One of the reasons we’re in this predicament: talk shows
Talk shows seemed like a great idea at the beginning. And in many ways they still are.
I’m not against them, or saying they should stop. They provide a gathering place and information for political junkies, a forum for a bunch of like-minded people (and some not-so-like-minded) to chat and to argue about important things, sometimes in a humorous and entertaining way. What could go wrong?
Well, there’s the double-edged sword of sensationalism. Twitter and many blogs foster this, too, as does the 24-hour news cycle.
This comment explains something I’ve alluded to several times on this blog:
[Rush] Limbaugh’s behavior makes sense when you keep in mind that he is, foremost, an entertainer. His shtick is outrage, tapping into that sense that many right-leaning Americans have over the state of politics and culture.
Of course he won’t acknowledge incremental progress such as passage of an Obamacare repeal bill. To do so risks that his audience may feel as if things are going their way for once. That lowers the sense of urgency they feel for finding a kindred voice on the radio. Smaller audience = smaller revenue from advertisers.
I don’t enjoy pointing out that an advocate who’s done so much to help conservatives unite has such a cynical motive. But it’s well-known among similar enterprises (D.C. think tanks, advocacy groups, education foundations) that when your constituency calms down, your fundraising falls off.
Limbaugh’s job is to keep people agitated.
I wrote about Limbaugh here, and about Twitter and its effect on this election here. People have become more and more used to expressing their anger in political ways. That’s not to say the anger isn’t real; it is. It’s not to say that some or perhaps much of it isn’t justified; it is. But the word “rabble-rousing” has a reality, too, which is that already-existing anger can be fanned, exacerbated, channeled, by speech directed at crowds.
Twas ever thus. The difference is that these days it’s much easier to reach more and more and more people, and to speak to the worst in them rather than to the best.
Sometimes I feel like Miniver Cheevy (except of course for the drinking).
…Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam’s neighbors.Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.…Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.
I think the anger is going to reach a boiling point this summer or fall. What happened in San Jose yesterday is just a preview; especially with pols such as the mayor actually encouraging violence against Trump supporters. Eventually the Trumpsters will have had enough and fight back. It’s going to make 1968 look like child’s play. But then maybe that’s what the Dems want…that way BHO can declare martial law and suspend elections. Something conspiracy people on the right have been predicting for years.
How much this has to do with talk radio I don’t know, but certainly agitators help this along on both sides.
Stopped listening to Limbaugh and others–Levin–some time back. You have Limbaugh pretty well defined. I don’t know about Levin; I mean how much of his anger is real and how much showmanship. I did think that Levin had something to say; but decided around 2012 that he was just too destructive.
Physicsguy, events like those in San Diego and San Jose are very troubling. Obviously, whether for ideological reasons, or from timidity, the political leadership have decided to let hooliganism go unchecked; and the police are collaborating. They do seem to be inviting escalation. But, their reactions are fairly consistent with what we have seen at other mob scenes. Be interesting to see under what conditions they decide to lower the boom, if ever.
Thats me… a vagrant…
physicsguy Says: What happened in San Jose yesterday is just a preview
what happened yesterday is partially paid protests
in nyc, i have seen them line up for cash then go protest, and many times… and if you think that there is no agitprop, and all that, your nuts
in fact, our open borders, open system, and complete disregard for state operatives from other states influencing, and playing games, makes for a perfect recipe even worse than twitter.
and its been chugging along for half a century with almost ZERO opposition..
its not to hard to tell if you pay attention. ever notice that there is often union signs already printed up, put on sticks? and organizers giving classes? and who pays for those court cases in arrest?
want to earn some money in our not enough jobs economy?
