Paul Harvey: Racist Remarks on MLK Day: Action Needed (from Daily KOS)

[Quixote1818]

From Daily KOS:

learned of this last night when listening to Bernie Ward on KGO (you can hear the entire hour by clicking on 10 p.m., Bernie explains the situation at the beginning of his show), and well, while not surprised (I stopped listening to Harvey years ago as his commentary has increasingly become more winger like), words fail me after listening to exactly what Harvey was saying on MLK day.

First of all, Harvey is reading an email (click on Monday and go to about 6.16 to hear what he says) that has made the rounds, an email that is an "Urban Legend"and has been noted as such. Harvey compares the recent snow storm in Colorado to the Katrina disaster, falsely stating that the two are the same (they are not) and in addition claiming that no one in Colorado needed any outside help (another lie).

More.....

I am amazed that there has not been a larger outcry against what Harvey has said, and the inference that Harvey is making, which is basically that "white" people can handle disaster on their own, and "black" people are helpless and can't help themselves. And he did this on MLK day.

Further, Harvey has no concept of what a real disaster is if he thinks that a blizzard and the destruction of a hurricane are the same. How many people in Colorado lost their homes? Home many found that they had no home left after the disaster? And further Colorado DID request help from the Federal government, remember that the cattle ranchers need to have the GOVERNMENT help to get food to the cattle.

Snip>

I almost never ask, but if you could either recommend this diary or make sure to post this information in other diaries, on other blogs, or anyplace that you can, you will help to at least make Harvey apologize for his hate filled commentary.


Continued with Paul Harvy's and ABC's email contact.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/17/103431/139

[AX10]

1. When Paul Harvey passes on, that will be progress.

It is quite sad that there is still a market for his kind in the 21st Century.

[cynatnite]

2. I think it's insane to compare the two...

but the government sure hasn't been there for the residents of Nebraska where my sister lives. Her and a few neighbors got together and have been sharing their supplies. They've gone without electricity for a month now. There is no estimate when they'll get it.

My sister told me earlier today that her and a neighbor found out about a family who had run out of food some miles away. They got some donations together and took it to them.

There is no comparison between this and Katrina, but the government is nowhere to be found as usual.

[spacelady]

21. I have the unique perspective of growing up in Nebraska &

for the last 10 years living near the Gulf Coast of Alabama where hurricanes Ivan & Katrina made the 1-2 punch along with a string of lesser storms that still made imapct upon the region. Now you may make the argument about freezing to death in power outages but how many homes in Nebraska were COMPLETELY wiped out? How many were swept away & you only had the clothes on your back if that? Most rural dwellers have backup heat & you can always pile more wood on & more clothes on & more quilts on the bed, right? What if you had water over your head, no sanitary facilities, no clean water to drink, nowhere to get dry, it is 100% humidity, hotter than Hades, no gas, no identity, no food, no diapers, no medicine, and you may get shot for trying to survive? No Comparison.

On edit: Maybe I should make this a thread of its own?

[BoneDaddy]

30. Great points

Thanks

[Vanje]

22. In cold Nebraska,, and frozen Colorado,...

Are there human corpses along the road sides and floating down urban waterways?

[nosmokes]

3. meanwhile, the ranchers get rich from federal subsidies and begrudge the

poor in new orleans and anywhere else the pittance they get in WIC and food stamps and AFDC, all the while biching about gubmint welfare, never seeing the irony when the multi billion dollar ag bill passes, filled with money that goes into their pocket.

[eagler]

12. That's a very good point

nt

[BuyingThyme]

4. Harvy's a Puke operative. A lying, pro-war murderer.

[cynatnite]

5. He murdered someone? n/t

[BuyingThyme]

8. Lots of people. The central theme of his show over the last few

years was that Americans should die for his lies. They did.

[cynatnite]

9. Well, I would call him an enabler of the bush regime...

not a murderer since he's not the one in charge.

[BuyingThyme]

10. I would call all complicit media shills murderers.

Harvy was among the deadliest.

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. Not unexpected from someone 135 years old.

[BrightKnight]

17. Studs Terkel and Walter Cronkite are old.

Paul Harvey has never been in the same league with them. He has always been just a voice for a little 1-pony show.

He has apparently always been an asshole. He should retire now before his legacy gets flushed.

[RB TexLa]

7. It's not just race, it's Louisiana that is what the rest of the country thinks of us.

It's ok, we have known it for a long time.

[eShirl]

11. he's not dead yet?

good grief, he was a fossil when I was a kid

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

13. Wonder who Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person" will be today

We have an embarrassment of riches, considering what Paul Harvey said yesterday, what Limbaugh said about Obama, and what O'Reilly said about some kids loving to be kidnapped and abused.

[progressoid]

14. Gaaah, that fuckin email again.

I'm working on a response to that thing for a RW family member that sent it to me.

I keep getting too pissed off when reading it.

[Cha]

15. paul harvey sounds like a

fucking idiot. Comparing anything in the USA that has happened so far to Katrina would be the words of a Simpleton. Would that be paul harvey?

[NastyRiffraff]

16. My god, is this guy still around?

He was a has-been 20 years ago.

