Believe it or not, Rep. Allen West -- the self-proclaimed "modern-day Harriet Tubman" who compared being gay to liking ice cream and riding scooters, said gay soldiers can "change their behavior," called not-a-lady Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz the "most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the US House of Representatives," and says Obama supporters are a "threat to the gene pool" -- gets more television and radio coverage than any other freshman in the House.
Imagine that.
According to Smart Politics -- a nonpartisan news site at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs -- West has been interviewed or mentioned in 222 news programs since the start of the year, which is way more than any other House freshman.
The Smart Politics article says for every news broadcast that has mentioned any House freshman at all, West gets name-dropped in 17.9 percent of them.
By searching through news transcripts of broadcasts from ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and NPR, the number of West mentions were well above his freshman counterparts, with Rep. Joe Walsh being mentioned the second-most at 12 percent and Rep. Tim Scott in third at 3.6 percent.
Out of the 94 freshman in the House, Smart Politics shows West had the most mentions on Fox News (surprise) at 101 broadcasts, well above Walsh, who had the second-most Fox mentions at 28.
In perspective, any time Fox News mentions a freshman representative, West is part of the segment 29 percent of the time.
West also had the most mentions on NPR and CBS and tied for the most on ABC with Rep. Frank Guinta. West came second to Walsh on both CNN and MSNBC.
You can see the findings from Smart Politics here.
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