All Angry White Men are the Same, Right?

I guess, they are all the same in regard to age and ethnicity.

This is the modern face of cable television news: angry, emotional, mouth agape in the midst of some hateful monologue. Oh, and in case you hadn't noticed, the worst purveyors of cable news rage are all white men over 40. The era of the angry white man is officially here.

There’s Bill O'Reilly, commanding "bad Americans" to "shut up" or shoving his index finger into people's faces and yelling, "Bull!" There was Sean Hannity, accusing guests of saying they would "stand by" while women around the world were raped. And over there was Glenn Beck, dousing a staffer in pretend gasoline before hovering a match over the pleading young man's head—conveniently, Beck's horror show was passed off as a metaphor for the way Barack Obama was going to incinerate America, instead of what it actually was: a gruesome theater spectacle that belonged not on a news network, but in an old-timey street revival.

Fox News gets credit for perfecting this particular brand of madness, but they certainly didn't monopolize it. Eventually, the spittle-flicking caterwauling entered and corroded each of the top cable news networks.

On CNN, the station's local anti-immigration zealot, Lou Dobbs, was caught saying that economists who support immigration are "jackasses," while curmudgeon Jack Cafferty designated  all Chinese goods "junk." Over at CNBC, in a now-famous screed from the Chicago Stock Exchange's trading floor, business reporter Rick Santelli proclaimed that people who can't pay their mortgages are "losers." His “populist rant” caused an eruption of cheers from the brokers on the floor. Then there's Keith Olbermann, the most infamously angry newsman not on Fox, and also FNC’s mortal enemy. Every night, the MSNBC host blasts someone as the "Worst Person in the World" and once advised President George W. Bush to "shut the hell up!" If nothing else, at least anger is bipartisan.

The author goes on to point out that these voices dominate political commentary in the MSM to the exclusion of black men.  Fair enough, there are a lot of angry white men in the media, but are they really the same?  Is ranting for years about a doctor that performs legal procedures you disagree with near the point of inciting violence the same as getting mad about violence inciting rhetoric? 

Comments

[Lynne]

Good leadership and bad leadership comes in all different colors. Now white men aren't the only ones to blame for spending our country into poverty, thanks to President Obama!Soon every man,women,and child,(saddled with Obama's debt)will be angry.Time to wake up, it's always about the green.

[Chris]

Of course, those bailouts and debt pile up did not exactly start under Obama. Bush owns TARP and the same interventionist policies that people on the Right seem to object to when taken up by a Dem. Certainly Obama's played a role, but it's not accurate to saddle one political party with things.