The Far Side

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on a recent sunny Saturday, an Americans for Prosperity sponsored anti-tax rally took place on the Capitol Square in Madison. Camera in hand and curious, I decided to observe the event. I’ve never spent any time listening to “The Other Side” on right wing

talk radio, and boy, did I get an earful.

I was absolutely astonished as I listened for fifteen minutes to hate-filled, inflammatory lies from one of the speakers. At one point, when he mentioned the millions of dollars worth of damage union thugs had inflicted on our Capitol, I burst out with a “that’s just not true!”

The guy standing next to me said, “Well it was a couple hundred thousand.” (According to a recent statement by the Walker administration, the Capitol sustained no damage, rather $200,000 of “accelerated wear and tear—seven million was the original damage claim.)

“So you agree that was not a true statement,” I said.

His reply still puzzles me, “Well they killed a lady’s puppy.”

I’m dismayed at the misinformation that is used to simply rile people up. As I‘ve said many times, I’ve been at the Capitol on almost a daily basis for over a year and have followed debate and legislation closely. I was there at the rallies listening to the speakers on “Our Side”. I never heard anything mean or inflammatory. And to the best of my first-hand knowledge, the statements were true. That doesn’t mean we weren’t angry, but we were dismayed by real events, not lies.

How do we help people check out their sources of information, and how do we end the divisiveness of hate-filled talk radio?

And here is a great link...
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11419/incredible-shrinking-75-million-damage-tab-wisconsin-capitol-protests read about it here or in the comments section.