American morning chatshows - a hotbed of right-wing views?

When I've just woken up of a morning my brain function is minimal and my sociability level even lower so instead of attempting to make polite conversation with my flat mates I put on the TV and after a failed search for any news I give up and watch one of the many morning chat shows that are on American cable.

This morning after being rudely awoken by an overly loud dustbin lorry I gave up any further hopes of sleeping and ate breakfast with the TV on, what I found kind of shocked me. At about 8am they were discussing the use of taser guns (just in case you don't know a taser gun fires something like 50,000 volts of electricity at someone) and the atypical dumb blonde presenter was entirely defending their use, despite the fact that someone very high up in Amnesty International was telling her that he knew of at least 270 taser related deaths and about 3 that have conclusive coroners reports that prove the tasers killed people. The blonde even replied, "How many times have they been used? Over 700,000? Well its not that high a risk," dear God woman people have been killed - doesn't matter what the percentage is the risk is there!

Even worse that this was the case of a student getting tasered for asking a few too many questions at a political rally - he isn't being violent but the police go in to arrest him anyway, when he understandably resists arrest and the 19 police officers around fail to be able to cuff him they taser him. It was widely covered on the news and you can actually hear his screams of pain. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCBcOQkUNjI to see one of the news reports. Dumb blonde continues to support the use of tasers even after they feature two women who have been affected by them - one who was mistakenly identified as a suspect and tasered 3 times another whose brother dies after being tasered 9 times. And yet dumb blonde continues with her opinion and helpfully comments, "well its better than being shot."

As well as Amnesty guy and dumb blonde there was also a male presenter who was wisely taking the middle ground, the inventor (who just happened to be wearing a stars and stripes tie) and a police trainer. The inventor, trainer and blonde failed to realise that force is not necessary in arresting people, that there are far better ways to do it. They also failed to accept that 5000 volts going through someones body is getting to leave some sort of damage, how could it not? As you can tell this rather riled my liberal feathers.

A few days previously I had seen a TV advert (in the morning) that was anti-immigration that blamed all of California's problems (lack of schools, too many cars, overcrowding, etc) on immigration - which basically boils down to Mexicans. What they failed to mention was that Mexicans do all the jobs that Californians do not want to do - cleaning, waitressing, bus driving, taxi drivers, bin men and any other job you can think of that does not require qualifications. There is a very big Mexican population in Southern California, on the bus most signs and adverts are translated into Spanish and Mexican restaurants are everywhere, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. If you fancy making your blood boil go to http://www.cap-s.org/newsroom/recent_advertising.html and watch the cute child spout right wing propaganda.

Seeing as whilst I am on a non-immigrant visa I may as well be an immigrant I'll have to keep a look out for locals with pitchforks (and possibly taser guns!) and keep an eye on the police because I am a student who likes to ask awkward questions and we know they don't like them.