At least that’s what Reihan Salam believes! Writing on the Daily Beast web site Salam says that the controversial hosts are preventing more violence than they are stimulating and in fact deserve “a medal from the Department of Homeland Security.”

As Salam notes, “After a Holocaust Museum security guard was murdered by a deranged white supremacist, many observers loudly wondered if right-wing extremism represented a real and potent threat. After all, the shooting followed the slaying of George Tiller, the Kansas doctor best known for performing controversial late-term abortions. Are the two events a dark potent of a violent domestic terror campaign?”

The answer, says the author, “is probably no,” because “screamers” like Beck, O’Reilly and their ilk actually “soak up the angry energy of alienated citizens.” Rather than stoke the fears of their audience, Salam claims, the screamers instead “inoculate… against truly extreme sentiments.”