Huff vs. Ailes and Beck: Do Words Matter?

It's getting so I don't have to even watch TV anymore. All I have to do is go to Huffington Post or YouTube and I can watch little three-minute videos of all the latest media chatter without having to view the whole program. I had stopped watching all the Sunday shows because of my disgust with spineless Democrats. So I was able to see the few minutes of This Week on Huffpost in which Arianna challenged Roger Ailes on Glenn Beck's inflammatory language. And I didn't even have to sit through windbag George Will's stern lecturing as if all America were a fifth-grade class guilty of talking out of turn during algebra.

The pity is the whole argument is down to a squabble over whether or not Beck used the word "slaughter" in describing what the Obama administration wants to do to the American public. Beck said he never used that word. Huffington played the tape where he said it. Beck says of course he didn't mean it literally. The whole thing is petty. I wish they would debate the tenor of fear and paranoia Beck is creating rather than nitpicking over a single word. This just makes Arianna descend to Fox's level and the argument becomes "No I didn't say that." "Yes you did."

Keith Obermann is becoming just as bad for his over-the-top slamming of Senator-elect Scott Brown of Mass. by taking minute details and blowing them up to label Brown as racist, sexist, homophobic, and advocating violence against women. Most of the time I agree with him, but he just went too far this time (and Jon Stewart called him on it.)