Image courtesy Colorado Ceasefire
In an editorial Monday, The Denver Post slammed Mike McAlpine, a leader of the Evie-Hudak-recall campaign, for calling pro-Hudak protesters Nazi "Brownshirts," which, The Post pointed out, is "particularly ill-suited because Hudak is Jewish."
Gun-safety activist Tom Mauser, who lost a child at Columbine, was one of those protesters, and, appearing on Boyle's show Friday (Audio 1 at 30:00), he objected to being called a Nazi. McAlpine originally delivered the "Brownshirts" comment on Peter Boyles KNUS show Oct. 21.
Continuing his free-fall from respectability, Boyles told Mauser that McAlpine did not level the "Brownshirts" attack, and then Boyles bullied Mauser into retracting his statement that McAlpine used the term "Brownshirts", even though McAlpine did, in fact, say on Boyles' show that pro-Hudak protesters were "Brownshirts."
After enduring Boyles for too long, Mauser departed from the show, and guess who joined Boyles? McAlpine!
Boyles told McAlpine all about his conversation with Mauser, telling McAlpine directly that the "word 'Brownshirt' was never used by you." (Click on Audio 2 here)
Not a word emerged from McAlpine's mouth to correct Boyles, even though Laura Waters, another leader of the Hudak recall campaign, told Boyles: "Thank you for that clarification. It wasn’t [McAlpine who said "Brownshirts."]
Boyles hasn't responded to my emails asking for an on-air correction.
If he made one, I haven't heard it, and his treatment of Mauser was so gross, and it's even worse if you hear the audio (Audio 1 beginning at 30:00), you might want to join me in trying to get Boyles to apologize: Email him: Peter@710KNUS.com.
You can see the entire transcript of this exchange by clicking here, and I've pasted some of the worst of it below:
BOYLES: Would you retract that from Mike [McAlpine]? That’s all I’m asking. Tom?
MAUSER: Would I retract it?
BOYLES: Yeah. Would you retract that he didn’t say that.
MAUSER: He did say “Brownshirts”.
BOYLES: No, he didn’t.
MAUSER: What did he say?
BOYLES: Well, I don’t –. Hey, I – a caller said “brownshirts.” I remember it. You want to get Mike [McAlpine] – call Mike up.
MAUSER: Oh, okay, Oh, it was a caller that said it?
BOYLES: Yeah. A caller said it. He didn’t say it….
Boyles tells Mauser toward the end of the exchange: You know what you’ve turned into? You’ve turned into one of those people I can’t speak to anymore because you keep coming up with things that aren't true!…
Later in the show, with McAlpine and Laura Waters (Click on Audio 2 here):
Boyles: …We had quite a knockdown, drag out with tom Mauser this morning
Boyles tells McAlpine: First of all, I need to make this clear, because I was making it clear to [Mauser], the word “Brownshirt” was never used by you and “goon” was never used by you. And his first accusation was you said those things. And I said no, that you had not said those things. That in fact, the word “goon” was me, and I think a caller – when we were naming the crew of people to help, and somebody used “brownshirt”, but it certainly wasn’t you.
WATERS: Thank you for that clarification. It wasn’t.
BOYLES: And he came in loaded for bear {?} to talk about “Brownshirt” And I said, “First things first. I said ‘goon’ and ‘Brownshirt’ was made by a listener.” And I asked him to make an apology to you, and it took a couple of minutes.
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Good God, Peter Boyles is a douchebag. Bullying the father of a Columbine victim. What a piece of shit.
A douchebag trying to earn a living since he can't draw an Army Airborne pension after all. D'oh!
The only way to change the discussion away from the debate over sensible gun regulation is to claim to be a victim of slander when in fact they are the ones engaged in hyperbole. Slimy tactics by slimy people.
Some people have no sense of decency and no shame. Peter Boyles is one of them.
Tom Mauser is an incredibly dedicated individual. It is absolutely shocking that Boyles would bully him into retracting a statement, when Boyles knew what Tomwas saying was absolutely correct. Boyles appears to be totally lackin in integrity.
Hey, Peter: "Denial" ain't a river in Egypt!
With all due respect, Jason, I don't think that boyles gives a flying f*%k what you or anyone posting on Colorado Pols thinks of him. I have a legal question:
Since you have audio proof of what was said, can you file a complaint with the FCC? Can Tom Mauser? I would hope that there is a remedy.
And what would the formal complaint be. That Boyles is garbage? Who knew?
. . . someone who has ever listened to him ?!?
I just looked back over prior discussions and it seems like this thread was carried over from 7 October. I said then and I still believe that Alan Berg's (they were very close friends) changed Boyles in a trgically profound way. Up until then, he was a center left talker. It seemed as if when Alan was murdered, Peter snapped. One day he and Berg were birds of a feather, and the next, Boyles was giving Mike Rosen a run for his money. I always wondered if he feared that being a left-leaning talk show host would get him killed, too, so he changed. Ken Hamblin (remember him?), did exactly the same, overnight. Maybe he came to the same conclusion. Of course, it didn't help a bit when Clear Channel bought the whole AM dial.
