Liberals who can’t win arguments are determined to silence the other side. They are increasingly using the tactic of pretending to be "offended" in order to demand that the conservative be muzzled. Since liberals are adept at the pressure game and media executives are themselves liberals, the tactic often works. This modus operandi is especially effective when the supposedly offensive remark has anything to do with race.

This is especially true for corporations for whom radio in general, and talk radio in particular, is a sideline. Just as Don Imus was only a small part of the CBS empire, Journal Communications is a liberal newspaper company for whom radio isn’t that important. The irony that these media executives routinely champion free speech is both galling and hilarious.

What did McBride do that was so awful? She pretended to interview liberal Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane by asking him a number of questions he’d have trouble answering. She played the sound of a chicken clucking when it came time for the absent Kane to speak. One of the "questions" dealt with the murder of a little girl in a drive-by shooting. The playing of the "clucking" sound was the horrid "offense" that got McBride sacked.

Give me a break. The bit wasn’t very funny (and is actually a ripoff of something I did years ago) but it’s hardly offensive. McBride was making fun of the refusal of urban liberals to acknowledge the severity of the crime problem. She wasn’t mocking the little girl. WTMJ knows that.

Here’s what happened after McBride’s show. A local blogger, former Journal reporter Jim Rowen, posted McBride’s bit on his Web site. Rowen, by the way, was the person McBride beat out for her University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee journalism teaching job. Rowen apparently tipped off another Journal columnist who called WTMJ to "ask" about it. McBride was canned 36 hours later.

Talk about incestuous. A former Journal reporter prompts a current Journal reporter to raise a stink about comments made by another former Journal reporter at the Journal’s radio station. The reason McBride didn’t stand a chance despite the harmlessness of her bit is that she doesn’t have a lot of listeners. At least she doesn’t have a lot of listeners as I do which is why I still have my job.

The only way to combat this double standard is to object to it. Media companies that don’t engage in it will be rewarded. My own employer, Clear Channel, has the two most listened to talk shows in America (Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity) precisely because it is willing to give conservatives a forum. Fox News Channel destroys CNN and MSNBC in the ratings because of its pro-conservative slant. This newspaper carries columns by several provocative conservatives, myself and McBride, included. That means that all of those media companies get a lot of abuse. On the other hand, they could keep selling out conservative readers and listeners and watch their circulation and ratings continue to plummet - just like they’re doing at WTMJ-AM and their daily newspaper.

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Here’s another thing the mainstream media is choosing not to report about itself. After WTMJ fired morning host Ken Herrera this month (the ax is swinging right and left over there), leaders of the local Hispanic community strongly objected. When those same leaders complained about me several years ago, every local paper and TV station pounded on the story. But none has reported on the pressure received after Herrera was canned.

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And, another thing. My radio ratings are better than ever (and that’s saying something). I bring this up not to pat myself on the back (I do enough of that on the radio) but to point out that the results of the 2006 election are hardly a sign of America moving to the left and tuning out the conservative message. (Many predicted my demise after the November rout. On the other hand, they’ve been predicting my demise ever since I got here in 1989.)

Conservatism in the media works precisely because there is so little of it. If the mainstream media was not violently slanted to the left, there wouldn’t be a need for conservatives to seek out voices on tinny AM radios. Liberals can’t beat us in the marketplace so they are determined to censor us with the power of pretending to be offended by our comments. They’re having a degree of success, as McBride’s WTMJ carcass proves.

(Mark Belling is the host of a daily WISN radio talk show and a Sunday television show. His column runs Wednesdays in The Freeman.)