"Frank Dresser" wrote in message ...


In comparison to the other SW hosts, Chuck Harder is a moderate
lunatic-fringe, end-of-the-world, Armageddonist, survivalist KOOK. He's
hardly in the big league of false scary predictions with Brother Stair, Alex
Jones, James Lloyd, Texe Marrs or any of a dozen SWers. Chuck Harder's
scary stories are too infrequent, and carry too little impact for him to run
with the big dogs. Chuck Harder is a single shot .22 in a world of .50
caliber machine guns.


Very well put...which raises a rather scary point about Chuck Harder.
Unlike the "shortwave howlers," Chuck has considerable media
experience, mostly acquired in Tampa, FL - where he was in consumer
advocacy, advertising, local radio, TV, recording, production, sales,
promotion, and public relations - from 1963 to 1991.
His media experience shows up in his daily delivery - smooth,
polished, non-threatening, authoritative.
The bad news? First (apolgies to Mayor Pam Iorio), Tampa is a very
conservative, provincial town whose politics were molded by
anti-Communist Cuban immigrants. Far-Right groups such as the Liberty
Lobby and the John Birch Society have traditionally done well in the
Tampa area; during the (over-hyped) militia craze in the mid-1990's
following the Oklahoma City bombing, it was revealed that dozens,
perhaps hundreds, of such groups existed in the Tampa metro area - a
far greater concentration than other metro areas in the U.S. Upshot?
Unlike other major U.S. cities, there was no moderating factor in
Tampa to shape Chuck's political opinions, and he steadly lurched to
the far Right until he signed on with the Liberty Lobby in the late
1980's.
Yes, Chuck is a moderate compared to the "shorwave howlers," but I
still feel he shares much of their hard-Right, nationalistic,
anti-everything political outlook. In other words, if you were to have
a Bush/Kerry-style debate between Chuck and Texe Marrs, for instance,
concentrating on domestic and foreign policy, the two would agree much
more than disagree.
Remember, Chuck opens his mike to crazies such as Dr. Dennis Cuddy and
Craig Winn, as well as meat-and-potatoes centrists and conservatives
such as Clifford May, Michelle Malkin, and Josh Block of the
American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Those are my thoughts, for what they're worth. Again, apologies to the
folks down in Tampa.

Dan Weir