Thinking faster than I was typing–"Alan Berg's death"
Berg was murdered in 1984. Limbaugh did not go national until 1988. But, you may be on to something because boyles credits limbaugh with "saving" AM radio. So i think the impetus to go "radical right" was certainly commercially motivated, but I think it started a few years later than 1984.
Sometime in the late 1980s or so, there was a brief, but golden time on KNUS, before it was bought by Salem broadcasting. All the local talk show hosts were on….Hamblin, boyles, Alan Dumas, and others…..but one day, it went country music…I remember people calling up and saying good-bye. No one was conservative or radical talk, then. But afterwards, the radio went "red."
A good word about Ken Hamblin: the night that Berg died, Hamblin was on the radio, live. He was broadcasting out of the old KOA station on Lincoln. At the time, the Berg killers had not been apprehended and there was little security at the station. Hamblin stayed on the air and in effect told the killers to "come and get me if you dare." I thought it was brave.
I also remember radio during WWII. There have been far better times on local media and I am glad I remember some of it.
I remember Hamblin's broadcast that night, too, Dwyer. He was pulling Berg's shift. I stayed up and listened to the whole thing. I wonder if someone close to him questioned his sanity after that show, because he, like Boyles very quickly changed his slant and became far more right of center. A lot of local talkers did. I always wondered if Berg's murder scared them into it. In Steven Singular's book, Talked to Death it was revealed that they had a hit list that included leftist media personalities and that Berg's name was right on the top.
Your memory is better than mine.
Actually, I was part of a group that appeared on Peter Boyle's pubic television talk show in 2000. We were talking about the issue of gun violence and closing the gun show loophole. There were four guests, two from each side. I remember three things about that show.
1) Afterwards, Boyles implied that he agreed with our positions.
2) He was a relatively good moderator of the panel, allowing everyone to speak and not hassling anyone.
3) After the show was over, he immediately lost his temper BIG TIME with a staffer for some production issue…I think it was because he thought we were all too stiff in the cameras, and he would have liked more lively guests. (Sorry, most of us were new to being in debate in front of a camera, and were fretting about pulling a big faux pas.). I've since run into that staffer occasionally, and remembered how embarrassed I had felt for her.
People have told me that he has always been ultra-right-wing. I don't listen to right-wing radio or television to know his history…but my experiences in 2000 did not give me that impression.
From my perspective, something has made him lose it. Nevertheless, whether it is profit-movtive or a change in his own political outlook, bullying a man who lost a son to gun violence is well beyond the pale of decent behavior. He needs to find a career more fitting for his distorted sense of propriety.
(By the way, isn't one of the arguments of the pro-Hudak recall that she questioned the conclusions (based on data) of a rape victim in testimony against the bill to ban guns on campus. For her comments, she immediately became the focus of a hate campaign (ugly threats of rape and violence). The recall language refers to this event. The victim was brought in from another state to testify that if she had been carrying her CCW gun, she would have been able to defend herself and not have been raped. She may believe this, but statistics are not with her. For example: one out of five police officers (highly trained in weaponry) who are shot and killed oin the line of duty are shot with their own gun. Although one can be sympathetic to her for the awful crime that she endured, it is prudent to carefully consider the conclusions that the rape victim drew.
So the gun rights crowd feel they can have it both ways: They can go into conniptions over questions or comments to a rape victim witness over her conclusions, yet it is perfectly fine to bully a man who lost a son in the Columbine shooting massacre. (Be assured that this is not the first time that Tom Mauser has been bullied (even criminally threatened in the past). Hmmmmm!
@doremi,
Are you sure it was 2000, public television and boyles? My memory is not good. But I don't think that boyles ever had a show on public television. He was the moderator for many years on public television's Channel 12 "Colorado Inside Out". But,I thought he was long gone by 2000. He did start out thirty, forty years ago as a "liberal" and changed as the money changed, IMHO.
So I'm posting Boyles' contact info again. As Jason Salzman said, if Boyles treatment of Tom Mauser infuriarates you, at least email Boyles. (peter@710knus.com) He's getting some new listeners from this blog, although if you're like me, you can only stomach a few minutes of his blowhard schtick at a time.
I'm emailing him, and copying his boss, Brian Taylor, at what I hope is his boss's email address: brian@710knus.com
Possible talking/ emailing points:
http://www.710knus.com/peterboyles.aspx
studio line 303-696-1971 (probably screened, but worth a try)
twitter: @knus710#peterboyles
FB page: News/Talk 710KNUS comment under the topic "Senator Doubtfire and the Hudak recall petition drive continues"
Station general info:
http://www.710knus.com/contact.aspx
710KNUS@710KNUS.com
Brian Taylor Vice President/General Manager 303-750-5687
Office
303-750-5687(KNUS)
Here also is a link to the KNUS advertiser's page. We do know that contacting advertisers gets right wing talker's attention – Ask Glenn Beck, if he still gets mail in his dank little corner of the internet, where hopefully he will soon be joined by Rush Limbaugh.