My Dad actually filed a complaint with the FCC over Fox News’s tag ling of “Fair and Balanced” in 2002. He felt that any news organization that had to say this over and over again, in the face of overwhelming evidence of bias was nothing more than a propaganda machine and should not be allowed to lie continually about itself to the public. It never went anywhere; the FCC said they thought the market place would take care of any problems like that (what a shock that the Bush era FCC would say such a thing!).

Which is why it is so sad that CNN with the tag line of “Americas Most Trusted News Source is announcing that it is hiring Erick Erickson of Redstate.com to be an new on air news analyst. The kind of things that Red State publishes and the comments that they engender is enough to turn your stomach. If someone on the street were saying the kind of things that Erickson says on a regular basis you would do your best to cross the street to get away from them. Yet CNN thinks it is a good time to bring them into millions of American homes.

The redoubtable Steve Benen of Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog has a great run down on them, I’ll just give you a couple of teasers:

This is the same Erickson who recently called retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter a "goat f–king child molester," referred to two sitting U.S. senators as "healthcare suicide bombers," praised protesters for "tell[ing] Nancy Pelosi and the Congress to send Obama to a death panel" (he later backpedaled on that one), and described President Obama’s Nobel Prize as "an affirmative action quota."

Erickson’s level of eliminationist fantasy is beyond the pale. This is a man lets out and out racism run free at his website. It is unconceivable that CNN would hire someone like this. At a time when we need better journalism from the major media companies we are getting their version of shock-jocks. It is not bad enough that Nancy Grace goes on air and badgers people who have not been convicted of any crime (to the point of perhaps being the proximate cause of a suicide by a guest) but now we will be treated to the most virulent of Right wingers on John King’s USA show.

I don’t know about you, but I am done with CNN. I thought they might be improving, slightly, when they got rid of that old nativist Lou Dobbs but clearly the problem with Lou as that he was old, not that he was a crazy race baiter.

This nation has serious problems. We have a rising culture of hate, nativist and so called Patriot groups (like the Oath Keepers) we do not need another major cable network giving a platform to these kinds of thought and words. I know there are those who will say it is better to be able to see them and have people see exactly how crazy they are. This is the way to discredit their lies. I would like to think that were the case. However, eight years after Dad was told the public would catch on to Fox News’s lie about being fair and balanced it is still the number one cable news network and showing no sign of failing anytime soon.

I am not in favor of censorship and CNN can do whatever it likes, but as of today, I will never tune in to their network. There decent from trusted news source to news-entertainment is as sad as it is complete.

The floor is yours