Melissa del Bosque, whose phenomenal reports for The Texas Observer are always worth reading, spent some quality time with a couple of cantankerous lawmen for her latest assignment, “Boots on the Ground: A Day in the Life of a Border Sheriff.” She even traveled into the barren desert on an ATV with Arvin West, sheriff of Hudspeth County and chairman of the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition, in an effort to get to the root of the fear-mongering, sensationalist “battle zone” rhetoric that dominates cable news coverage of the Texas-Mexico border.

At times it’s like watching a game of telephone: Sheriff tells exaggerated story to Texas congressman, congressman appears on Sean Hannity’s show, Sean Hannity concludes that al-Qaeda terrorists are streaming unchecked across the border. Luckily, del Bosque also meets Lupe Treviño, also a Texas sheriff, who’s working to dispel some of the outrageous myths about border violence. “Treviño created an hour-long PowerPoint presentation called ‘Border Violence: Rhetoric vs. Reality,’ ” del Bosque writes. “He makes his case at luncheons and to any audience who will listen.”

Source: The Texas Observer

Toward the end of the Bush administration, right-wing media was forced to play defense for a beleaguered conservative movement. With Obama in charge, the right-wingers have gone on the attack. So far, that attack has been characterized by “violent, doomsday, and anti-intellectual rhetoric,” according to Media Matters. Rush Limbaugh has says the Obama administration has launched “an all-out assault on capitalism.” Sean Hannity calls the administration, “radicalism you can believe in” asserting that “the Bolsheviks have already arrived.” Media Matters has compiled myriad examples of violent rhetoric, warnings of a “new world order,” scapegoating and other general paranoia coming from the conservative media.

For a more amusing take on the issue, you can watch Current TV’s SuperNews! segment on paranoia poster boy Glenn Beck:

Or Stephen Colbert on the same issue:

Over at Nerve, Steve Almond parses his desire for uberconservative pundit Sean Hannity, the “angry, engorged and totally hot” object of his affection. Almond acknowledges the flaws in Hannity's character—"I find you, as a moral actor, repulsive," he writes—but a few years after appearing on Hannity's Fox News show, he just can't shake his lingering fascination with the man. "[W]hile I find your demeanor shrill and brutish," he writes, "I also find it strangely . . . alluring." 

[W]hen I appeared on your show I couldn't see you. But I could hear you—loud and clear. And that's what really captured me. The liberal in me was appalled by your hectoring. But the insecure male in me felt, I don't know. . . ravaged is probably the best word. Within ten seconds, you were interrogating me. Within twenty, you were insulting me. Within thirty, you were disgusted. There was something so raw and personal about it all.

Check out the rest of the letter here, or revisit Almond's treatises on candy bars, writing about candy bars, and how to write a sex scene.  

(Thanks, Bookforum.)

Image by bobgo29, licensed under Creative Commons.