Media Matters Goes After Bill Cunningham: Some of His Comments Earn Him Title of "Purveyor of Hate Speech" From Liberal Group

Media Matters has set it's sights on conservative commentator/radio host Bill Cunningham for some of his controversial comments about poor people, blacks, the unemployed and other groups.

He came into the national consciousness during the recently concluded Presidential elections when he introduced John McCain at an event in Cincinnati. He used President-elect Obama's full name (HOW DARE HE USE THAT NAME!) and said that he was a "hack" and a "Daley-style Chicago politician" among other things.

McCain didn't like it, and immediately repudiated what Cunningham said, which prompted Cunningham to say that he had been thrown under McCain's "Straight Talk Express" bus and trampled. He pulled his support of McCain and returned to his local talk-radio show. McCain knew who was introducing him, yet made no effort to find someone else to do the honors.

In the months since, he made some very nasty comments about Obama that Media Matters has zeroed in on. And truth be told, Cunningham is in the same vein as Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly; he sometimes says the right things the wrong way. The specifics that Media Matters quoted in their report are as follows (credit: Media Matters web site) :

• Alleging that "Obama wants to gas the Jews"

• Invoking "[s]ix-six-six" and "the beast" in discussing "Barack Hussein Obama"

• On Obama Sr.: "That's what black fathers do. They simply leave"

• On the poor: "[P]eople are poor in America ... because they lack values, morals, and ethics"

• Declaring that America's "so-called noble poor" don't use birth control so that "the mom can get more checks in the mail from the government"
  
  
• "We are the only country in the world where poor people are fat."

The part that Media Matters forgets is that as inappropriate as some of these comments apparently are (while out of context, mind you), it's also protected speech.

I definitely don't agree with everything that Savage, O'Reilly and Cunningham say. They're their own worst enemies at times, but I also disagree with Media Matters on how they cut and paste comments together to make their victims look as bad as possible.

If fascism does start in this country, it'll start in the media with the same kind of tactics that Media Matters employs when going after people they don't like.