the way, so he still has his ID card to get on the campus, so. I don't know what law he broke, but apparently they say he did and they indicted him. And so the local TV went over to his house to see what his comments were about the indictment."

Randi Rhodes believes she knows the original intent of the Founding Fathers -- and that it was their intention to brutalize conservative talk-radio stars Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. On Wednesday afternoon's show, she was ripping into Arizona's immigration law, and how conservatives aren't democratic, and liberals are the forces of freedom and the Constitution: 

Because they’re not democratic. Because they are what they say we are. They are actually the controlling freaks that they think we are. We are the people who believe in freedom. We are the people who believe in one man, one vote. We are the people that believe that the Constitution matters, and that if the Constitution has a requirement that federal immigration is the purview of the federal government to administer and enforce all immigration laws, then we actually stand by that, whether or not, you know, we think that was the right decision or the wrong decision for the Framers to have chosen. [Mocking] The founders. The fathers. The founding fathers. This is why I retch every time when their start with their founding father – with their love.

Thomas Jefferson would bitch-slap Rush Limbaugh so hard -- I swear -- and oh, Mark Levin - can you imagine Ben Franklin going up against Mark Levin, and what mincemeat he would make out of that bald little psycho? I mean, seriously! Five minutes -- they wouldn't even last five minutes! There would be a duel immediately on the streets of New York! It’s so good.

Brian Maloney at Radio Equalizer captured the bizarre (and no doubt jealous) analysis of  Rush Limbaugh on liberal talk radio over his remarks that "that cracker" George Steinbrenner made a lot of African-American millionaires as owner of the Yankees (and fired a lot of white managers). On Wednesday afternoon, Randi Rhodes tried to compare Limbaugh to Rev. Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps, who ruins the funerals of our soldiers:

This is his death, Rush Limbaugh, this is George Steinbrenner's death! Is there any event that you can't turn into a platform for racism? Rush Limbaugh has ruined more funerals than Fred Phelps ever dreamed of ruining!

I mean, he's much more widely distributed than Fred Phelps' little Westboro Baptist Church out of freaking Kansas that goes to, uh, you know, our soldier's funerals with signs that say God hates the F-word. I mean, really, this is what we've degenerated into and you want to, what, say America's the greatest country in the world.

Libtalker Randi Rhodes can't hold a candle to conservative radio host Mark Levin when it comes to constitutional law. 

But Rhodes remains unrivaled in doling out gratuitous insults to divert attention from the issue at hand.

Here's Rhodes on her radio show Friday, describing the reaction of Levin and Washington lawyer Cleta Mitchell to the so-called Disclose Act narrowly passed by the House (click here for audio) --

RHODES: But anyway, they're freaking out because the NRA is exempt and so now, they're attacking the NRA. The conservatives have lost their minds, over disclosure. Losing their minds. In fact, Mark Levin, this, oh he's such an angry little mushroom man. Oh his penis must be just so inadequate. He is on the air literally, I mean, losing his mind, talking to a lawyer from a very large K Street law firm here in DC who's advising, she says she's thinking about advising her clients to disobey the law.

On Tuesday's Randi Rhodes radio show, Rhodes was complaining that the stimulus money is running out, leading to layoffs of public employees. She lamented that Colorado Springs is going without street lighting and selling police helicopters, and starving the public sector is what conservatives want, because they hate public servants. 

And this is exactly why the conservatives keep harping on spending, spending, spending as the problem: because they know spending, spending, spending is the solution, and they don't want this solved! They don't want this solved because they hate government! They hate teachers. They hate police officers. They hate first responders. They hate firemen. They hate EMT workers. They want it all to be privatized! That's when you gonna get the haves having police protection and excellent schools and the have-nots having no police protection and no schools! And therein is the dreamworld for them. This is nirvana for them!

