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As Media Matters has noted, despite CNN's president Jon Klein sending a memo out stating that the network wanted to "avoid booking talk radio hosts" because "[c]omplex issues require world class reporting", they continue to make exceptions for the likes of Tea Bag Party organizer Mark Williams.

Tonight's AC360 was another example of the network giving a hate mongering Tea Bagger with a radio show a format, but they're worried about sullying their image if they might let someone like say, Stephanie Miller back on, who's been pretty vocal about being blacked out from the network on her radio show.

If they wanted to actually give some context to complex issues, they'd allow talk radio show host Thom Hartmann on as a commenter and collectively raise the average IQ of the people who regularly appear on their programming by a few percentage points rather than let this Know Nothing hate monger on there.

Transcript below the fold.

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Tim Wise asks when the Republican Party is going to reject the racist rhetoric and dog-whistle politics coming from the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other right wing radio and television hosts. Don Lemon asks him if they are aware that they are doing it or not and as Wise notes, it doesn't matter. They still need to be held accountable for their actions and the predictable outcomes of those actions.

Don Lemon should have known better than to have even asked that question. Of course they are fully aware of what they are doing. It is exactly what they are being paid very highly to do which is to deligitimize our President in the hopes of taking him down because he has a "D" behind his name. They did the same thing to Bill Clinton even though he could have just as well been a Republican with the way he governed, and they're doing it again to Barack Obama. The GOP has been playing the same games with the dog-whistle politics and race baiting for ages now. So to answer Wise's question about when are they going to reject stoking that racism. Never. Never, ever as long as it wins them elections.

LEMON: OK. So we are going to continue our discussion now over the health care rallies and the tone of what's going on in the country. Tim Wise joins us. He's frequent here on the show. The author of "Between Barack and a Hard Place" and among the most prominent anti- racist activist in the country. Thank you, sir. Always good to see you.

TIM WISE, AUTHOR "BETWEEN Barack AND A HARD PLACE": You, too.

LEMON: You heard the chairman from Florida say no, it is not race.

WISE: I did.

LEMON: It does a disservice. You heard David Sirota say it is the elephant in the room.

WISE: Right. Well like I said in the show before, it is the background noise of a lot of the opposition, not all of it but a lot of it. You know, when you have someone like Glen Beck saying as he did about a month ago that the health care debate isn't really about that. It is just reparations for black people, where you have Rush Limbaugh yesterday on the air saying first that community service is the first step towards fascism, which is bizarre even for him.

And then almost immediately after that saying one of the problems with America is too much multi culturalism. You wouldn't say that unless you are trying to stoke white racial resentment. And so when you say those things, I want to know when are Republican leaders going to condemn that kind of rhetoric because that is where race is being interjected. It is interjected by us, it's interested by the leading talk show hosts in this country.

LEMON: I mean, but is it knowingly or is it maybe unwittingly they're doing it and maybe they don't realize they are doing it.

WISE: Well, two things, it may be either or but it doesn't matter. I mean, racism needs to be evaluated based on outcome. If you do something which has a predictable consequence, you have to be accountable for that consequence. So for example, when Glen Beck lied and said that Van Jones was involved in the Los Angeles riots which was not true. That is a very clear, as David said, dog whistle politic moment.

You're saying that because you know that the L.A. riots are viewed as this racialized rebellion and it scares white folks to death. So you say that about this man. It isn't true. Glenn Beck had to know that wasn't true. That is a way to scare white folks. Where race comes in, it is old fashion but it's white racial resentment that they are trying to whip up.

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Add Anderson Cooper to the list of main stream media hosts that at least bothered to have industry whistleblower Wendell Potter on their show. Cooper is just shocked that right wing writers and radio hosts are taking their talking points from the insurance industry. I wasn't surprised given they're already reading off all of the RNC talking points for the day that are sent to them.

COOPER: You say that insurance companies intentionally -- and I quote you -- "confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy Wall Street investors."

How are they intentionally confusing customers and dumping the sick?

WENDELL POTTER, FORMER EXECUTIVE, CIGNA: Well, they confuse customers by not just being transparent, by not providing the information that -- a lot of us need.

A lot of people don't know that their insurance is inadequate. And that's why so many people are finding that they are in the ranks of the underinsured, because they just don't have any idea that their -- their coverages are not good enough.

They dump the sick by purposely looking at applications when someone files or has medical claims, whether you have a major illness or a major accident. If you buy your insurance through the individual marketplace, outside of your employer, you have to disclose whether or not you have had a preexisting condition.

If you leave something out, if you forget something, or don't even know something that is relevant that might be in some doctors' notes, the insurance company will use that as justification to cancel your policy.

COOPER: The forms I have seen on my insurance things are incredibly complicated. They make your head hurt. Are you saying that is intentional?

POTTER: It is very intentional. These companies make billions of dollars a year. They could certainly make these forms a lot clearer and a lot more easily understood. But it's not a priority.

COOPER: CIGNA, for the record, denies that they dump customers.

And they told us -- and I quote -- that "CIGNA complies with all regulatory requirements regarding setting rates and policy terms, consistent with our mission to provide individuals with a path to health, well-being and sense of security."

