As you may recall, late last night the American Family Association ousted Bryan Fischer as its top spokesman and issues analyst. Reportedly, Fischer got the boot due to a litany of claims over the years that the Nazi Party was founded by gay people and that gay activists are cut from the same cloth as the SA. Apparently, these comments were too much for the Republican National Committee to tolerate once word got out that the AFA was footing the bill for an RNC trip to Israel–especially given that this year is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow revealed that she’d had a conversation with AFA president Tim Wildmon in which Wildmon blew Fischer off as “just a talk show host” who can no longer be considered an AFA spokesman.
Well, now we know what Wildmon meant. It turns out that while Fischer isn’t drawing a paycheck from the AFA anymore, the AFA is–for now, anyway–letting him keep his daily talk show on American Family Radio. Just hours after Maddow detonated this blockbuster last night, Fischer took to Twitter in an apparent attempt to troll those of us rejoicing at his long-overdue ouster.
Don’t believe everything you hear! I’ll be on air same time tomorrow as always 1-3pm CT, on http://t.co/sI2xhN0XQd. Tune in!
? Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) January 29, 2015
And indeed, Fischer’s show, “Focal Point,” is still listed on AFR’s schedule. His blog posts are still on the AFA Web site as well. However, his biography has been scrubbed from the site. From the looks of it, Wildmon is trying to do what he thinks is the bare minimum to appease whoever in the RNC called to demand that Fischer get the boot. Apparently, by saying that Fischer no longer speaks for the AFA, Wildmon thinks that it will be enough to take the heat off him.
To put it mildly, this is disingenuous. The AFA has known for over five years that Fischer is a loose cannon. Less than a year after giving up his post as head of an Idaho religious right outfit to join the AFA, Fischer had made numerous statements that were outrageous even by AFA standards–and as any veteran religious right watcher knows, that’s saying something. In 2010, an AFA spokeswoman said that Fischer’s writings were “his personal opinion,” and were not considered AFA policy. Ever since then, Fischer’s blog posts have carried a disclaimer to that effect. So Fischer’s analysis of issues was just his opinion, even though he was the AFA’s top issues analyst and one of its prime spokesmen? And just now, his rantings have become too much for AFA to bear? If you don’t get this disconnect, don’t worry–I don’t get it either.
To understand how it’s possible for Fischer to still be on the air even though is no longer “officially” on the AFA payroll, you have to consider an episode from last March. While AFR morning drive time host Sandy Rios was on a brief vacation, leading conservative Catholic activist Austin Ruse sat in for her. When Ruse found out that a freshman at Duke University was acting in porn films to help pay her expenses, Ruse hit the ceiling. He declared that this was evidence that liberal professors should be “taken out and shot.”
Any responsible broadcaster would have cut ties with Ruse on the spot. Incredibly, however, Ruse was allowed to come back the next day–and preceded to go on an on-air tantrum about how those big, bad libruls were out to get him. The next day, apparently someone at AFA headquarters in Tupelo, Mississippi who didn’t have his or her head up his or her rear end decided it was time for Ruse to go–an ouster noted by yours truly on Daily Kos. Almost as incredibly, when Rios came back the following Monday, she said that while Ruse may have been “intemperate,” he was speaking “words of life.” Ruse himself apologized on Rios’ Facebook–but in a further example of how far the religious right’s followers are removed from reality, the reaction was mostly along the lines of “atta boy, Austin!”
In what world is it possible for a statement that any fair-minded person–regardless of political shade–would consider outrageous and unacceptable to be chalked up as merely an “intemperate” attempt to speak “words of life”? It’s the same world where it was possible for the AFA to allow Fischer to speak for it for as long as it did. And it’s the same world where Fischer can still have a mic even though he’s no longer officially on the payroll.
