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David Duke's Role in Absurdity Barry Farber In this Walter Mitty fantasy I'm proposing, you are the producer who decides who shall be welcomed as a guest on TV or radio talk shows. There's a guest with a claim you know to be wrong who really wants to come on your show. His facts are demonstrably bankrupt, but he's controversial, outrageous, and great theater.
Question: Do you bring him on the air?
My answer is, it depends.
One of the funniest press releases I ever got from a group seeking to be on my radio show came from a group that called itself, the "Man Will Never Fly Association." They professed to have irrefutable documentation that aviation is impossible, a vain and arrogant dream, an impossible endeavor, so, forget-about-it — man will never fly!
Included with the press release was an invitation to attend their annual convention of the Man Will Never Fly Association, at which time scientific papers and learned essays would be presented by leading physicists and engineers all backing the notion that man will never get off the ground. And where was this interesting convention to be held? In Kitty Hawk, N.C. where, in 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright proved than man could, indeed, fly.
Also, thoughtfully included was a package of airline schedules showing would-be visitors to the convention where and when they might catch convenient flights to attend the Man Will Never Fly convention in Kitty Hawk.
Would I have them on the air? You bet — in a heartbeat, and I'd write it all off to good clean fun and a good time would be had by all.
Story Continues Below
Now then, turn the page. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the not-quite-but-almost-dictator of Iran called a two day conference of "scholars" from around the world to "debate" whether or not there had actually been a Holocaust; whether the late Adolf Hitler had really murdered every Jew he could get his hands on during his triumphant (at first) conquest of most of Europe.
One of those attending that conference in Tehran was David Duke of Louisiana who never met a Nazi principle he couldn't approve. CNN's Wolf Blitzer made a big deal of inviting David Duke live from Teheran to appear on the "Situation Room" to discuss whether or not there had really been a Holocaust.
Stop right there.
That's far enough.
Wolf Blitzer is a former correspondent for the Jerusalem Post. He knows good and well there was a Holocaust. Why, then, does he invite an avowed white supremacist, former Ku Klux Klan leader and a man who was voluntarily photographed wearing a swastika armband with his right arm extended in the Hitler salute to debate whether or not there had occurred something in history that Wolf Blitzer knew good and well really did?
Ted Kavanau, who put CNN on the air for Ted Turner as line producer at the beginning, said on WMCA Radio in New York, "It's ratings. It's good box office. David Duke live from Iran questioning the Holocaust will draw a huge audience." Ted would never have put such a "debate" on the air and neither would I. Others do and flourish in the ratings.
Ted mentioned he'd seen a TV interview with a black "activist" he'd never heard of who had a storefront headquarters somewhere and who said all white people should be massacred! Great stuff, right?
It might lighten things up if sandwiched between Dr. Kissinger analyzing the Middle East and Zbigniew Brzezinski detailing authoritarian tendencies in Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Responsible programming is bound to be less exciting than irresponsible programming. There was no Internet when I was in high school but there was a kind of virtual "Web site" hanging over everything proclaiming which girls would and which girls wouldn't. And the girls who would were vastly more popular than the girls who wouldn't. The girls who wouldn't, the preachers told us, would get their rewards later on. I hope they did.
It's the same with broadcasters, except the "good" broadcasters — those who will have no part of an exciting David Duke interview questioning the fact of the Holocaust — will probably never get their just reward from the audience for being responsible.
It's time to get a few things straight.
The David Dukes who don't get the media attention they want cry violation of their freedom of speech.
Objection denied.
They have all the freedom of speech they're guaranteed. Freedom of speech does not include freedom to be interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN or by anyone else anywhere else. They remain free to buy a megaphone or an electronic bullhorn or a sound system and have a rally wherever local police permit at maximum volume permitted by the community board.
If I decide your claim that two-plus-two equals five, or that the sun rises in the West, or that Hitler never intended to harm the Jews in Germany and his conquered territories is nuts and I refuse to have you on my show, all I have done is frustrate your desire for media attention. I have not impinged upon your freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech does not include freedom to be invited on talk shows or freedom to be taken seriously.
Two puzzling questions remain: Why has nobody commented on the embarrassing coincidence of the Iraq Study Group recommending talks between Washington and Iran while Iran's two-day absurdity of Holocaust denial was in full throttle?
Would James Baker please answer a direct question: Do you see any infirmity in counseling talks between America and a government that goes to great expense mounting a conference to "explore" whether or not there was a Holocaust? Also, with so many millions of witnesses, how can there be any such thing as doubt that the Holocaust existed in all of its alleged dimensions.
The best answer to the Holocaust deniers was provided to me, not by any Jewish organization or authority, but by Christian author Robin Moore of "The Green Berets," "The French Connection," and many other best sellers. In his journalistic career, Robin happened to meet up with and interview the notorious Klaus Barbie, Gestapo boss of Lyons, France and one of the major uncaught Nazis hiding out in South America.
It's a poorly kept secret that those who most energetically deny the last Holocaust are precisely those who most ardently desire the next one. Robin taught me to face up to the Holocaust deniers like this:
"Sir or Madame. You contend there was no Holocaust, no Nazi attempt to slaughter the Jews under their control. I disagree. In my argument I will not utilize any Jewish sources to back up the fact of the Holocaust even though we have millions because you will say they are Jewish sources and therefore suspect. I will further not utilize any neutral sources; diplomats, and their diaries from Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal bearing witness to the Holocaust, because you will then claim they have been bought off by the Jews. "I will confine my argument to Nazi sources only to back up my argument. For example, Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief of Lyons, told American journalist Robin Moore, ‘Every time I was about to close the trap on the French anti-Nazi resistance, I would get a call from Berlin with some mid-level Nazi party idiot screaming, "The Jews! Where are your Jews? Berlin is furious you're lagging in your shipment of Jews."'
"And Klaus Barbie told Robin Moore, ‘If those idiots in Berlin had only let me fight my war and forgotten about the god-damned Jews we would have won the war.'"
Once a listener on a radio call-in show who denied the Holocaust got that reply from me full in the face. His retort? A full five seconds of silence like a boxer who'd been hit convincingly in the gut. "Well," he said thereupon, "in a country of 80 million people like Nazi Germany you're going to find a few traitors like Klaus Barbie."
The caller then hung up; he ran away.
As the referee as well as one of the contestants I was confused. Did Robin Moore help me win by a knockout, or just a TKO?
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