Steve Malzberg

Steve Malzberg
Steve Malzberg
Home Base	New York, NY
Published By	OPP HQ
Published On	13 March 2004

Whenever you simply call out conservatives on their fascist ties, they will start charging you with violating their First Amendment Rights. If conservatives truly believe in the protection of free speech, they will have to explain this guy.

Malzberg was until recently a radio talk-shit host on 77 WABC in New York City. For all his own talk of free speech, he doesn't seem interested in extending that beyond himself or those whom he disagrees with. Also, like much of the WABC "talent", Malzberg does not see racism or hate unless it is a black person doing it. Malzberg's first real bit of press came in 1999, when he attacked Spike Lee for jokingly saying that NRA President Charlton Heston should be shot. Malzberg did not have anything to say about similar remarks from Heston, but had loads to say about Lee.

   "The remark is bad enough," said Malzberg, who faxed the Post column to Heston, "but given the recent (Columbine) school shootings and the climate they have created in this country, you might think Lee would be taken to task by someone, somewhere. Where's the outrage over this?"

Probably the same place it was whenever he engages in the same. Consider his remarks on his radio show on February 14, 1995:

   On illegal aliens : "These people don't belong.  We should have troops at the borders and they should shoot and kill anybody who climbs over that stinking wall and crosses the border."
   
   Speaking about students who staged a peaceful sit-in at a Rutgers basketball game in response to University President Francis Lawrence's remark about blacks having an inferior "genetic hereditary background": 

"I hear where representatives of the university said, you know, 'We can't guarantee that it won't happen again.' Well, the hell you can't. You put people in there with guns and hoses, and they do it again - you use them!"

Also that day, a caller "Joe from New Jersey" called in to Malzberg on WABC and asked if he could give out contact information for the National Alliance. Malzberg not only allowed him to; He encouraged him to do so (note that Malzberg is Jewish). The entire show that night was pro-white power context. Malzberg once went on a campaign to oust Rev. Calvin Butts from his position as chair at SUNY-Old Westbury for his remarks the right are trying to promote as racist. Whether or not there is an argument for that is irrelevant when it comes from someone like Malzberg.

Not only has Malzberg has expressed racial hatred on his radio show against African Americans, but Arabs as well, and has called for war against Palestinians, the only time you may find a departure with him and the white-power crowd.

When he was confronted about this particular radio show on the air once, he hung up on the caller, angry because the caller dredged up something that happened seven years before. In his typical hypocritical fashion, he had just spent much of that night's show attacking Al Gore for homophobic remarks he made in 1988. The reason why he was talking about Gore, by the way, brings us to his main shtick.

Malzberg is known for his bellyaching about some double-standard that suggests conservatives cannot get away with what he considers to be slights and insults towards other people while liberals can. He spends much of his time trying to expose the "hatred" of people like Alec Baldwin, Spike Lee, and others who have made comments that he considers questionable about conservatives.He has taken credit for example, for Rep. Dick Armey s repudiation of Lee's comments on Heston on the House floor. Meanwhile Malzberg has never been called to task over his own hate and violent rhetoric, so perhaps there is a double-standard. Perhaps Rep. Armey should have been told to take a closer look at him and make his displeasure known.

In 2004, Malzberg left 77 WABC, his radio home for 25 years, and went to 1600 WWRL-AM a smaller station in NYC. He did a point/counterpoint morning show with Karen Hunter, an African American commentator formerly with the New York Daily News. This was a much better program than the one that he had at WABC because the ignorance that he was allowed to run free with at the old station was being challenged passionately, not just by Hunter, but also by the callers.

Unlike WABC, where callers of color are few and far in between and are either not given a chance to articulate their views or ridiculed when they are, WWRL's callers are better representative of the racial makeup of the city and all callers are respected. Malzberg didn't even last a year. After eight months, he was fired, and now he is in radio limbo. Every now and then you can catch him on some radio show as a guest host or on television news programs giving his opinion on something, always with the same refrain that conservatives are everyone's doormat or something. Truth of the matter is he is a doormat he knows it, and if you ever see him in action you will come away with the notion that in the end it is not his conservatism that pisses you off, but rather that he is just a bitter fuck..