Leftist Grass Roots Campaigns
http://grassrootscampaigns.com/
Each commenter was to write no less than 100 comments a day, while people in the other room were to write four postings a day, which then went to the other employees whose job was to post them on social networks as widely as possible
and they do other things besides being russia focused. after all, if you think someone is bad for your military to go up against, your going to do what?
there is a HUGE history of this and it goes back to my constant point about learning the game which no one wants to do, and so, they dont know how to play, who is playing what, how to read the landscape..
i mean if half of what you see and hear is faked and you dont know it, what do you do?
heck… we had one that came here playing to be the child of frank marshall davis… and they and i have tusseled before.. in fact many of them give up when they notice me on the board becuase each volly they give, gives me more time to reveal inconvenient points… so, its better NOT to tussel with me as i dont say the same old things as others do, and i have a voluminous amount of stuff to reveal..
here is a cached grassroots campaing job posting
http://captainsquartersblog.com/mt/pro-choice-texas.html
this is what the CPUSA and such ahs been doing (among other common things) for nearly 100 years…
but if you ignore the spycraft, agit prop, disnformatzia, trotsky entryism, collusion, graft, and such – your ignoring the silent war that constantly wages even without a cold war!!!!!!!!!!!
and all your calculations will come to naught…
because a lot of what you see is this game and this bs
how else do you think all these kids WANT state slavery as a utopia? well, when the head of the CPUSA is also the head of the teachers unions, who do you think gets to bias the system till its far to the side of bias?
a constant slow pressure will move the needle to one side over time… its not a question of whether, its a question of when and how fast
and the funny part? soviet close societies with other systems are safer than those like ours that are open and told “these are not the droids your looking for” as the intellectuals (murdered in the other systems caus ef things) define reality to a trusting society much like the Dodo…
in fact, if you dont believe in it, it does not exist
so you dont defend against it
and evne worse, our system doesnt just lay naked belly up without knowing, it will stand and fight to say that its not there.
but the KGB helped the kennedys after the family switched sides after two of theirs were assasinated, one by an ex soviet american to russia defector, the other by a islamic sirhan sirhan.
in fact they even coined a term to make such introspevtion and investigation automatically wrong.
conspiracy theory…
According to John Ayoto’s 20th century words, the phrase conspiracy theory was originally a neutral term and only acquired a pejorative connotation in the mid 1960s, implying that the advocate of the theory has a paranoid tendency to imagine the influence of some powerful, malicious, covert agency in events
prior to that it was valid to think that people conspire
in fact, such is the norm of human kind as we seek to play our cards close to our chest.
its even more interesting in that you can read about such things that turned out to be true… a lot of them, but the key here is to discredit anyone who would entertain that something like grass roots exist, or that external countries dont send people ehre and pay them to do work, and who are trained to do work
or that sleepers like anna chapman dont exist..
open borders means that you can have lots of ghosts here with no papers, id, or anything and who can access big bank accounts to do things with simply a credit card filled up by some external agency.
so you figure it out…
its been a 100 year effort by many countries colluding with things like the commiterm, vpred, and others to cause the down fall.
heck, even the green revolution was coordinated and you can read the minutes of the meetings!!!!!!!
and when such entities are normalized to be able to stand openly, the downfall and horror is soon to come… Who can point out the lid to sid, to SDS to weatherman, to ayers, to obama? and not be ridiculed despite all the information is public and open to look up?
the funny thing is that trump is breaking the game for all sides, and in office, he can expose things… funny, but maybe even our military and state organs have helped conspire to make it so. after all, how would they fare if change became real and sourced in the opposition?
Talk radio is the sensible reaction of the right to the aggressive leftist long march. Thanks to the fiction that the personal is political, leftism is the status quo now and has been advancing further into our lives for a long time. (People beating on righties in the streets while the cops stand by and do nothing is a new twist, however.) This is why lefty talk shows fail-everyone already knows the story so why bother to tune in and year it yet again. Snooze. Righties don’t have much of a voice in the culture or in the academy or even in the government. This is the only outlet for some. I don’t know that Rush downplayed the Obamacare repeal vote. Maybe he did; I only listen to the show if I am in the car during those hours and think to turn it on. Not a regular listener. Whether he did or did not, I also don’t believe that makes a bit of difference to the people who were sold a fraudulent bill of goods by this awful man, our president. Is Rush or talk radio in general obligated to give an impartial view? The left never does, ever; why should there be stricter standard applied to one of the few outlets for conservative talk?
what happened yesterday is partially paid protests
Have you looked at the video of what happened? To me, it seems to be disorganized angry young men, no sign of any paid protestors — they’d have shown some organization.
