Timothy McVeigh

On Friday’s Need to Know on PBS, co-host Jon Meacham – also of Newsweek – devoted the show’s regular "In Perspective" segment to highlighting "anger" and "hate" felt by some conservatives toward President Barack Obama, and included examples of protesters and anger expressed toward liberals. He began the segment by raising the possibility of violence resulting from "extremism": "Perhaps we should not be much surprised anymore about the language of extremism. But we can't let the prevalence of far-out rhetoric dull us to its pernicious and possibly violent effects."

He asserted that most of the "hatred" is coming from conservatives: "For the most part, the fury is on the right, and it started with the rise of Barack Obama. Change and rage. It's a curious thing. Obama – hardly a radical figure – provokes hatred among some who feel alienated by the times."

The PBS host soon revisited the possibility that anti-Obama "hate" could result in violence: "But there have been times when the force that perennially divides us is not anger as much as its more violent and more disturbing cousin: hate. These are the times when men with weapons have emerged from the shadows, and changed history." Clips of Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh, and wreckage from the Oklahoma City Bombing were then shown.

On Monday, the Christian Science Monitor bucked its mainstream peers by reporting something truthful about the TEA party movement: police officials have begun to relax security requirements at conservative rallies because of the remarkable absence of violence.

Yes, you read that right: despite nonstop media warnings about hateful protests, violence from TEA party attendants is so nonexistent that police feel safe allowing them to bring large items and sometimes even guns.

The Monitor was compelled to check things out when a TEA party in Raleigh, North Carolina, persuaded officials to overturn a ban on flag poles. Such items are typically banned because a flag pole is really just a very big stick that could be used as a weapon. The Monitor's research led the paper to admit that conservative protests are far less threatening than many past demonstrations.

Patrik Jonsson's article drew a refreshing contrast between violent rallies of the Vietnam era versus the new model of peaceful civil uprising:

On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann used his regular "Worst Person" segment to accuse Rush Limbaugh of having "blood on your hands" for the Oklahoma City Bombing in response to the conservative talk radio host pointing out that, while some liberals have tried to blame talk radio for inspiring Timothy McVeigh to commit mass murder, McVeigh himself actually admitted to being motivated by the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and even perpetrated the attack in Oklahoma City on the two-year anniversary of the disastrous event.

Ignoring the argument that the federal government might have more successfully freed the children from the compound alive if other methods had been used, Olbermann instead distorted Limbaugh’s words and claimed the talk radio host "wants a memorial to David Koresh."

Olbermann quoted Limbaugh as the conservative talker alluded to the fact that the innocent children whom the government was trying to rescue did not survive the raid, and the tendency by liberals to ignore McVeigh's choice of April 19 as the date for his terrorist act thus linking it to Waco, as the MSNBC host answered Limbaugh’s rhetorical question about whether the Waco raid or talk radio inspired McVeigh by asserting that it was indeed the fault of conservative talk radio:

Liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow appeared on the Daily Show, Tuesday, to promote her new Timothy McVeigh special and to compare, "The dark side of it is that [McVeigh] really did see himself as part of an anti-government movement in the United States...And, right now, I think we are experiencing an upswing again in sort of anti-government extremism."

Maddow didn't go into detail about who, exactly, is encouraging this upswing. Ads for her April 19 special, The McVeigh Tapes, have touted that it will put "into perspective the threat posed by anti-government extremism." In a commercial for the spot, Maddow lectured, "We ignore this, our own very recent history of anti-government violence and the dangers of domestic terrorism, at our peril."

Liberal MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow will host an April 19 special on Timothy McVeigh's 1995 act of terrorism and how it "puts into perspective the threat posed by anti-government extremism."

In an ad for the program, Maddow lectured, "It doesn't have to lead to violence, but it can and it has. We ignore this, our own very recent history of anti-government violence and the dangers of domestic terrorism, at our peril."

In a previous commercial for the special, an announcer questioned, "15 years later, can McVeigh's words help us understand today's anti-government extremists?" Will the left-wing host attempt to connect tea partiers and conservative activists to violence?

Liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow will anchor an April 19 retrospective on terrorist Timothy McVeigh and whether his murder of 168 people could be linked to "today's anti-government extremists." [Audio available here.]

During an ad for the upcoming special, footage of bloody victims from the Oklahoma City bombing appeared onscreen as an announcer wondered, "15 years later, can McVeigh's words help us understand today's anti-government extremists?"

Now, it's possible that the "anti-government extremists" the ad refers to are groups such as the recently arrested militia group in Michigan. But, it's worth remembering that after the original bombing, journalists jumped to associate McVeigh's actions with mainstream conservatism.

On Monday's O'Reilly Factor on Fox News, NPR news analyst Juan Williams furthered the left's talking point about the tea party's supposed connection to militias, and even went so far to claim that the Gadsden or "Don't Tread on Me" flags used by the conservative grassroots movement is "the same imagery that was on Timothy McVeigh" [audio available here].

Williams made this preposterous claim during a panel discussion with the Weekly Standard's Mary Katharine Ham 25 minutes into the 8 pm Eastern hour. O'Reilly asked the NPR analyst about a point made by Fox News's Brit Hume in an earlier segment, that there's double-standard in the mainstream media in the amount of coverage of extremist imagery and language found at tea party rallies has been given versus equivalent imagery and language used at left-wing protests (a point raised by the MRC's Rich Noyes in an August 2009 Media Reality Check): "There's no doubt that the media will seize upon any kind of misbehavior on the right...Whereas if it happens on the left, it will, as Mary Katharine [Ham] said, be de-emphasized or ignored entirely. So that's a corrupt media system, isn't it?"

The guest raised the militia issue at the end of his answer:

WILLIAMS: I think we're out of context here. If we're talking about- you know, somebody going after Ronald Reagan- you know, one guy who's in love with Jodie Foster, okay- if we're talking about that. You know, people who have a lot of hatred- hateful attitudes towards President Bush, and then somebody who is extremist on the fringe, yes. And if that was also to be then the case with the tea party, yes, that's too much and unfair. But, when you start to see militia groups start to associate with the tea party, when you see the flag-

Upon further research and examination into the Army's complete findings on the Fort Hood shootings, in a February 22 report, the Boston Globe's Bryan Bender conceded that politically-incorrect conservatives were right all along - just not in those words of course.

Immediately after Major Nidal Malik Hasan murdered 13 U.S. soldiers November 5, major news networks and publication bent over backwards to omit Hasan's Islamic identity or to excuse the killing of 13 soldiers as a result of stress or psychosis.

Report after report, interview after interview, and press conference after press conference, reporters, politicians, and government officials warned against jumping to conclusions - in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Rather than deliver a single revelation, the 24-hour cable news channel coughed up a reheated, overwrought and misleading story that seemed designed to yoke Sarah Palin and her husband to the most extreme secessionists in Alaska.

That's how Los Angeles Times's James Rainey characterized an October 14 effort by CNN's Rick Sanchez to portray Gov. Sarah Palin as a shady secessionist who would like to see Alaska break away from the United States. Sanchez even went as far as to raise the specter of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing.

Rainey began his October 15 column, "CNN bid to tie Palin to secessionists is a stretch," by noting the Geraldo-like melodrama with which the network's Rick Sanchez teased the story of overblown political intrigue: