Anti-War Conservative Gagged

People who criticize George W. Bush and his administration's policies have a tough time in the media today - war frenzy has taken over in some many sectors that critics and skeptics simply can't get anywhere. This is true even for conservative critics - fellow conservatives will attack conservative critics without mercy and without regard for things like facts and reality.

The American Conservative carries an article from talk radio host Charles Goyette:

Why only a couple of months after my company picked up the option on my contract for another year in the fifth-largest city in the United States, did it suddenly decide to relegate me to radio Outer Darkness? The answer lies hidden in the oil-and-water incompatibility of these two seemingly disconnected phrases: “Criticizing Bush” and “Clear Channel.”

The principals of Clear Channel, a Texas-based company, have been substantial contributors to George W. Bush’s fortunes since before he became president. In fact, Texas billionaire Tom Hicks can be said to be the man who made Bush a millionaire when he purchased the future president’s baseball team, the Texas Rangers. Tom Hicks is now vice chairman of Clear Channel. Clear Channel stations were unusually visible during the war with what corporate flacks now call “pro-troop rallies.” In tone and substance, they were virtually indistinguishable from pro-Bush rallies. I’m sure the administration, which faced a host of regulatory issues affecting Clear Channel, was not displeased.

Criticism of Bush and his ever-shifting pretext for a first-strike war (what exactly was it we were pre-empting anyway?) has proved so serious a violation of Clear Channel’s cultural taboo that only a good contract has kept me from being fired outright. ... The other KFYI talk-show hosts—so bloodthirsty that they made Bush apologists and superhawks Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity sound moderate—vilified me almost daily.

I sympathize with Goyette's situation; at the same time, I find it curious that he is even slightly surprised about what happened. Neither the corporate people nor the other conservative talk radio hosts acted in a fashion that was out of character in the smallest way. His experiences could have been predicted in advance to a high degree of accuracy. He participated in a system which vilified and attacked dissenters and, as soon as he became skeptical of that system, he himself was chewed up and spit out. He participated in a system that rejected civil discourse in favor hatchet jobs and emotional tirades. He reaped what he sowed and I don't see any indication in his column that he learned anything from that.

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