After Bolling's error, erasing 9/11 and several other deadly terrorism attacks from the Bush record, was pointed out by outlets including Media Matters and Huffington Post, the host returned to the air Thursday to issue a correction that sounded more like a retaliation against those who dared correct him. Bolling denounced the  "radical liberal left" and accused Media Matters of pettiness for pointing out the error, in an emotional tirade in which he exclaimed:

No, I haven't forgotten. I happened to be standing there, watching in true terror as radical Islamists slammed planes into the towers that morning. I remember the towers collapsing, killing 3,000, including 16 of my close friends. And I really remember trying to comfort the kids of my friends at their memorial services.

Bolling's temporary amnesia about the September 11 attacks puts him in company with many conservatives who have distorted the Bush record on terrorism  (Extra!, 3/10). But even the correction part of Bolling's tirade was in error:

Yesterday I misspoke when I said there were no U.S. terror attacks during the Bush years. Obviously, I meant in the aftermath of 9/11.

Among the terror attacks Bolling's revised position erases from the Bush record: the  September/October 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five, the December 2001 "shoe bombing" attempt, the July 2002 attack on the L.A. airport's El Al ticket counter that left two dead, the "D.C. sniper" attacks in October 2002 that killed 10,  the  March 2006 SUV attack on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus that injured nine and the July 2008 murder of two at a progressive Knoxville, Tennessee church, which were carried out by a gunmen who said he was inspired by Fox News contributor Bernard Goldberg.

According to the Huffington Post, none of the panelists on the show challenged Bolling's initial error about 9/11. But should we be surprised? Among those panelists was former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino, who is on the record insisting to an unfazed Sean Hannity, "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."

Compare and contrast.

And just so there's no doubt in people's mind, the blanket coverage the mini-mobs are lapping up (i.e., the mobs are hugely important!) stands in stark contrast to the way the press often did its best to ignore liberal protesters who spoke out against the war in Iraq.

For instance, in October 2002, when more than 100,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to oppose the war, the Washington Post put the story not on the front page, but in the Metro section with, as the paper's ombudsman later lamented, "a couple of ho-hum photographs that captured the protest's fringe elements."

Not that crowd size is the be-all, end-all of an event's significance, but it's worth remembering that no credible count of yesterday's right-wing protest puts it in the 100,000 range. (And the anti-war protesters didn't have the advantage of a highly-rated cable network promoting their event every day for months.)...

But I still think it gets back to the fact that D.C. is just "wired" for Republicans. Anti-war protesters, the thinking goes, were liberal hippies out of step with the mainstream. After all, there was a Republican president and Republican House in 2002, and polls showed reasonably strong support for the war in Iraq. Why pretend the liberal protesters are important?

In contrast, seven years later, Tea Baggers have to be considered a major political movement. There's a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress in 2009, and polls show reasonably strong support for the administration's economic agenda, but the right-wing cries can't be relegated to a few throw-away paragraphs in the Metro section.

Benen further quotes Barack Obama's 60 Minutes statement that "in the era of 24-hour cable news cycles, the loudest shrillest voices get the attention," but explains "that's only partially true--it depends on what the shrill voices are saying and from what perspective." See the FAIR Action Alert: "Fox Hunting Trumps Peace Activism at Washington Post & NYT" (9/30/02).

Corley is discouraged to see that, "for instance, 45 percent believe the false claim that legislation includes 'death panels' while 55 percent believe the false claim that coverage will be extended to illegal immigrants"--and an MSNBC passage says that, in particular,

self-identified viewers of Fox News are disproportionately misinformed":

In our poll, 72 percent of self-identified Fox News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79 percent of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69 percent think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75 percent believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly....

As ThinkProgress has pointed out, Fox News regularly distorts the truth about health care reform.

In fact, just "last week, Media Matters found that over a two day period opponents of health care reform outnumbered supporters by a 6-to-1 margin on Fox." Hear a strong corrective to all this deceit on FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Trudy Lieberman on Health Care Reform" (8/14/09).

But "many advertisers have nonetheless sponsored these hosts' hate speech in recent weeks, including major corporations and organizations that, in 2006, reportedly requested that ABC Radio Networks not air their advertisements during any Air America programs":

At the time,

ABC subsequently provided a statement to Media Matters, which read: "It is not uncommon for advertisers and/or agencies to request that their ads run or not run in specific programming environments or dayparts. ABC Radio Networks does not solicit nor encourage these requests from advertisers. If a request is made by an advertiser and /or agency we make our best effort to comply."...

The New York Times reported at the time that "the advertisers' avoidance of Air America's liberal programming seems pointed when contrasted with the commercial success of right-wing talk radio programs like those of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity." [New York Times, 11/6/06]

Indeed, Schulman tells us how, "despite their appearance on ABC's Air America 'blackout' list in 2006, a number of those same advertisers have recently run ads during broadcasts of one or more of the following: Limbaugh's radio show, Beck's Fox News show, Beck's radio show, Dobbs' CNN show and Dobbs' radio show." He then provides for your perusal a handy list of said advertisers, including--no surprise--General Electric.