She said 32 states don't have the money for unemployment benefits, and that isn't because they've overreached, but because they're underpaid by the taxpayer. She's talk radio's answer to John Kenneth Galbraith. The public sector lives in "squalor." The fantasies about the conservative anarchists continued: 

Liberals are forgiving of Helen Thomas's "get the Hell out of Palestine" remarks to the Jews -- even the Jews. But they're still making fun of the lady's face. On Tuesday, Norman Lear sent in a two-paragraph statement to the Washington Post's On Faith page that announced:

What we all intend, at least what our cultures and religions say we all intend, is good. Among them is forgiveness. As journalist Helen Thomas leaves the national stage after her 50-year run, it's time to forgive that now ancient hatched-faced [sic] whippersnapper, whose just being there delighted us for so many years. I will never forgive her offensive last words per se, but rest well, Ms. Thomas, on the billions of other words and on the 90 years it took to say them,

Mocking Thomas as "ancient" is odd coming from Lear -- he's 87. On her radio show on Tuesday, Randi Rhodes was discussing the adultery allegations against South Carolina GOP gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley, but ended by mocking Thomas:

Radio talk-show host Bill Press is the tiniest of fish in the radio ocean, but this minnow’s all over the place complaining about the whales. The problem is, of course, that if the market is any kind of measurement, no one knows, or cares, that he’s written a book. So he’s written a column to self-tout “Toxic Talk: How the Radical Right Has Poisoned America’s Airwaves.”

Press writes about the good ol’ days of civil discourse, but “that's not what we hear nonstop today.” And who’s to blame? “Honest disagreement on the issues has been replaced by a barrage of ugly name-calling from today's ministers of hate on the right.”

OK, then let’s see the evidence. But first, let’s dispense with the Michael Savage examples, shall we? Press cites this phony as screaming to a gay activist, “You should get AIDS and die, you pig!” That is true, but Press doesn’t tell you that a) that was not on his radio show; it was on MSNBC, and b) Savage was loudly condemned by conservatives (like yours truly), and MSNBC was congratulated when he was fired, though some of us also pointed out that MSNBC should never have hired this bigot in the first place. That example is evidence Press is doing a clip job, not a research project.

It’s getting wacky in the air of liberal talk radio about the BP oil spill. On the Randi Rhodes show on Monday, a female caller from Kentucky told Rhodes: “The only people who could basically benefit from all this death, and the cesspool-making down there are the oil companies. So I think they’re doing it deliberately, killing everything so that the only thing that will be worth anything down there is oil.”

Rhodes replied: “You know? That’s not bad.” She talked about a shopping mall going up in the Amazon rainforest, and added “That’s not so far off base, what you’re saying.” She then turned around and suggested Brit Hume was a “moron” for downplaying the aftermath of the oil spill on Fox News Sunday: 

Brit Hume is a moron; I mean, if you -- if you ever suspected that he was a pompous ass, and it was backed up by some wild intellect that he had, you know, I spent the weekend with lots of pompous ass -- assi [plural, like octopi] – right, and they do have the intellect to back it up. So that when you see somebody who's just a pompous ass for no apparent reason, it sort of sticks out now as somebody who's just a pompous ass for no good reason with nothing to back it up.

Left-wing radio host Randi Rhodes celebrated her one-year anniversary with Premiere Radio Networks on Friday’s show with her producer Dave giving her flowers. He oozed: "I just wanted to thank you because when we first started working together I said you rescued me like an oily bird on the shore of right-wing ideology, and I’ll always, forever be thankful." This spurred Rhodes to mourn the painful life of oppressed liberals who work at Fox News Channel (click here for audio):

I feel the worst, the worst, for the Fox News staff in New York. ‘Cause they’re all union guys, you know, these – I mean, they, and I met a bunch of them, and they’re like ‘Oh, you have no idea. Do you need any people? Can we come to work for you?’ I go, ‘uh, I don’t have much budget, but if I could, I’d take every one of ya, nestle ya in my armpit.’

Dave said it was "tortuous" and painful to have to monitor a right-wing host. Rhodes added they have to distort things at Fox:

April 15 was a hot day for Tea Party rallies, and also a hot day for liberal talk-radio denunciations of the Tea Party movement. Randi Rhodes claimed it was just a crowd of stupid people looking for a free lunch:

They have a lot of free time to travel about and around the country, don't they? These are the same people that just were in Boston; then they got on buses. They never ask who pays their freight. They think there's a free lunch somewhere on the bus, I don't know. And they just come town to town, and they stand there with their stupid signs screaming and yelling about corporations need to be protected. It's the sickest movement I've ever seen in my life!

Bill Press rolled out the typical line that "I think they want something for nothing. I pointed out before, if you look at this crowd, most of them are older, white, on Social Security and Medicare."

