Local Right Wing Pittsburgh Radio 104.7

With nothing better to do this morning (really!) I turned on the radio to the local FM News Talk 104.7.

The station's on-air "talent" includes Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and a pair of local wingnuts, Quinn and Rose. The official website of this dynamic duo is called "The Warroom."

Who is this Jim Quinn guy? I guess he's had a long and storied career in local radio. Here's some old photos for you to peruse. And here's an article from 1970 from the Pittsburgh Press about the wild child himself. While he hated hard drugs, he was in favor of legalizing marijuana. Looks like he was the sort of guy who railed against "the establishment" and then happily cashed its hefty paychecks.

Here's what Chris Potter (of the City Paper) had to say about Jim Quinn more recently (in 2003, to be exact):

As 2003 comes to a close, we at City Paper bid farewell to one of our unlikeliest colleagues: radio “personality” Jim Quinn. You may know Quinn from his weekday morning screeds on WRRK-FM, where he raves about feminists, environmentalists, the United Nations, and so on. But here at work, we know him as the guy who walks around the office with a sidearm strapped to his waist.

Wait-there's more:

Quinn doesn’t even have a book out this Christmas season, but when it comes to groundless rumor-mongering, he can hold his own: Quinn once claimed that physicians of Middle Eastern descent were openly celebrating the Sept. 11 attacks in McKeesport. He based his report on an e-mail from a listener, but despite that ironclad evidence, the story turned out to be utterly groundless. Quinn had to apologize for it later.

And here's Dimitri Vassilaros (of the Trib) had to say in 2002. The article was published right after the two DC-area snipers were arrested and Vassilaros was writing about how some local radio talk-show hosts were presenting the story:

"I think he is an Islamist looney-toon who thinks God wants him to murder anyone who is not a Muslim in return for 72 virgins and a key to the celestial Playboy Club," says Jim Quinn, WRRK (96.9 FM) morning talk host. Quinn says he is not legally mandated to say "alleged," but "I think people understand he is innocent until proven guilty."

Rose Somma Tenant, Quinn's morning show partner, is not as fair and balanced."In my mind, it is obvious he is guilty of many things," she says. "I consider him a criminal right now just based on what he has done. You notice there have been no more shootings now that he has been arrested."

Good thing the police actually caught the right guy. Imagine if they'd made a mistake. I wonder what the warroom would have said about the "looney-tune criminal" then.

On the "speaking before thinking" front, I guess things haven't changed much over there at the warroom. Today, I heard Rose Tennant (the "Rose" of "Quinn and Rose") do an expose of sorts on Time journalist John Cloud. After googling some of the phrases, I found her source matieral. It was this article from the Traditional Values Coalition. She read the web page pretty much verbatim. Good work, Rose. Lotsa digging involved in reciting a right-wing webpage. The TVC piece, by the way, starts like this:

John Cloud, a homosexual activist who writes for Time magazine has recently written the cover story for Time (Oct. 10, 2005) on “The Battle Over Gay Teens.” The article does not reveal that Cloud is a promiscuous homosexual who admits enjoying anonymous sex.

Now I have no idea about John Cloud's personal life, but that's a helluva way to start a "fair and balanced" report, isn't it?

From what I heard this morning, Rose quoted the TVC article and claimed that Cloud compared the Boy Scouts to the KKK. By the way, if they had actually checked the Time article (reprinted via the Unitarian Universalist Association--this is the link the Traditional Values Coalition uses, by the way) they would have seen the extent of Clouds "comparison."

Gay-activist attorneys say the presence of a few gays wouldn't keep Scout officials from maintaining anti-gay views, since the vast majority of scouting activities never involve discussions of sexuality or politics. They say the issue isn't so much a group's right to exclusivity--no one is arguing that the Ku Klux Klan must admit Jews--as it is whether a group like the Boy Scouts, which generally welcomes every boy, can claim that being anti-gay is part of its core values. (As a practical matter, the N.A.A.C.P isn't worried: it has filed a brief against the Scouts.) [emphasis added]

That's it. The "comparison" hinges on each group's right to exclusivity. But the paragraph itself says that that's not really the issue at hand, doesn't it?

But's only talk radio, so "facts" and "truth" are concepts that don't matter much in the Quinn/Rose warroom.