This episode is brought to you by Dropbox.

Start your free trial with this amazing service by clicking the Dropbox link at bestofalf.com.

Now welcome to the best of the left podcast with clips today from Ring of Fire,

The Daily Show, The Young Turks, Rachel Maddo, and Countdown.

About an hour's drive from where I live, a miserable 60 year old man by the name of Donnie Baker

murdered two Chilean college students, and he wounded five others. Baker has one of those

simple ten minds that's easily influenced by the media fear mongers. He murdered those kids

because he visualized himself as being a hero protecting America from the evil immigrant

hordes crossing our border. Those are the same evil hordes vilified almost every day by right wing

conservative media. Baker's story was similar to Joshua Cartwright's who murdered two

sheriff's deputies because according to his wife, Cartwright was distraught that Barack Obama

had been elected president. Cartwright lived in Fort Walton Beach, Florida just down the road

from Mr. Baker. It's a place where right wing media flourishes. These days hate crime stories are

so similar and so many in number that we begin to tune them out the same way that we might tune

out the car sales commercials that scream over our radio and TV airways every day. But the

Donnie Baker's and the Joshua Cartwrights of the world are intently listening to the screaming

airways, not the screaming that sells automobiles, but the screaming that encourages dull-witted

troubled personalities to commit murder. There's a new book on the market entitled The Eliminationist,

How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. It's a book that helps us understand the connections

between conservative media messaging and hate crime. Xenophobe, homophobe, demophobe, obama

foe, tax foe, choice foe, name the fear and you can match it up with some right wing TV or radio

talent pandering to the most terrified, simpleton and impressionable minds in his audience.

...