Thom Hartmann vs right wing radio host on austerity and suicide

[alp227]

Last edited Thu Aug 8, 2013, 02:32 PM - Edit history (1)

Thom Hartmann has lately described what happened after alternet.org published this article of his last weekend, "The Corporate Right-Wing Agenda Is Driving Thousands of Americans to Attempt Suicide". Both The Blaze (Glenn Beck's webshite) and NewsBusters (the blog of the right wing Media Research Center) wrote about the article, and Thom says he got a whole bunch of death threats afterward including as he said "N-word lover". Sure shows what kind of people read sites like The Blaze.

On yesterday's show Thom mentioned that he went on a right wing talk show on Houston to defend his point of view. Here's the interview in full:

As Newsradio 740 KTRH describes: "Houston's Morning News with Matt Patrick welcomes progressive radio talk show host Tom (sic) Hartmann, to discuss Hartmann's statement he claims science stands behind, 'the very same austerity policies that Republicans in Washington are pushing on us are the same policies that are driving Americans to kill themselves.' He also asks 'are we turning our children into conservatives by medicating them?' Hartmann explains himself about that and more. Listen in for this heated debate."

During the interview Patrick played a clip from 2010 where Thom claimed a link between Ritalin and conservatism (this clip is longer; the Matt Patrick show took the clip from the 0:26 mark.)

Patrick had no real answers to Thom's points other than "you know that's not true!" and the hackneyed right wing complaints about "big government" and other empty ad homs playing to the Dittoheads who listen to KTRH, as KTRH is the Houston affiliate for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin and also has fellow right wing airhead and former Houston City Council member Michael Berry in its lineup. He even makes a fool out of himself by dismissing the BBC "more suicides under Conservative rule" article Thom cited as "British science" and "Australian science" (as if science has geographical limits!) Thom also cited the NY Times article "How austerity kills".

Patrick later posted the podcast of the interview on his Facebook page. C'mon, let's show Patrick that Thom was right all along.

Speaking of Ritalin, Thom expanded about Ritalin and creativity in yesterday's show:

By the way, when Air America Radio was introducing liberal talk radio to the scene, KTRH actually used to have Ed Schultz's show albeit delayed to the evenings thus frequently pre-empted by Houston Astros games. KTRH at first had "best-of" Ed shows on weekends in March 2005 then added his show on weeknights from April 2005 to March 2007 then replaced Ed with Dennis Miller.

And Matt Patrick used to be a Tea Party activist in the Cleveland area. In 2011 he replaced Lana Hughes and J.P. Pritchard, who had hosted Houston's Morning News on KTRH since the '80s. Lana and J.P. now host the morning show on Houston's all-news and thankfully more reality-based station KROI News 92.