Hank Williams, Big Brother and Joe McCarthy

I’m starting not to recognize my country anymore. For a bunch of reasons. Some financial, some foreign policy, all government related. One that disturbs me is eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s “1984.” Except that Big Brother isn’t the government, it’s a left wing establishment that bristles and tries to destroy dissenting opinions, especially anything emanating from right-leaning broadcast pariah, Fox News. I’m no big fan of Fox, but between them and CNN, it’s the closest thing to balanced reporting out there. And that’s saying something.

For those of you living under rocks, Hank got fired from the Monday Night Football gig that he’s had for the last couple of decades. He made a statement on some morning show on Fox. In the interview, he made a not-inaccurate analogy saying that President Obama and Speaker Boehner’s likelihood of seeing eye to eye were on the same level as Adolf Hitler and Benjamin Netanyahu doing the same. I understood the colorful analogy perfectly, even if it was overly dramatic. He wasn’t saying that Obama or Boehner were actually idealogues in line with either Hitler or Netanyahu’s worldviews; he was saying that the President and Speaker were diametrically opposed on policy and it didn’t look like either one of them would ever agree with the other.

Some idiot, or group of idiots, in the more liberal leaning media outlets immediately seized on the story, implying that Hank called Obama a fascist like Hitler. This is irresponsible news reporting at its worst. It’s not what he said. Even without seeing the show and only reading the quotes, what he meant was clear and it was manipulated to mean something else to discredit him.

Walter Cronkite was an unabashed liberal in many ways, but he always reported “just the facts” and didn’t interject any editorial opinion into his nightly newscast, as that breach would have been impermissible in his eyes. He was a newsman, not a liberal shill. Sadly, today’s journalists have no such standards. To grab a headline or sound byte, they are willing to twist anything to make a story sensational, despite the evidence to the contrary. This behavior goes unchecked, often encouraged, by their editors and passes off as news, which, in turn passes on to the public as truth, when it is anything but.

I’m hardly a Hank Williams Jr. fan. I think the MNF song is godawful. But the man has a right to say what he wants and ESPN has the right to act on it however they see fit. And I have the right to call ESPN out as cowards for suspending and probably firing him based on an intentional misrepresentation of his words. If it’s not intentional, it means the reporters and audience members insinuating as such are reactionary, knee-jerk morons. We should expect better from our media. And from ourselves.

Geroge Orwell’s Big Brother doesn’t exist; it’s all the little brothers out there with blogs, cell phone cams and personal agendas that make the PR departments of big companies tremble at anything remotely resembling controversy since it may hurt their Almighty Bottom Line. If one nut finds something another person says offensive and decides to preach that, does that mean that that one person has a right to try and ruin someone’s livelihood for their dissenting opinion? I guess so. It also means I have the right to call out that hypocrite for using their right of free speech to damage someone else for exercising theirs.

Shame on ESPN for crumbling under pressure instead of having the guts to fight for the guy they’ve been working with for 23 years. They could have easily issued a statement saying Hank’s opinions were his own and don’t reflect ESPN’s. They could have gone a little further and said that Hank wasn’t insinuating the President wanted to kill six million Jews; he was just stating the likelihood of the two major party heads coming together and they should have defended his right to say that. The network would have gotten more respect for that instead of being cowards and doing what was politically expedient.

Shame on media outlets that insiniuated through ambiguous “Hank Compares Obama to Hitler” attention-grabbing headlines that Hank was racist. Even if he was and came out and said he was the Grand Dragon of Monday night, it is still protected by the first Amendment. You cannot stand by your principles only when they are convenient for you to do so. Nonetheless, that’s not what Hank said and those who reported it differently damn well knew it.

Shame on the public for the complaints and the blog comments celebrating the man’s hardships, playing the race card just to ruin Hank. Just because you supported Obama doesn’t mean that anyone criticizing him is inherently racist. Some may be, but the majority are not and their concerns are valid. For you to imply that takes away the gravitas permeating the real incidents of racism that are rampant. In your cries to play that race card and condemn Hank, you actually place doubt into other cases of actual bigotry, where now people will second-guess whether or not the incidents really occured at all.

Just like the boy who cried wolf, or the cases of women who falsely report sexual assault, it hurts the larger credibility of those others who truly are victims. Shame on you for that and for your schadenfreude in general for enjoying Hank’s misery.

This relates directly to Tracy Morgan’s gay bashing incident. He can say whatever he likes to a paying audience and the audience has the right to be offended. So does Hank, whether or not you agree with him. And while perfectly legal, it is hyporcritical and a moral wrong to condemn people for exercising the most important right we have in this great nation because you don’t agree with it. The differences should be brought up and discussed, not squashed and dismissed without any real debate on the issue. Are we really searching for truth or are we just tring to make ourselves feel better?

It is McCarthyism all over again. His inquisitions were legal, but not moral. And Hollywood studios blacklisted his targets for fear of government reprisal. Just like ESPN blacklisted Hank and the media blacklisted Tracy until they were forced to grovel for mercy from a hypocritically judgemental public. It stinks now as much as it stunk under Senator Joe. They are all victims of knee-jerk witch hunts.

In “Julius Caesar,” Shakespeare’s Mark Antony orates over the body of a newly-murdered Caesar under the watchful eye of Brutus, wielder of one of the murdering daggers. The public believes that Brutus was just in killing the tyrant Caesar because of his ambition. Antony points out that Caesar brought money to Rome’s coffers, wept “that the poor have cried,” and that Antony “thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse, was this ambition?” By the end of the speech, the crowd calls for the blood of the same Brutus they would have offered the crown to minutes before. The crowd is fickle and easily swayed.

So are the hearts of all of us. We will praise and condemn different people for committing the same acts. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. The point is that the differences need to be resolved in a civilized manner. We need to talk out our dissentions, not try to ruin other people for dissenting in the first place. That is what terrorists do when someone doesn’t uphold their self-serving interpretations of Islamic Law.

Are we so arrogant that we think our personal opinions are infallable and sacrosanct? Or perhaps our individual interpretations may not hold up under scrutiny. Maybe we maliciously call for blood because we don’t want to be wrong. In that case, we’re being selfish. We should be after truth, and if we have to defend our truths through character assassination, they perhaps they are not truths at all, but just a blanket of lies we wrap ourselves in to feel warm at night. We don’t want to face the truths that are cold.

For the record, I believe that Hank was correct in his analogy. Obama and Boehner are rigid and diametrically opposed. But I also respect your right to dissent and I would be happy to debate this in a civilized manner without trying to kill you in the process. The truth will set us free. Or destroy our assumptions. Either way, I would rather face a cold truth than a comforting lie.


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