Video from the San Francisco Bay Area CBS station is here.
According to one news report I saw this morning (ABC?), some of the San Jose attackers were making gang signs.
That seems plausible to me, but I wouldn’t know a gang sign if I saw one, so I couldn’t verify that even if I watched a lot of video.
Not directly related, but I’m a little ticked right now and I need an outlet; do indulge me? . . .
— — — —
They sure made a big friggin’ deal of something Trump said approving of hypothetical violence on Trumpkins’ part. But deafening silence in the face of continuing *actual* violence on the part of anti-Trump people.
And by the way, where are the cameras and microphones in Hillary!’s and Bernie’s faces* demanding that they disavow the violence enthusiastically committed by the anti-Trump people? Crickets.
* and President Hopenchange’s and Joe Biden’s and Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s and Harry Reid’s and Elizabeth “Lie-awatha” Warren’s faces; *HMMMMMMM*??
AMartel:
Thanks.
I have listened to Rush for twenty-some years now, for 20-30 minutes at a time when in the car. He is not on XM so I drive out of FM range now and again on my way to Mississippi when I could listen to his whole three hours.
But he is usually correct, IMHO. He does his homework. knows whereof he speaks, and has given it goodly thought.
The people that denigrate or deprecate Rush are those who never listen to him, in my experience.That I understand and appreciate him does not mean that I am ignorant!
Oldflyer: It is my distinct impression that Mark Levin’s anger and distress at the rot of our country in the hands of Obama and the Dems parallels our own. some of his phrasings are puerile (“Washington comPost”), but of no moment.
Neo:
“there’s the double-edged sword … the word “rabble-rousing” has a reality, too, which is that already-existing anger can be fanned, exacerbated, channeled, by speech directed at crowds.”
America’s Founding Fathers/activists were rabble-rousers. The activist game is after all, a social game.
The “double-edge sword”, like any weapon – or like most any effective creative tool in a kitchen or workshop – incurs a heightened risk if it’s used improperly and/or you’re unable to control or you lose control of it.
And, of course, the activist game is competitive. So apart from its risk/reward as a tool for your team, it’s dangerous when a competing team of activists successfully turns it against you, as the Trump-front alt-Right activists accomplished in the GOP primary race.
Rabble-rousing is SOP for Left activists, so logically, it would also be SOP for Left-mimicking Trump-front alt-Right activists adapting a playbook that’s well proven against the same opponent.
Decry it, but take care to maintain competitive context. Which is to say, prescription should follow diagnosis: figure out how to solve the challenge posed by both of your opponents’ Left-type rabble-rousing and/or how to employ the “double-edge sword” as your weapon in the arena.
Don’t lose sight that the “anger” that was turned against “cuckservatives” and “GOPe” to fuel the alt-Right engine of the Trump phenomenon – that same “anger” in raw form was also the necessary social fuel for a conservative Republican presidential campaign.
By rights and with 1st dibs, a conservative Republican candidate should have wielded the “double-edged sword” constituted from that “anger”.
But due to the dearth of essential competitive activism on the Right, the GOP proved incapable of marshaling the “anger” against the competition imposed by an activist usurper. Trump-front alt-Right activists simply employed a sufficient method to commandeer the raw “anger” from the 1st dibs of conservative Republicans and manufactured the “anger” to fuel the Trump phenomenon, instead.
In terms of counter-activism, your team doesn’t necessarily need to employ Left-type rabble-rousing to counter Left-type rabble-rousing. Just like any other kind of competition, there’s more than one way to play to win the activist game. For example, the Ivy League civil-military campus activists won their game without resorting to rabble-rousing versus elite Ivy League campus ‘SJW’ leftists who did regularly employ Left-type rabble-rousing, which was effective. The good guys worked the problem and overcame the competitive challenge in the arena.
Diagnosis is necessary. But you should follow up diagnosis with prescription and treatment. Not liking the activist game doesn’t remove the existential, evolutionary need to play it to win. The activist game is the only social cultural/political game there is.
Neo: The trouble isn’t Rush Limbaugh. The trouble is the media environment that created him.
Why is there a market for Rush?
