DRMIZER
10-29-2003, 11:23 AM
Mike Hudson is a writer for the Niagara Falls Reporter. His brush with the right-wing media began when he wrote an email to a fellow reporter, Frank Thomas Croisdale who wrote an article on Rush Limbaugh's firing from ESPN. Apparently the problem was that the Croisdale article was "on Rush's side." Everything quickly took on a life of its own.
The email contained a question asking him why of all the people who have problems in this world, he chose to stick up for a scumbag like Limbaugh.
The email worked its way into the hands of Steve Malzberg on WABC, flagship station for the Rush Limbaugh show. That's when everything went awry.
Malzberg contacted Hudson. During the conversation Malzberg told Hudson that his wife had been a longtime staffer on Rush's show and asked me whether I would appear on his program. I told him I would and we worked out the details.
"When I got on the show, I talked to a different Steve Malzberg. He was shouting at me. It was good, though, because I went from being nervous to being mad in about two seconds. I recounted what Rush had said about other drug addicts, and quoted his gleeful remarks on the deaths of Jerry Garcia and Kurt Cobain. Malzberg replied that a person says a lot of things when they're on the radio three hours a day, five days a week, for 15 years.
Well, yeah. Especially if they're high."
"Malzberg called me a "hypocrite" -- which I think might be one crime I'm actually not guilty of -- and I told him I respected the fact that the Malzberg family owed Rush a big debt of gratitude for all he'd done for them."
Over the next few days, Hudson received more than 250 e-mails from Limbaugh supporters, who call themselves "dittoheads." A majority hadn't heard the show, but read Malzberg's one-sided account of it later on a right-wing Web site.
Here's a small sample of the printable emails received after the show:
"You are scum. You deserve to be buried on a yokel-local weekly in the land of ignorant tree-huggers. I bet the local overall-suspenders rubes think you are witty, urbane and so, so, so clever. I suggest you take a ride over the falls in a barrel."
"I wish you would get elaphantitus (sic) and die."
"Hope you get accosted by a bunch of black, AIDS infected homosexual rapists and die ... you're a disgrace."
"Hope you contract the ALZHIEMERS DISEASE (sic) so we all can watch you slowly fade away to where you would not be able to feed yourself nor wipe your butt nor remember anything not even your family."
"I hope you get throat cancer and die."
"I hope your pecker falls off and you have to sit to pee."
"Compassionate conservatives indeed. For the record, I've never done anything in my closet except store my clothes there, and my dad did a lot of nice things for me but never sent me to any low-ranked Democrat brainwashing place. And unlike, say, Rush Limbaugh, I haven't presented myself to the public as some kind of moral compass, presuming to tell other people how they should live their private lives.", stated Hudson
"Limbaugh's a phony and a liar. A strong advocate for "family values," he's been married three times and doesn't have any kids. An admitted drug addict who's now in his third rehab and under criminal investigation, he has a long record of calling for stricter drug laws and harsher sentences for those who would break them. He targets the mythical "welfare mother" for not going out and getting a job when his alleged audience of 20 million apparently has nothing better to do than sit around and listen to him on weekday afternoons." writes Hudson.
"He deserves no more compassion than that he's shown to countless others, which is to say, none."
Original story reported in the Niagara Falls Reporter.
The email contained a question asking him why of all the people who have problems in this world, he chose to stick up for a scumbag like Limbaugh.
The email worked its way into the hands of Steve Malzberg on WABC, flagship station for the Rush Limbaugh show. That's when everything went awry.
Malzberg contacted Hudson. During the conversation Malzberg told Hudson that his wife had been a longtime staffer on Rush's show and asked me whether I would appear on his program. I told him I would and we worked out the details.
"When I got on the show, I talked to a different Steve Malzberg. He was shouting at me. It was good, though, because I went from being nervous to being mad in about two seconds. I recounted what Rush had said about other drug addicts, and quoted his gleeful remarks on the deaths of Jerry Garcia and Kurt Cobain. Malzberg replied that a person says a lot of things when they're on the radio three hours a day, five days a week, for 15 years.
Well, yeah. Especially if they're high."
"Malzberg called me a "hypocrite" -- which I think might be one crime I'm actually not guilty of -- and I told him I respected the fact that the Malzberg family owed Rush a big debt of gratitude for all he'd done for them."
Over the next few days, Hudson received more than 250 e-mails from Limbaugh supporters, who call themselves "dittoheads." A majority hadn't heard the show, but read Malzberg's one-sided account of it later on a right-wing Web site.
Here's a small sample of the printable emails received after the show:
"You are scum. You deserve to be buried on a yokel-local weekly in the land of ignorant tree-huggers. I bet the local overall-suspenders rubes think you are witty, urbane and so, so, so clever. I suggest you take a ride over the falls in a barrel."
"I wish you would get elaphantitus (sic) and die."
"Hope you get accosted by a bunch of black, AIDS infected homosexual rapists and die ... you're a disgrace."
"Hope you contract the ALZHIEMERS DISEASE (sic) so we all can watch you slowly fade away to where you would not be able to feed yourself nor wipe your butt nor remember anything not even your family."
"I hope you get throat cancer and die."
"I hope your pecker falls off and you have to sit to pee."
"Compassionate conservatives indeed. For the record, I've never done anything in my closet except store my clothes there, and my dad did a lot of nice things for me but never sent me to any low-ranked Democrat brainwashing place. And unlike, say, Rush Limbaugh, I haven't presented myself to the public as some kind of moral compass, presuming to tell other people how they should live their private lives.", stated Hudson
"Limbaugh's a phony and a liar. A strong advocate for "family values," he's been married three times and doesn't have any kids. An admitted drug addict who's now in his third rehab and under criminal investigation, he has a long record of calling for stricter drug laws and harsher sentences for those who would break them. He targets the mythical "welfare mother" for not going out and getting a job when his alleged audience of 20 million apparently has nothing better to do than sit around and listen to him on weekday afternoons." writes Hudson.
"He deserves no more compassion than that he's shown to countless others, which is to say, none."
Original story reported in the Niagara Falls Reporter.