Last night, the first segment on Bill Moyers Journal dealt with rightwing hate radio, using the late July shootings at the Knoxville Unitarian Church as the entry point. It was an unusually raw and unvarnished look at what hate radio does--examining specific examples: Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh--and yet, there were some significant critical avenues that were left unexplored. Still, the media has been so neglectful of this for so long, it was heartening to see this virulent cultivation of mass hatred finally get a spotlight thrown on it. Rick Karr was the correspondent reporting the story. He began reporting like this:
RICK KARR: On a steamy Sunday morning in July a man armed with a twelve-gauge shotgun burst into this church in Knoxville, Tennessee and opened fire. Seconds later, one person lay dead, another mortally wounded, and six injured.
REVEREND CHRIS BUICE: The man who walked into this sanctuary on July 27th was armed with a gun but he was also armed with hatred, he was armed with bitterness, he was armed with resentments, he was armed with indiscriminate anger. He was armed in body and spirit.
RICK KARR: Members of the congregation wrestled a fifty-eight-year-old, unemployed truck driver named Jim David Adkisson to the floor and held him until police came. At first it seemed like just another inexplicable outburst of violence until a police news conference the next day.
POLICE CHIEF STERLING OWEN: It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement.
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