The Radical loses it on the air

Today I made the mistake of calling into Dakota Midday while Shad Olson was selling his particular brand of nonsense.

Paul Guggenheimer was fantastic; Mr. Olson said:

"I'm not talking about the KOTA thing, except for this..."

which translates to:

"I'm going to take three minutes of your program to make a self-serving statement about how "interesting" it was that I was kicked off the KOTA anchor job for promoting God and America, but refuse to answer any questions about it."

Paul didn't let him off quite that easy; and carefully got him to explain himself (as if it really needs much explanation, really).

I asked Shad why he thinks encouraging pastors to preach for or against candidates from the pulpit squares with our Constitution and America's founding ideals.

Shad started with the tired conservative line that the Founders believed in freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. This is patently false of course. I pointed out to him that Jefferson, Madison, and Adams et al. were very suspicious of the power of religion (and the wealthy and corporations, but we didn't get into THAT), and that any reasonable reading of the facts would lead you otherwise.

He brought up church's working to organize against slavery. That was not partisan politics, that was issue campaigning - totally allowed and you can keep your tax-exempt status, sorry. Ding.

He brought the pulpit project where evangelical preachers defied the law, sent videos the IRS, and were not prosecuted as evidence that it's okay. Uh no, sorry, it was the Bush Administration and they wanted to keep their right wing base, so they didn't enforce the law. (Shocking, I know.) Ding.

He could not produce any evidence of the Founding Father's piety (because there isn't any) but continued a smug patter about how if I really read the Federalist Papers et al., I'd see the Judeo-Christian God as the basis over our country's founding. Sure many of these guys were intensely spiritual, but they really didn't like the idea of the Church having ANYTHING to do with government. After all, for many of the colonists, that's why they were here and not there!!!!

This really annoyed me, because it flies so directly in the face of verified facts. I recommend a book to you all, The Godless Constitution. Of course Shad would never read anything that interesting.

We started talking over one another and it kind of devolved - Paul Guggenheimer had to cut me off (deservedly).

I need to learn to take answers off the air from people like Shad, because there is no talking to them, you might as well just start them up and let them dig their own hole in the ground.

Sigh.