[Hand]

18. I remember my FATHER turning off the car radio...

...when the ignorant fucker came on. He didn't want us kids to hear his garbage. And I'm 57 years old!

[XemaSab]

19. He's repeating shit that snopes already debunked

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/soapbox/dakota.asp

[Cheap_Trick]

20. that old fossil is still alive?

irrelevant, but alive? do the right thing Paul...OD on some metamucil and punch your ticket.

[calimary]

23. Damn! I soured - permanently - on paul harvey during the OJ trial.

That's when he switched, in my mind, from being this amusing, relatively innocuous old coot, to being really and truly vile, and beneath contempt. This just blew my mind. If I hadn't been listening to the radio, to hear it with my own ears, I wouldn't have believed it.

It was immediately on the heels of the release of a 9-1-1 tape of Nicole calling police when OJ was terrorizing her. This was long before the murders. She'd moved out, they were divorcing, she lived elsewhere in the same general neighborhood as he did (and just a few blocks from where she died). On the tape, you could hear her frantic appeals to the 9-1-1 operator, screaming that OJ was breaking down the door, and was going to "beat the shit out of" her. In the background, you could hear him, too, bellowing, screaming, banging on the door. You could hear the pounding of his fists against the wood and the walls, and a horrible, horrifying commotion. That she could maintain the semblance of cool that she did amidst all that was startling. It was a chilling tape recording.

So paul harvey comes on and comments on that, during one of his regular broadcasts. And do you know what he said??? This STILL leaves me absolutely STEAMING!!! He commented on it, alright. He actually had the GALL to comment NOT on the outrage you could hear playing out on the tape, NOT on the screaming, frightening maniac in the background, NOT the drama of her traumatized voice and the urgency of her appeals to the operator, BUT... the fact that she said a four-letter word. harvey said some snarky comment like "what a shame that such a lovely woman should use such foul language."

!!!?!?!?!?!???!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

I could NOT believe my ears!!! That old, shit-for-brains BASTARD. I'll give him some four-letter words. Of all the things you could say about what you'd just heard on that shattering, gripping, horrifying tape recording, especially considering the larger context into which it was inserted, THAT'S what he chose to say.

SCHMUCK.

I turned my back on paul harvey then and there. And I will NEVER return.

[Warren DeMontague]

24. Add me to the "Jeezus, that guy's still alive?" contingent.

Worst part about driving cross country years ago was the places where that guy was all you could get on the radio.

[mitchum]

25. He has always been ancient and cranky

my entire life

[GreenZoneLT]

26. Oh, nonsense. Paul Harvey's dead.

I mean, he's gotta be; he'd be, what, 132 if he weren't? That guy was a fossil when I was a kid 30 years ago.

My theory is that they just take samples of his voice and synthesize new programs. Sort of like half the newspaper cartoons (Shoe, Blondie, Nancy, etc., etc.)

[donheld]

27. This from Paul Harvey 1 year ago

Paul Harvey's Tribute to Slavery, Nukes, Genocide
Hateful rant shows Disney's double standard on speech

7/1/05

Disney/ABC radio personality Paul Harvey, one of the most widely listened to commentators in the United States, presented his listeners on June 23 with an endorsement of genocide and racism that would have been right at home on a white supremacist shortwave broadcast.

Harvey's commentary began by lamenting the decline of American wartime aggression. "We're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies--more moral, more civilized," he said. Drawing a contrast with what he cast as the praiseworthy nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, Harvey lamented that "we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq and kept our best weapons in their silos"--suggesting that America should have used its nuclear arsenal in its invasions of both countries.


Harvey concluded:



We didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.

And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.

a bit more at

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2569

[murielm99]

28. Harvey also sided with Oliver North

during Iran-Contra hearings. He said North was being persecuted.

He has been an old fossil since I was twelve, and I am fifty-eight now.

I turn off the radio when he comes on.

My father met him once. Apparently Harvey has a great deal of clout. He owns several Christian radio stations outright.

It sounds like his son will take over when he dies. The son is just as bad. But maybe people will weary of all that shit by then.

[trof]

29. Snopes has great comments on that e-mail. Best:

"You can't shovel water."

[Gelliebeans]

31. I got that stupid email recently

except that the location was about the Dakotas. Again and again I am seeing recycled shit from the rwinger's that prove that they stand for nothing other than to promote an agenda that can divide this nation based on race, ethnicity, sex or religion. These fear tactics need to continue to be debunked as these assholes have nothing to stand on except divisiveness.

So much time is wasted with their lame attempts to lie and manipulate but we have to be vigilant because the premise they have been working on ie. continue to repeat the lie again and again and eventually it won't matter if it is the truth or not has worked for the last ten years.

I am often amazed that a simple search of google will produce these same old emails foretelling of bleak futures ahead if Dems are elected to power or the nitwits at one of the many right wing think tanks screaming about how taxes are the doom of the American dream.

We know this stuff is bullshit but do the millions of people that open those emails know? I think some people are becoming more savvy of their tactics as proof of the polls but the vast amount aren't and that is the reason why I continue to send links to Snopes or other urban legend pages that line by line debunk the majority of the crap that comes through the inbox.

These people are getting desperate and no doubt the large corporations will help them spread the lies in order to justify corporate needs. Now more than ever we need to be vigilant.