Mark Hyman

At about 6:15 AM, my wife and I were getting ready for Church and paused for a moment to have coffee. I turned on the television on KOMO (an ABC affiliate in Seattle), and the first program we saw was Mark Hyman’s “Behind the Headlines” episode called “Ignoring History”. In the episode, he compared the drive by minorities and liberals to remove statues celebrating Confederate “heroes” from the Civil War to the decision by the Taliban to blow up the 2000 year-old “Buddha of Bamiyan” statues in Afghanistan. I immediately began fretting and fuming — Hyman actually had the temerity to compare the removal of statues of what were by definition traitors from taxpayer-funded government property to the destruction of archaeological treasures! Before about two years ago, KOMO never broadcasted tripe like this, but it was obvious that Sinclair Broadcast Group is forcing its subsidiaries to broadcast right-wing and white nationalist stories. After Hyman’s story was over, the news began...and the first story was presented against a glaring red background with oversized white letters stating “THE WAR ON TERRORISM”. It was not about what’s going on stateside, nothing about the latest insane nuclear saber-rattling by Der Furor Trump, but about how the battle is going in Raqqa, Iraq.

By that time I had not yet heard the biggest news of the day, concerning the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia which has as of this writing resulted in two police deaths (from a helicopter crash) and one death and at least nineteen injuries from a car that drove into the crowd of counter-protesters who were opposing the white supremacists. Most politicians and VIP’s have denounced the white supremacists conducting the march — except, of course, Donald Trump, who refused to condemn the white supremacists and refused to call the vehicular homicide and assault an act of terrorism.

But what bothers me most is the glaringly-obvious link between the white supremacists’ march and the Sinclair Broadcast Group: the statues of Confederate war “heroes”. Why? CNN is quite clear on the matter:

So how did Charlottesville, which previously has been of little interest to white nationalists,become the rallying ground for what appears to be the third such event in the city this year? a group carried torches led by white nationalist Richard Spencer around the Lee statue to protest its removal. Saturday's "Unite the Right" event would bring white nationalists, neo-Confederates and alt-right activists to the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Emancipation Park, which had recently been renamed from Lee Park. The same park was the site of a May demonstration in whicharound the Lee statue to protest its removal.

Now ask yourself this: WHY would Sinclair Broadcast Group require its subsidiary stations to air a right-wing opinion comparing removal of Confederate statues to destruction of archaeological treasures by the Taliban on the same day as the march by white supremacists protesting the removal of Confederate statues? I’m sorry, but this is too much of a coincidence for me.

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