Because for decades the major news media have been Democratic Party Pravda. (Notice that none of the “good news” you accused Limbaugh of neglecting was reported by the major networks, either.)
Without a genuine competitive media landscape, Rush is the best we’ve got. Instead of complaining about him, why not try to think of ways to reverse the leftist takeover of media, education, and the arts?
As it is you sound like the annoying sort of “moderate conservative” who constantly criticizes others on the Right while constantly making excuses for the Left.
I also find Rush frequently, and Mark Levin almost always, overwrought. That being said, I understand the reason for their existence. Trimegistus has it right — when you see Hillary, Josh Earnest, or any of the usual suspects baldfacedly lying, and the mainstream press just sitting there lapping it up, you really need a good ranter to try to even the score.
Incidently, Camille Paglia loves Rush Limbaugh and has been on his show a number of times. Actually, Paglia is very conservative in her views on just about everything but actual voting. Somehow, she gets almost all the way there, but can’t see the relationship between leftist politics and everything she finds deplorable in art, music, education, feminism, attacks on freedom of speech, etc. , etc., etc. Well, there’s always hope.
The medium is bigger than Rush or Levin although they are probably the top two, and may be moving beyond AM, satellite radio, podcasts….Some are quite moderate, Hewitt for example, and some are more extreme and reactionary than either Rush or Levin, eg, Savage. Lots to choose from.
Andrew Klavan has a lot more humor and is not so grim as Levin can be at times. Ben Shapiro is pretty sharp and quick. Both are podcast guys.
The ineffective republican performance since 2012 provided ample target for scorn and derision. Will they learn?
AMartel; Frog:
In this post I described how negligent Limbaugh was in relation to the repeal of Obamacare. Please read it.
“Incidently, Camille Paglia loves Rush Limbaugh and has been on his show a number of times. Actually, Paglia is very conservative in her views on just about everything but actual voting. Somehow, she gets almost all the way there, but can’t see the relationship between leftist politics and everything she finds deplorable in art, music, education, feminism, attacks on freedom of speech, etc. , etc., etc. Well, there’s always hope.”
Paglia is not the only one. In fact, almost any sane Democrat is in the same boat. The SF writer Orson Scott Card is also very conservative in many ways, but got stuck on stupid 40-50 years ago because he decided Republicans were heartless for opposing illegal immigration — he could not see that using bad means to “good” ends always ends in disaster.
actually, the only way this leviathan gets shutdown is to actually cut the funding, but that was made impossible in the continuing resolution, that made a mockery of ’14 midterm victory, they are always selling the cow for worthless magic beans, the kabuki regarding the rhodes road show, where they pretended to oppose the iran deal, was another example.
no we’re in this mess, because the media lie, about iraq, about crime, about the economy, about public health, and a hundred other things, one can hear the minitrue bulletin, at the quarter hour mark, the wall street journal and say national review, are loath to really examine what’s going on,
Rush is a combination of fun, analysis and controversy. He was the antidote to the liberal MSM. He voiced what many thought but couldn’t articulate. He is exceptionally smart.
Rush is getting very repetitive and long winded. Not nearly as sharp as he used to be.
I got through to Levin one time. He completely misunderstood what I was saying. Thought I was a lib. Started yelling at me and hung up on me. He’s off the wall.
“Why is there a market for Rush?”
The answer is obvious as many of us know. But Rush, for example, is a response to a disease. I am on the right, but I often find the Rush of the right lacking wisdom or exchanging wisdom for $. Still, the Rushes are like lighthouses for many on the right who are genuinely PO’ed for very good reasons.
Unfortunately, that p*ssed off frustration was not channeled to support Walker, Fiorina, or Cruz. Instead support went to the carnival barker. Congratulations to the clueless blinded by anger and frustration.
Watch this, folks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEMZSn8iLr4
Seriously, if anyone going to vote for Sanders or Clinton, this should make them ashamed and horrified.
Here’s another sample of the Left’s Brownshirts and their violence. Note that they like to go after women, teenagers, and even people in their cars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_jq5iUqtBo&feature=youtu.be
Watch, or turn away.
What starts as a crusade ends up as a racket.