Here's something you don't see every day: a far-left media outlet calling out one of the far-left's heroes to defend one of the far-left's most hated conservatives.

Yet that's what happened a few weeks ago when Air America's editor of news and politics took on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann for sexist and misogynistic comments he made about conservative author Michelle Malkin.

As NewsBusters' Brad Wilmouth reported on October 13, Olbermann on "Countdown" that evening called Malkin "a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it."

Air America's Megan Carpentier was quite displeased at this sexist display (h/t NB reader Joseph McMahon):

CNN’s Carol Costello again omitted the liberal source of a statistic she touted during a report on Wednesday’s American Morning, that 91% of talk radio is apparently conservative. Costello also pushed the left-wing aim of localism in radio programming, playing three soundbites in favor of the proposal, versus two against it.

Near the end of her report, which aired at the bottom of the 7 am Eastern hour, the CNN correspondent cited ultra-left talker Randi Rhodes (all three clip in favor of localism came from Rhodes), who “says millions of Americans get their political talk from AM radio -- 91 percent of which is conservative.” Costello didn’t cite the source of the figure, which comes from a 2007 report by two liberal organizations -- the Center for American Progress and Free Press -- and co-authored by Mark Lloyd, who is now the FCC’s “chief diversity officer.” The correspondent touted the figure as well during a report on Monday’s American Morning, where she claimed that it came from “Talkers” magazine. The figure itself is misleading because, as MRC’s Culture and Media Institute pointed out, the CAP report ignored “non-commercial radio,” such as NPR and other public radio networks.

CNN’s Carol Costello began a new series on political talk radio on Monday’s American Morning, suggesting it was unfairly dominated by conservatives, and brought on a liberal psychiatrist who theorized that Rush Limbaugh has an audience because he’s “operating like the bully, and if you’re on the playground...you want to be...under the bully’s wing and go along with him and get...some power by proxy.”

The correspondent’s report, which aired just before the bottom of the 7 am Eastern hour, was the first installment in a “special series on talk radio,” according to anchor John Roberts. Costello zeroed in on the listeners and why the format “can capture people for such long periods of time.” A graphic on the screen during her report heralded “anger on the air: what listeners don’t know about talk radio.” [MP3 audio available here]

Towards the end of her report, the CNN correspondent played a sound bite from radical left-wing host Randi Rhodes, who speculated that “the reason they don’t passionately listen to liberal talk radio is access” (Costello outrageously downplayed Rhodes’s political leanings by describing her as someone whom “many consider a liberal talker”). The “liberal talker” noted that apparently, “ninety-one percent of talk radio is conservative.” Costello continued that “according to Talkers magazine, liberal talkers fill just nine percent of the nation’s news talk radio on the commercial dial. Change that, Rhodes says, and liberal listeners would listen just as much.”

The 91 percent figure actually came from a 2007 report titled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio,” written by two liberal organizations- Center for American Progress and Free Press. However, the report, which was co-authored by current FCC “chief diversity officer” Mark Lloyd, “suffers from a number of structural flaws,” as a 2008 special report by MRC’s Culture and Media Institute pointed out. The CMI report continued that “the CAP report’s greatest flaw is ignoring noncommercial talk radio,” such as NPR’s many public radio affiliates.

Don't be surprised to soon see Keith Olbermann display a picture of Randi Rhodes on his "Worst Person In The World" segment while pompously intoning, "Have you no shame, madam?"

And what would be the cause for this "honor?" Well, yesterday Randi emerged briefly from radio obscurity to blast Olbermann's one hour special comment on ObamaCare that he delivered earlier this week.  And it wasn't just a quick blast. She went on a rampage against him for her entire three hour show. To get an idea of the tone of the attack, here is what Randi posted on her blog:

Last night's Countdown on MSNBC was devoted to a one-hour "special comment" by Keith Olbermann. I always thought a comment was a brief observation. Evidently I was wrong about the "brief" part. I'm sorry, but that was the most self-indulgent hour I've heard since Emerson, Lake & Palmer broke up. Keith! Talking for an entire hour isn't a comment. It's a filibuster. Olbermann railed on for an hour about how we need healthcare reform. Keith, the best thing about stating the obvious is that you can state it pretty quickly. At least most people can. Watching that there were a lot of things I wanted to hear Keith Olbermann say. But mostly I wanted to hear him say "And in conclusion..."