Perfectly clear

As KFBK’s celebrity host at the recent Sacramento Rally for America, I can’t help but wonder about SN&R columnist Bites’ obsession with 50 rallies around the country that had Clear Channel participation ranging from the peripheral, like the one here, to full-blown promotional support from company-owned local talk stations.

During Liberty Weekend, there were more than 400 Rallies for America. More than a hundred were held the weekend before, and several hundred more since. That means hundreds upon hundreds of rallies just plain happened, and Clear Channel had nothing at all to do with them.

That is a shame. We are licensed to use the public airwaves, upon the condition that we serve the public good. Shame on us for not sponsoring all the hundreds of rallies and facilitating hundreds more! Hooray that we sponsored some and that local management here let me go off on my own and stage a pro-United States of America action using the station’s facilities, even though on-air announcements of the event were restricted to my own program.

At the same time, I also note the conspicuous omission from SN&R’s pages of comment on the role of nonprofit corporate entities like Pacifica Radio, WorldLink TV and Access Sacramento in fanning raging anti-Semitic flames and participation in angry demonstrations that erupt into planned violence. These “spontaneous” but well-organized protests feature people whose watches stopped in 1969 and who sport signs expressing such tokens of peace and goodwill as “Assassinate Bush!” Speakers rant and froth support for homicide bombers, while blaming Jews for all that is evil about America and blaming America for all that is evil in the world. I am looking forward to Bites’ take on that corporate sponsorship of Jew- and America-bashing demonstrations run by a professional protest organizer hired by Saddam Hussein to cough up some “Astroturf ” PR for genocide.

This is not to toss stones, mind you; after all, Pacifica and the others are serving their community. It’s just that my community happens to be America, which cherishes and strives for human rights and justice for all and believes that terrorism, genocide, children wired with bombs, and the bloodthirsty Butcher of Baghdad are bad things.