Neo, it’s good you spent some time ‘fisking’ Rush on ACA repeal.
When will you spend time on ‘fisking’ the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS etc. for THEIR distortions and lies.
Having lurked, and occasionally commented on, this website for a while it seems to me that while you have a quite mild distaste for the Left you have and extreme and virulent dislike for the right.
It’s OK to be a moderate. But why aren’t you honest enough, at least with yourself if no one else, to explain that you are one?
neoneocon is a catchy name. More accurate might be neoNeverCon.
Tuvea,
First, be nice to neo. She’s awesome.
Secondly, and I don’t claim to speak for her, but sometimes we tend to criticize those in our own “house”, so to speak, because they are ours. Spending time pointing out the abuses of the liberal msm (which neo has done, just not to your liking evidently) would be a full time job.
I’m a conservative and I quit listening to Rush years ago. There’s some good there, but too repetitive, too much about him, too many commercials, and too focused on keeping the rabble roused. Yeah, I partially blame him and his ilk for the situation we’re in and the candidate we’ve got. My wife still likes him though.
Long-winded comment:
First, it was the Merry Pranksters in the 1960’s. The Hippies, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, et cetera. They were outrageous. They were, in modern terminology, trolls.
Next, you had Limbaugh. IIRC, the phrase he used to use was “exposing outrage by being outrageous”. Trolling. He’d talk about The Magic Negro knowing that people would accuse him of racism and be wrong. It makes for good radio, but it does harm the national discussion.
Next: Jon Stewart. The criticism of him has always been “clown nose on / clown nose off”, that he gave himself license to be political while claiming that he was only a comedian. He had a giant rally in Washington DC about nothing: that doesn’t make sense unless you think in terms of trolling.
So far, so good. (Not that good at all, really.) The internet comes along, and we’re rewarded for getting the most responses, good or bad. Trolling becomes a sport for the masses. And I don’t feel like going back and changing this comment of mine, but I just realized I left out Michael Moore, who made “documentaries” that were misleading, with full knowledge that they were misleading, with the viewers having full knowledge that they were misleading. Another troll.
There’s a change in kind, not simply degree, when Barack Obama runs for President. Now we have a political figure who deliberately overstates things because he knows they’ll get a rise out of his opponents and make them look bad. (His people have admitted that he does this.) He says things like, “Apparently they [the Republicans] are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America”. In other words, we have our first troll President.
You do this long enough, the other side gets angry. They nominate a guy who has no experience, no understanding of the office, and no demonstrable skills other than insulting people on Twitter.
miguel cervantes:
“we’re in this mess, because the media lie, about iraq”
See the answer to “Did Bush lie his way to war with Iraq?”.
Tuvea:
You write: “When will you spend time on ‘fisking’ the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS etc. for THEIR distortions and lies.” You also write that you’ve read this blog for a while.
The two statements don’t compute. I have spent so much time criticizing the MSM that I could excerpt several longish books from this blog alone on the subject.
Too much teaching kids to talk vs teaching them to fight and compete for the goal of being right.
http://www.targetfocustraining.com/
http://chirontraining.com/Site/Home.html
Two links, posted to Book’s post about the Leftist attacks on American voters at Trump Rallies.
Call 911 and ask for help? Nope. Beg your Political masters for protection and help? Nope.
None of that works. I think Americans, especially patriots, are fond of the Rule of Law and all that jazz about obedience to some bullsh authoritarian police unions and Leftist bs about equality.
In the end, the only thing that can save you, is yourself. People can start there. Trump’s supporters are a good example of how helpless and powerless they are. They think giving Trump the Throne of Power is going to save them. It won’t.
