Hate radio is despicable wherever it comes from. And when its being broadcast from right here in Salem, there's even more reason to condemn it.
Gator Gaynor and Denise Nanke (wife of city councilor Brad Nanke) took to the KYKN airwaves on Tuesday to mock the Parkland, Florida high school students who survived the massacre that claimed the lives of 14 classmates and three adults.
How sick is that? Really sick.
I learned about this latest episode of the hate radio series that goes by the name of the Gator & Denise show via a Facebook post put up by Jim Scheppke, who has the guts to listen to the crap Gaynor and Nanke spew and report on it. You can listen to the disgusting 10-minute clip here.
This is what Scheppke said in his post:
I invite you to listen to this 10 minute rant from our home-grown right-wing radio talk show hosts where they compare the Parkland students to Hitler Youth, among other ridiculous and outrageous assertions. Then ask yourself why our Mayor, Chuck Bennett, appears on their show every Wednesday. Does he never listen to it the other four days of the week? I think he should consider whether his appearances on this show legitimize and normalize the hatred and ugliness that is not contributing to the betterment of our community. I like our Mayor and I think he is doing a good job, but I think he makes a mistake and does his constituents a disservice by contributing to this radio show.
Indeed, Mayor Chuck Bennett is a weekly guest on the Gator & Denise show. They use Bennett to promote their show, which means Salem's Mayor is helping to spread lies and hate.
Gaynor and Nanke would be odious enough if they simply promulgated extreme right-wing views. What makes them truly obnoxious is their habitual spreading of lies that anyone with an Internet connection and a minute or two to spare could easily detect.
But they don't take the time to do that, because truth doesn't matter to Gator & Denise.
In the clip from Tuesday's show they parroted a conspiracy theory that one of the Parkland students is a "crisis actor" who goes around the country getting on TV to spout his liberal views in a ghoulish fashion, to quote Denise Nanke.
This, of course, is completely false. David Hogg is a genuine Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student. A CBS-Los Angeles story explains how unethical right-wingers conjured up the false "crisis actor" propaganda.
A Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting survivor opened up to CBS2 after becoming the target of a conspiracy theory. Some are calling 17-year-old David Hogg a phony and a fraud, but he’s fighting back against those reports while trying to be a vocal leader for his peers in an effort to tighten gun laws following last week’s massacre.
Hogg is one of several Stoneman Douglas students leading the charge against gun violence after 17 of his classmates and teachers were killed. He’s been interviewed by CBS News and other major networks multiple times. CBSLA’s Andrea Fujii caught up with him after he was in town for Dr. Phil and CNN interviews.
...Fujii interviewed Hogg last August in Redondo Beach and now that story has gone viral. Hogg was visiting family and friends in Los Angeles when he recorded a confrontation between one of his friends and a lifeguard. Now skeptics are claiming the teen doesn’t even live in Florida. But CBS News confirmed he is a Stoneman Douglas High School student.
What boggles the mind is that Gator Gaynor said that the supposed crisis actor was fake news, when in reality it was Gator Gaynor and Denise Nanke who were spreading fake news on their radio show.
Here's another bit of fake news from Gaynor in the audio clip.
He read a quote that supposedly was from Joseph Stalin: “America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”
But Snopes says that the quote is fake. Stalin never said that. Again, it took me just a minute or so to learn this. Ben Carson also repeated the false quote during a presidential debate. A Washington Post story says:
And we would note for emphasis here that Carson did not utter these comments in the midst of a lengthy policy debate in which he was speaking off the cuff. This was his closing statement -- a closing statement that is undoubtedly something planned and practiced.
The fact that Carson used a false quote is the latest piece of proof that perhaps he's out of his league on that debate stage.
Well, Gator Gaynor's use of the false quote shows that he's out of his league as a radio talk show host. Oh, except the Gator & Denise show is part of right-wing hate radio, which doesn't have any ethical or factual standards.
So Gaynor and Nanke will keep on spreading their lies, because their audience doesn't care about truth. I just wish Mayor Chuck Bennett wouldn't support them by appearing weekly on their show.
Gator and Denise tried to apologize on their Facebook page, but they blew it.
They made this very Trumpian remark. They said that the erroneous reports about "crisis actors" that they repeated are "yet another example of news and "information" that is being put out on all sides."
No. Not "all sides." Your side.
This is just like when Trump, after the Charlottesville violence said "There is blame on both sides."
Sorry, Gator and Denise, we can't accept an apology that blames "all sides."
Posted by: Jim Scheppke | February 24, 2018 at 09:09 PM