Atlanta newspaper blasts Boortz

The senior editor of Atlanta's Creative Loafing newspaper has authored this substantial piece, which gives a lot of information and insight into Boortz and his views. Apparently the author is responsible for "outing" Boortz as a chickenhawk, having revealed what is known about Boortz' evasion of service during the Vietnam War.

The piece also discusses the LP National Convention situation in depth, and even plugs the petition.

I've copied the entire piece into the extended entry section.

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http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2003-12-18/fishwrapper.html

Neal Boortz is no John Galt

Libertarians will ensure their irrelevance if they embrace radio ignoramus

BY JOHN F. SUGG

Atlanta's radio offerings are so, so, so very awful that, yes, on my drive to the office, in desperation I am forced to tune in to the city's pinnacle (or is it pit?) of know-nothingness, Neal Boortz. But I have a rule. At his first lie, gross misrepresentation of the truth, or race baiting, I go to a book on tape. Often, I don't make it out of the driveway. Seldom do I travel the five miles to I-85, and never have I completed the 30-minute drive to the Loaf without Boortz bellowing some deceitful absurdity.

Neal dissembles, John hits the off button.

For example, just last week Boortz proclaimed that the Bushies told no fibs to con Americans into supporting the war. Huh? I paused for a minute before switching on my current recorded book to make sure Boortz wouldn't qualify that astounding fiction or giggle and say, "Just kidding," since all the world now knows George Bush lied. So did Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the contemptible gang. They politicized and distorted intelligence, and when that didn't work, they fabricated and uttered gross untruths. They have even admitted it, but now claim it doesn't matter.

I sometimes jot down Boortz's lamest deceits. It's a long list. Ranking at the top was his hysterical claim, in the days before Bush's invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein's military might surpass that of Nazi Germany. I slapped my forehead at that one -- the claim went beyond mere bad information and makes me wonder if there isn't serious impairment of Boortz's reasoning capacity. The fellow needs a 12-step program for the chronically dishonest and incorrigibly stupid.

The truth, by the way, was that in 1939 Adolf Hitler boasted 98 divisions, with 1.5 million well-trained men, for the invasion of Poland. For the Western offensive, Germany had 2.5 million men, and 2,500 tanks. In June 1941, Hitler had available 3 million men and 4,000 tanks to invade the Soviet Union. Saddam, prior to our invasion, never had more than 400,000 troops and 2,200 tanks, and the demoralized and largely broken-down Iraqi military was never in the same universe as the Wehrmacht.

In other words, Boortz equals bullshit.

I don't want to argue the war here, but it was just so Boortzian for him to proclaim that pure lunacy as truth. And the sheep that follow him bleat their belief that they are actually getting "information."

That Boortz struts about touting himself as a libertarian would make his daily mission of mendacity a good laugh -- except for one thing: For Big Brother to win, the Bush regime needs to bovine-ize America. Ignorance and the Orwellian capacity to simultaneously believe glaring contradictions are the essential intellectual diet of the Bushies. Force feeding America the swill are Faux News and the phalanx of talk show screechers, of which Boortz is, to his chagrin, merely a farm team lightweight.

(In October a University of Maryland survey measured how much false information -- such as that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq -- people believed and whether they primarily relied on Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN or print. Those relying on Fox were far less likely to know the truth about critical world and national issues, and far more likely to believe distortions of the truth. Boortz, of course, gets it wrong more often than the heavy-hitting propagandists he worships on Fox.)

America needs real libertarians, whose origins are firmly rooted in the Bill of Rights. The Libertarian Party (libertarians with a big "L") is holding its national convention in Atlanta in May, and the party has invited Boortz to be a speaker.

I'm told by Libertarian activists the decision was rooted in the group's cheapness -- they didn't want to foot the freight for major talent.

Well, you get what you pay for -- free traders such as the Libertarians should understand that. In lib -- or Lib -- ertarian land, there has been a howl of protest over the invitation to Boortz.

One of the few points on which Boortz's rants coincide with the Libertarians is ending the Drug War. Hell, there are a lot of tokers out there who can't even spell Libertarian who are in tune with the party on that point.
Boortz is no libertarian. He is a sorry shill for the Bush big-government, interventionist, xenophobic, authoritarian regime. Imposing our will on the world, looting resources and guaranteeing Halliburton billions in profits -- that isn't free trade; it's empire. Gutting the Bill of Rights, spying on law-abiding citizens, manipulation through agitprop -- that isn't freedom; it's slavery.

