The North Carolina Republican Party is calling on UNC-TV to break its ties with host and columnist D.G. Martin.
Martin is the longtime host of the popular "NC Bookwatch" program on the statewide public television station. He's also a longtime political columnist whose left-leaning columns appear weekly in publications around the state. The two are separate ventures.
In his most recent column, Martin seems to compare supporters of Republican legislative leaders to apologists for the recently ousted Egyptian government and for the Nazi regime in Germany.
The column in question is titled "Egypt, Nazi Germany, and North Carolina," datelined July 29.
Needless to say, the NC GOP has gone completely insane as a result. Party chairman Claude Pope wants Martin's head, now.
"We call on UNC-TV to suspend this program while they evaluate their relationship with their host who made such an outrageous and damaging comparison. Such divisive hyperbole only serves to confuse and trivialize issues that are important to North Carolinians, who all deserve a formal apology,” Pope said.
Martin, for his part, has apologized.
Reached by phone, Martin said he understands the GOP's point.
"I'm very sorry that I offended some people, and I apologize. Period," Martin said.
UNC-TV Communications Director Steve Volstad released a statement late Friday, noting that Martin "has volunteered his time to host Bookwatch for more than 10 years."
But I bet it won't matter: Martin has awakened the raging, fascist Tea Party beast, and they'll be out to end not only Martin and his book review program, but I would suspect the entire UNC-TV system will have to be obliterated as well.
It's what Goebbels would do.
I seem to recall the Tea Party claiming to be horrified that the "PC Police" were enforcing "politically correct speech standards" on society, and that it was terribly damaging to seek to stop people from "feminazi" and other, similar phrases. Funny how eager they are to form the "RNC Police" to suppress speech that they find offensive. Where's that much-vaunted conservative sense of humor that we heard so much about when Rush Limbaugh was talking about Sandra Fluke? For that matter, didn't conservatives deem it a terrible thing for lie-berals to put pressure on Mr. Limbaugh's sponsors?
ReplyDeleteYet another example of Republican moral relativism: no fixed sense of morality for Republicans - the morality of an action depends, not on the act itself, but upon whether a Republican performed that action.