From The Pilot
By Chris Fitzsimon - Wednesday, July 28, 2010
“We have terrorists running America. … If we allow it, these same folks will inflict more damage on our nation than any suicide bomber could ever hope for.”
Those paranoid delusions are not the work of an anonymous commenter on an obscure right-wing website whose owners are difficult to discover. They are from an article a couple of weeks ago on wakeupamerica.com, a website run by two Republican members of the General Assembly, Sen. Andrew Brock and Rep. Bryan Holloway.
Suggesting that the president is a terrorist more dangerous than a suicide bomber is normally the kind of statement that would prompt calls for apologies or result in other elected officials distancing themselves from the statements and the people who made them.
Not in this case. Wakeupamerica.com has been spewing this kind of venom since Brock and his pals created it.
Past articles have talked about “the movement to take back our country from the radical socialist agenda that Obama and his cronies are subversively implementing,” and they have warned that “the left’s policies, especially those policies aggressively set forward by the Obama administration, target the family and Christian churches for destruction.”
Not only have there been no repercussions for Brock or Holloway, the media have barely reported on their offensive antics.
Another well-known North Carolinian is also playing a prominent role in the far right’s national attack machine: Fred Eshelman, the CEO of Pharmaceutical Product Development Inc. in Wilmington.
The School of Pharmacy at UNC-Chapel Hill was renamed for Eshelman two years ago after he gave more than $30 million to the university. Eshelman was in the news recently for a large gift he made to UNC Wilmington and for ringing the NASDAQ bell on the 25th anniversary of his company.
But Eshelman is more than a prominent businessman and university benefactor. He is the principal funder of a group called RightChange.com that ran ads against Obama in the 2008 election that were so extreme that even a respected conservative group called them “ridiculous” and an “outright, nonsensical lie.”
RightChange ran ads in a congressional race earlier this year that featured an attack of the “50-foot Pelosi” and is now attacking Florida Gov. and Senate candidate Charlie Crist.
Documents filed with the IRS show that RightChange spent just under $300,000 in the second quarter of this year, most of it on consultants. One of them is Tim Pittman, an official in administration of Republican Gov. Jim Martin in the 1980s.
The other board members of RightChange are Republican legislators, Sen. Fletcher Hartsell and Rep. Jeff Barnhart. They have never explained their involvement with the group or how they feel about the offensive ads it runs.
Earlier this year, Eshelman was also one of the founders of yet another right-wing group, Real Jobs NC, whose first website featured more distortions about North Carolina’s taxes. The website was taken down, but you can bet it will be back and it’s likely that ridiculous attack ads will come with it.
Maybe outrageous statements calling the president a terrorist or running blatantly false ads isn’t really news anymore in the current political climate.
But surely the fact that four state legislators and one of the state’s most prominent business leaders are playing increasingly prominent roles in the far right’s national propaganda machine that produces the scurrilous attacks is newsworthy.
Why isn’t anybody asking more questions?
Chris Fitzsimon is executive director of N.C. Policy Watch. Contact him at chris@ncpolicywatch.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment