From David Hinckley at the New York Daily News:

Rory O’Connor, a writer, critic, filmmaker and blogger, thinks he hears poison coming out of conservative talk radio, and he’s written a whole book explaining why.

“Shock Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio” (AlterNet, $14.95), which O’Connor wrote with Aaron Cutler, identifies 10 hosts he considers the worst offenders, and the list is about who you’d expect: Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingraham and Imus.

Imus may be a little surprised, though one imagines most of the others - perhaps alongside Phil Boyce, the WABC program director who has five of the top 10 on his station - might feel slighted if they were excluded from this particular club.

O’Connor, however, finds nothing admirable about their work. They cynically distort the truth, in his estimation, to sell an entertainment product. They pander to our worst sexist, homophobic, racist and xenophobic instincts, he argues, and in their wake leave their country a nastier, uglier place.

For O’Connor, the good news goes only this far: He suggests their sledgehammer approach has helped spark a backlash that O’Connor thinks could put the country on a more progressive course.

That remains to be seen. But O’Connor and Cutler will make their case in person tonight at a reception, 6-8, in the New York Tolerance Center, 226 E. 42nd St. It’s not open to the public, but it does mark a step in what Cutler clearly hopes will be a counteroffensive to the conservative voices that have dominated talk radio for 20 or more years.