By Selwyn Duke
Laura Ingraham was filling in for Bill O’Reilly last night on his cable news show, and one of the segments pertained to an alleged rise in "hate crimes" in 2007. She had as a guest Brian Levin, a civil rights attorney and Director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. Despite that title, however, it seems that Counselor Levin is a man who shouldn’t think, because when he does, he does it all wrong.
Levin’s argument is that, get this, talk radio is partially responsible for a rise in crimes against Latinos because it supposedly stokes the fires of anti-immigrant sentiment. But his thesis tells us less about talk radio’s prejudices than his own.
After all, anytime anyone expresses an opinion and tries to influence society, some who agree with the sentiment will get angry, and some may even lash out. Yet it’s only those who express politically-incorrect ideas who are accused of fomenting unrest, not those who toe the politically-correct line. They found a copy of Al Gore’s book Earth in the Balance in the shack of Ted Kaczynski, the Unibomber, and certain passages had been highlighted. Yet I heard no one implicate Gore in the man’s crimes. And there is incessant anti-white propaganda disgorged by academia and the media, yet few connect the dots and blame them for crimes against Caucasians (there’s more black-on-white crime than the reverse).
For Laura Ingraham’s part, she mounted a legality-based defense, pointing out that the Supreme Court has sided with free speech in all such cases. Yet she missed the 800-pound gorilla in the center of the room.
Levin attributed the rise in hate crime to increased violence between blacks and Latinos, mainly, I take it, in California. Now, I might point out that since, presumably, this is a two-way street, blacks are being victimized more as well. But Levin seemed to ignore that; I suppose it didn’t further his talk-radio-kills-immigrants narrative. But here’s what is even more ridiculous: If the problem is black-on-Latino crime, what has talk radio got to do with it? Are we to believe that these black youths — this would mainly involve teenagers and 20-somethings — from rough neighborhoods are listening to talk radio? I grew up in the Bronx, and I never heard the voice of Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity blasting from boom boxes. If you have, please let me know. That simply is not talk radio’s demographic.
Professor Levin’s thesis is stupid on the face of it, and the fact that such people are given air time is a damning indictment of our media.
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