COOPER: Is that kind of statement you used to write?

POTTER: It is. And I'm not surprised.

For one thing, the regulations are not adequate to protect consumers. That's one thing. And it should be part of reform to keep this kind of from happening.

Senator Rockefeller, in the Senate, has asked CIGNA and I'm sure probably other insurers to come and make sure that they are telling the truth, because you can look through transcripts when these executives talk to Wall Street analysts, and you will hear them use the word purge. So, it is there. They -- they -- they acknowledge it. They say they do when they're talking to analysts, but they say they don't when they are talking to other people.

COOPER: You are also alleging that the health care industry right now is engaging in what you say are dirty tricks to stop health care reform from being passed.

What kind of dirty tricks are you talking about? And just specifically, to be clear, are you accusing CIGNA of engaging in these tactics?

POTTER: Not CIGNA. I'm talking about the industry, because, during my career, I served on a lot of industry committees through the trade associations and on a lot of trade groups that were funded by the -- oh, excuse me -- front groups that were funded by the industry.

The way it works is that the industry will hire big P.R. firms that create these front groups that have names that have no association with the insurance industry, and it is these front groups that do the things that you are seeing right now, that try to destroy health care reform by using terms like government takeover of the health care system, or we are heading down toward a slippery slope toward socialism, or we're going to kill your grandpa because of this health care reform bill.

COOPER: You're saying that language is written by insurance companies?

POTTER: Absolutely.

COOPER: But, I mean, the folks who are showing up at these meetings, I mean, they are not being backed by -- they're not being paid to go there. I mean, there is a legitimate anger. There is a legitimate opposition, concern not just about health care, but about massive deficits and government intrusion.

POTTER: Yes, the other thing that they do, the other way that they work is the P.R. firms have very good connections with people that those folks listen to.

They have very close ties with the conservative radio talk show hosts and commentators and editorial page writers, and they feed the talking points. They feed the...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Did you used to do that?

POTTER: I did, absolutely.

COOPER: What do you mean feed talking points to radio talk show hosts?

POTTER: Well, these P.R. firms have very close ties, they have good relationships with the producers, with the talk show hosts themselves, that will say, look, you need to understand this about health care reform or you need to know that, if this bill passes, then this is going to represent a government takeover the health care system.

It is not true, but it is the kind of language that the talk show host will welcome, because it is ideologically in synch with their world view.

COOPER: Interesting discussion.

Wendell Potter, we would like to have you back. Thank you very much.

POTTER: Thank you very much.

Although we didn't get rid of Lou Dobbs, it looks like the stink we raised is having an impact. From today's Mediabistro.com:

Exclusive: TVNewser has learned, and a CNN spokesperson confirms, that in his morning editorial meeting today, CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein asked his show producers to avoid booking talk radio hosts. "Complex issues require world class reporting," Klein is quoted as saying, adding that talk radio hosts too often add to the noise, and that what they say is "all too predictable."

One of CNN's longtime show hosts, Lou Dobbs, hosts a daily radio show. A few political contributors also host radio shows including Bill Bennett and Roland Martin. They are presumably not affected by this.

But this means other talk radio hosts who appear regularly on CNN, probably won't in the near future including names like Stephanie Miller, Michael Medved, and Ben Ferguson.

This really needs to be heard to be believed. Boston-area radio talk show host Jay Severin was suspended this week for making highly inflammatory and racist remarks on his talk show about Mexicans. TYT's Cenk Uygur thinks the station didn't go far enough and Severin should lose his job:

As you heard in the video above, Severin has been suspended by WTKK-FM in Boston. But that is not nearly enough. If you don't get fired for this, what do you get fired for?

Here are just some of his prize quotes from the show:

"So now, in addition to venereal disease and the other leading exports of Mexico - women with mustaches and VD - now we have swine flu."

He described Mexicans as "the world's lowest of primitives."

"When we are the magnet for primitives around the world - and it's not the primitives' fault by the way, I'm not blaming them for being primitives - I'm merely observing they're primitive."

"It's millions of leeches from a primitive country come here to leech off you and, with it, they are ruining the schools, the hospitals, and a lot of life in America."

"We should be, if anything, surprised that Mexico has not visited upon us poxes of more various and serious types already, considering the number of criminaliens already here."

He also said that emergency rooms had "become essentially condos for Mexicans."

And on a 2004 broadcast, he compared Muslims to a fifth column in this country and said in response to a caller who thought people should reach out to Muslims: "You think we should befriend them; I think we should kill them."

But unfortunately calling for the murder of Muslim-Americans has become so commonplace and acceptable these days that he didn't even come close to getting fired for those comments. So, I guess he figured he had free reign to attack the other half of M&Ms.

Now before some of you start making a "Free Speech" martyr of Severin, be clear what free speech means. It does NOT mean that you have the right to spew any kind of ugly thought you have on public airwaves. It means that the government cannot curtail your right to speak your mind. It doesn't mean that you do not have to deal with the repercussions of what you say. In this case, Severin's boss is not the government and they must assume the responsibility for allowing such unmitigated hate on the air. Avoiding Godwin references, how similar was Severin's rant to Radio Rwanda? Is that the kind of allusions with which WTKK wants to be associated?