Clear Channel Entertainment Compares Bush to Hitler 

 

You may recall the castigation MoveOn.org recieved after two entries to its Bush in Thirty Seconds ad contest compared Bush to Hitler. For the record, the entries were simply uploaded to MoveOn’s site without any screening; when MoveOn was alerted to the entries in question, they were removed. The point of the fuss and furor over the original ads was to imply that MoveOn itself — and by extension, Kerry — was comparing Bush to Hitler.

 

Later, in an cynical twist, the Bush campaign put the images of Hitler from the two MoveOn submissions into an anti-Kerry ad:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Adolf Hitler’s image has surfaced again in the White House race. President Bush’s campaign contains online video, removed from a liberal group’s Web site months ago and disavowed, that features the Nazi dictator.

The Bush Internet video, which was sent electronically to 6 million supporters, intersperses clips of speeches by Democrats John Kerry, Al Gore and Howard Dean with the footage of Hitler.

Democrats want the video pulled from the site. Campaign aides said it would remain.

So the Hitler juxtaposition count so far entails

1. Two thirty second ads created by some random guys out there somewhere and uploaded to MoveOn, and then removed. Democrats in general were blamed (here’s RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie: “That’s the kind of tactics we’re seeing on the left today in support of these Democratic presidential candidates.”)
   
2. An ad created and distributed by the Bush campaign; while there was some cry and furor, it paled in comparison to the MoveOn hullabaloo.

And now we have another, this time by  Clear Channel Entertainment. Via Roger Ailes:

 “War Pigs,” the opener, was the best song of the set and the entire day. To double the force of the music, the giant screens next to the stage showed pictures of President Bush juxtaposed with pictures of Hitler.

Here is the NYT OZZfest review from which Ailes draws the quote, and here is Clear Channel’s press release (pdf) announcing OZZfest. Surely Clear Channel’s  sponsoring a festival that compares Bush to Hitler entails no less culpability, and probably more, than MoveOn’s allowing anyone to upload an entry to an ad contest.

 

So I join Roger Ailes in anxiously awaiting the next round of outrage.

 

Of course, given that Clear Channel sponsored pro-war rallies in the spring of 2003 and, as of 3/23/04, had given $24 to Bush for ever $1.00 it gave to Kerry, we might be waiting a while.(*)

 

AB

 

(*) Conservative bloggers, if they say anything, will likely say that Ozzy is to blame, not Clear Channel.  That actually sounds reasonable to me, but if they make that claim, I hope to see them similarly exonerate MoveOn (and, where relevant, retract their earlier condemnations.)