In case you missed it, on Wednesday night it was announced that the American Family Association had pushed out Bryan Fischer as its chief issues analyst. The move came under pressure from a red-faced Republican National Committee, which didn’t want the embarrassment of having an RNC trip to Israel being funded by a group whose most prominent spokesman has made outrageous parallels between Nazis and gays–including the claim that gays were responsible for the Holocaust. AFA president Tim Wildmon told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Fischer was “just a talk show host,” and should no longer be considered an AFA spokesman–indicating that while he was no longer on the AFA payroll, he would still have his daily talk show on American Family Radio, “Focal Point.”
This was confirmed yesterday, when Fischer went on the air as usual. He claimed that he hadn’t really been fired. Rather, he said, he realized that there had been far too much confusion between his views and those of the AFA, given his dual role as talk show host and AFA spokesman. Even though there was a disclaimer that aired at the end of all of Fischer’s shows and was attached to all of Fischer’s blog posts on the AFA Website, those evil libruls were still attributing his statements to the AFA. Wednesday’s move, he said, was an effort to clear up that confusion. People for the American Way got a clip.
Really, Bryan? You’re just now realizing, five years after you came to Tupelo, that people thought you spoke for the AFA because of your title as director of issues analysis? Moreover, if the views you expressed were really just your own, then why did AFA higher-ups feel compelled to edit out statements from Fischer in which he said that Native Americans deserved to be wiped out for not accepting Jesus, that welfare goes to blacks who ?rut like rabbits,? and that Muslim immigrants have to convert to Christianity if they want to be allowed into this country?
It now turns out that the spin began just hours before the formal announcement of Fischer’s ouster. The furor that ultimately resulted in Fischer losing his AFA paycheck began when the Southern Poverty Law Center urged RNC members not to go on the Israel trip because of AFA’s long record of bigotry and hate–much of which comes from Fischer. On Wednesday, AFA general counsel Patrick Vaughn fired off a letter to the SPLC stating that the AFA repudiated a number of bigoted statements from Fischer. The problem? This came after several years of silence on them–a classic case of closing the barn door long after the horse has escaped. Vaughn also said that AFR, and AFA as a whole, was a “free speech zone” within the limits of evangelical Christianity, and that AFA should not be held responsible for anything aired on its programs. If we’re to believe Vaughn, AFA shouldn’t be held responsible when its own president keeps silent in response to a call to revive the utterly discredited doctrine that states can nullify federal court decisions. Nor should it be held responsible when its morning drive-time host, Sandy Rios, blows off threats that her stand-in made against liberal professors as “words of life.” And on, and on.
In his reply, SPLC president Richard Cohen pointed out–rightly–that this apparent change of heart on the AFA’s part is highly disingenuous. For one thing, given years of confusion over when Fischer is speaking for himself and when he’s speaking for the AFA, it’s hard to give the AFA much credit for distancing itself from him now. Nor did the AFA distance itself from a number of equally bigoted statements that have been made by its other personalities over the years–including a claim by AFA president Tim Wildmon that Hollywood and the theater world are “heavily influenced” by Jews. Cohen added that for the AFA to strip Fischer of his formal spokesperson’s role while still letting him keep a high-profile talk show on AFR is nothing more than a thinly disguised attempt to “give the AFA a degree of plausible deniability” whenever Fischer and his colleagues go on extremist tirades.
My original view of this still stands–the AFA is doing what it thinks is the bare minimum to appease whoever at the RNC made a “what the hell is going on here?” call to AFA headquarters. What it really did was show that its standards aren’t much higher than those of the Cleveland police department.