"The Libertarian Party is so desperate, it has led them to abandon their issues in favor of seeking popularity," says Eric Garris, who helps run a libertarian website, antiwar.com, and who has long been involved with the party at the national and state (California) levels.

On the key issues confronting America, Boortz clearly stands on the side of those who attack freedom, and those who want to turn Big Government into Gargantuan Government (as long as someone besides rich people and corporations pay for it).

Examples: He applauds the FBI investigating anti-war demonstrators, making a broad smear recently on his website (that could have been authored by Karl Rove, and maybe was) that activists should be hounded by the feds because they are "pro-Saddam and anti-U.S.," and that they are "largely anti-American communists and Islamic radicals."

Likewise, in the same epistle, he applauded the police riot last month against trade demonstrators in Miami. I never met someone who claimed to be a libertarian but was so antagonistic toward the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments. It just doesn't compute.

In Boortz's best imitation of Joe McCarthy, he has insinuated that Justin Raimondo -- a nationally prominent Libertarian since the 1970s and the prolific editor of anti-war.com -- is a red. Raimondo "doesn't like me," Boortz huffed on his website last week, "because I approve of our actions in Iraq. Fair enough. Do you know who else doesn't like our Iraqi actions? Well, communists, for one."

Slimey, slimey, slimey.

On economics, Boortz worships Ronald Reagan -- ignoring the fact that government grew much faster under the Gipper than under, say, Bill Clinton, who the talk show host blames for just about every ill that has ever happened (another script line from Karl Rove). And, of course, Boortz has nothing but gushing praise for Bush's economics, somehow equating fiscal responsibility with pumping up government spending to $21,000 per American household, compared with $16,000 during the Clinton administration -- the biggest increase in more than 50 years.

That remarkably un-libertarian accomplishment, coupled with Bush's tax cuts for the plutocrats, has created record deficits that will indenture our children and grandchildren -- hardly what Ayn Rand, the spiritual guru for Libertarians, had in mind in Atlas Shrugged.

It's the war, however, that has real libertarians frothing at the invitation to Boortz. The Libertarian Party platform is decidedly anti-war, stating: "We call for the withdrawal of all American military personnel stationed abroad. ... There is no current or foreseeable risk of any conventional military attack on the American people, particularly from long distances. We call for the withdrawal of the U.S. from commitments to engage in war on behalf of other governments and for abandonment of doctrines supporting military intervention such as the Monroe Doctrine."

Pretty clear writing, and it's at the heart of Libertarian thought. An irony is that since Boortz is peachy happy with the FBI snooping on anti-war activists, and since most Libertarians are anti-war, the radio blowhard is all in favor of the government investigating the very people who invited him to address their convention. And, in the witch-hunting delusions that substitute for thought in Boortz's diseased mind, it's quite likely all those Libertarians are really either commies or radical Islamists.

Boortz doesn't like me. I outed him as a chickenhawk. He keeps changing the story about how he evaded military service during Vietnam (was it the asthma or your eyesight, Neal?). Last week, he was claiming the military wouldn't take him. More precisely, when he couldn't get a relatively cushy job as a pilot, he wasn't about to get dirty (or dead) crawling through rice paddies. It's so easy to be bellicose when it's the other guy -- probably an oh-so-expendable member of the working class and a minority -- who is getting shot.

But that's Neal Boortz, the apotheosis of cowardice. He doesn't like to debate when he can't be in control. He keeps his finger on the disconnect button so that when callers start to score points, he can quickly cut them off.

If that's who the Libertarians want to hear, the party -- already victim to several internal scuffles -- might as well admit that it's history. If its program is to imitate the Democrats' emulation of the Republicans, the Libertarian Party stands for nothing.

Neal Boortz was offered space for his unedited remarks on libertarians' "boot Boortz" efforts. Boortz apparently preferred to pout in silence. For those who would like to sign the petition to give Boortz the heave-ho from the Libertarian convention: www.petitiononline.com/noboortz/petition.html.

Senior Editor John Sugg -- who says, "Neal, you gutless bag of wind, this is a challenge to a smackdown" -- can be reached at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com or at 404-614-1241.

12.18.03

Posted by Jeff Smith at December 20, 2003 10:15 AM | TrackBack