I was catching up with my arts & culture reading over the weekend and was interested to see a story in the SF Chronicle about a radio station pulling a book ad off the air that attacked the Christian right after listeners called to complain.  It’s not a headline that I would ever expect to see in the Chronicle! 

You can read the whole article here, but the gist is that KDFC, a classical music station, pulled an advertisement for the book, "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on ," by Chris Hedges.  Hedges is coming to San Francisco and his publisher had purchased some ad time to promote the book.

Given how left-wing San Francisco is, it was hard to imagine what prompted those listeners to call and complain (or there are more of us "neo-cons" around here than I thought!).  But once I read the transcript of the ad, which was read by an on-air personality, it was clear why people were offended.

Here’s an excerpt of the ad copy:

"In his new bestseller, Chris Hedges challenges the Christian Right and its dark ideology. He challenges their religious legitimacy and makes a compelling case that these zealots have merely found a mask for fascism in patriotism and the pages of the Bible."

Hedges, of course, saw nothing wrong with the ad and told the Chronicle that radio station basically buckled under pressure from the Christian right. 

Why is it that when the likes of former President Bill and Hillary Clinton attend church, it is an appropriate display of their religious beliefs, but when the likes of President Bush attend church it is a display of their "dark ideology?"  And we wonder why the country seems so polarized.  In the end, the supposedly tolerant, open-minded liberals in America really aren’t all that tolerant or open-minded!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.