Neo, I read your prior post on this and you’re right about Rush. (Assuming there were no big Rush discussions about the Obamacare repeal vote. I wouldn’t know as I don’t listen regularly enough.). Rush does unscripted stream of consciousness monologues for 3 hours a day (minus ad time) which is wildly impressive but you do appear to have picked out an agenda. Is it political (screw the GOPe) or entertainment-based? Both? Or is it just not giving air time to something that just doesn’t matter, politically or to him? He’s not obligated to serve as a cheerleader for the wing of the party that he clearly doesn’t like. Rush was not a big Trump backer. I last listened to Rush for a longish time back in March when I had a long morning drive out to a job. Cruz was still in the race and he didn’t play favorites as between Cruz and Trump and in fact he seemed to my (hopeful?) ears to favor Cruz on the merits while admiring Trump on process (in dealing with the press). It is a matter of record that Rush scorns the GOPe but would be omit a key, albeit meaningless, accomplishment just to build rage and listnership? I think maybe he views the GOPe as useless in general and that’s why he didn’t go out of his way to note the repeal vote. It was an easy vote given that everyone knew it would be vetoed and there would be no real-world fall out.
I think a better example of irresponsible conservative media self-hype click-bait is the Hillary dog-pile. If she exits, and it could happen in the win at all costs/protect Barry’s precious legacy DNC, the other options-Sanders or Warren/Biden-will be much more palatable to the electorate. I’m not talking about thinking people I’m talking about the electorate at large. I know Fauxcahontas is so faux, Biden is a grinning error factory, and Sanders is a nasty old commie; they don’t. Plus, Obama will push them across the finish line with enthusiasm; Hillary not so much. Disaster! Stop dog piling! Lord KNOWS there are other things to talk about politically, like these fascists beating people over political speech.
“‘Why is there a market for Rush?’… Rush, for example, is a response to a disease…. Congratulations to the clueless blinded by anger and frustration.” – parker
Agree in a way, but it seems that there should be more to it…
There is a marketplace for everything, including ideas. Wouldn’t say Rush’s program is specifically a “response to a disease”, any more than the emergence of rock and roll on radio was (as many thought similarly at the time).
It is true Rush occupied/pioneered a niche that was massively underserved (conservative oriented discussion). Not much different than how FOX News Channel found their niche on cable news. The audience existed.
Rush’s “formula” has been to build anger, rather similar to “fire and brimstone” televangelists, such as Swaggert, etc. who built a huge following using a similar “formula”.
With a number of copy cats out there (now on radio, TV, and internet) doing the same/similar thing, it has the effect of building a much broader base of anger (having become something of an echo chamber).
Part of that anger is built around the lens of a “we vs they”, conspiracy oriented (e.g. “Establishment”, “Donor Class”), ad hominem laden (e.g. “GOPe”, “RINO”) victimhood message / meme. All rather divisive, which has nearly destroyed any credibility and trust with the political organization representing “conservative” ideas.
Add the fact that many of these media heads bent the facts to fit their narrative (neo wrote some great posts on this re: Rush), and we have an audience becoming “blind”.
Then once Trump announces his candidacy, and these same media heads (out of fear of losing their angry audience) don’t immediately ask fundamental questions, or worse, feign “neutrality” if not “apologizing / Trumpsplaining”, and we have an audience becoming completely unmoored from core principles, and uncritically open to a candidate like Trump.
These media heads have shown their true faces. Most of them would rather keep feeding the “beast” they created rather than potentially lose some of their audience.
That is not to say that there are some good reasons to be disappointed with the GOP and its leadership, how far Obama has gotten by manipulating the system, how the larger media has a “built in” bias, etc.
There is the seed of legitimacy in almost every complaint.
However, it is profoundly sad to realize that what one assumed was a more “politically thoughtful” group could so easily be led astray (in 2008 we all recall how these media heads explained that the left had a virtual monopoly on “low info voters”).
It was shocking to learn just how much many of the “thought leaders” in the conservative media are cynically more interested in the bottom line than the ideas they claimed they were representing.
If they spoke out, doubt they would have lost any significant audience share, but it is another tragedy of the commons problem that played out, similar to how the other 16 candidates largely ignored Trump before it was too late.
So, yes, “blind anger”, but that was built by these media heads with an audience that were / are too willing to be manipulated.
With the 2012 election, IMHO they were one of the factors that Romney lost. Realized the “poison” they inject and have since quit listening to any media type that speak in a similar tone / rely heavily on emotion, ad hominem, etc.
The world they present is not the real one, any more than “The House Wives of… ” are representative of a typical wife. They distort the world for their own economic benefit. Time we all realize that and act accordingly – seek multiple alternative sources.