April 13, 2007 07:54 PM UTC

Giant Killers

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• by: Tyler Chafee

In an article entitled “Behind the Fall of Imus, a Digital Brush Fire” the front page of the The Wall Street Journal (subscription req.) reports on the role that Media Matters for America played in the eventual firing of Don Imus:

At 6:14 a.m. on Wednesday, April 4, relatively few people were tuned into the “Imus in the Morning Show” when Don Imus referred to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s.”

Ryan Chiachiere was.  A 26-year-old researcher in Washington, D.C., for liberal watchdog organization Media Matters for America, he was assigned to monitor Mr. Imus’s program.  Mr. Chiachiere clipped the video, alerted his bosses and started working on a blog post for the organization’s Web site.

The Media Matters for America homepage this morning showcases similarly offensive statements from over a half dozen other conservative personalities.  Such as Glen Beck calling Sen. Hilary Clinton “the stereotypical bitch“.  Neil Boortz suggesting that Katrina survivors consider prostitution because “it sure beats the hell out of sucking off the taxpayers.” As well as Bill O’Reilly, while referring to the disproportionately few jobs and contracts that have gone to locals in the rebuilding of New Orleans, saying “[T]he homies, you know … I mean, they’re just not going to get the job.“

This morning, both the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News published a column by Bill Menezes, Editorial Director of Colorado Media Matters, that chronicles offensive behavior in Colorado’s conservative talk show circuit.

Is this the beginning of the end of the Republican noise machine?