Not worth listening to...
Well, I've made my disdain for Rush Limbaugh plain, and I have admitted that I haven't listened to him since the Clinton era, so those who say that he's different now may have merit (although I think being a partisan when your party is in power is, by definition, going to give your talk a different tone than being a partisan when your party is not in power), but...
I just wanted to share that today I happened to run into a link to a site where I could listen to a streaming online version of "Air America", the left wing talk radio answer to Rush, and I can safely report (after having listened to about half an hour 3 or 4 times today, and heard several different shows) that it's no more worth listening to than Rush is.
Holy crap, what partisan hackery. It's almost embarassing that at the moment my opinion of the administration is the same as theirs. Just a huge old mess o' conspiracy theory and self-congratulatory back patting.
One example: I listened to one guy rant for a while, claiming that Rove and Cheney were going to turn out to be the "two highly placed sources" for Robert Novak, but this was not the crazy part. The crazy part was that he kept saying "Assuming Cheney is still alive. No one that I know of has seen him in days, and there are rumors that he died of a heart attack out west".
If I didn't know that people can be this crazy on both sides of the political aisle, I'd swear that these people were actually Republicans trying to make the Left look bad. (But then, I would have guessed the same about Limbaugh, at least in the Clinton years incarnation).
The answer, folks, is not to take your information from talk radio, or at least not blatently (and self-admittedly) partisan shows such as Limbaugh on the Right and Air America on the Left. If you're going to, at least listen to both sides, so perhaps their raving will cancel each other out.
Can we really be this stupid, as a nation, that there are sufficient numbers of people on each side to support this kind of quackery? This doesn't do much to bolster my faith in the American electorate.
At least on (some) blogs (like, I hope, this one), we discuss. We may not agree, but we discuss the differing sides and try to have open minds.
I'm going to go off now and cry for the state of American politics.
Liam.
posted by Liam at 7/06/2005 12:47:00 AM
5 Comments:
You talk about the Clinton Years of Rush Limbaugh and of the endless lies or mistruths about Clinton that Limbaugh shouted repeatedly and without checking on the veracity thereof;can you be specific on a few so that I could reply, check on, read about or something. I am sure that in the past before I started reading your blog you probebly did this, but please induldge me.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005 9:53:00 PM
Nice post and comments Liam. Interestingly, my latest essay touches on this subject and you may be interested in browsing through it if you get a chance.
I try to listen to a little of all the partisan whacko's to try and find out what they are all up to, and usually, it's two sides of the same coin, albeit a contrived, counterfeit, or totally unimportant coin anyhow.
Thursday, July 07, 2005 12:57:00 AM
Liam, I just read your rant about Limbaugh's lies, distortions, etc. I have been a listener of his radio program for years. I surely don't get all of the impressions you do. Yous stated in an earlier comment that you only read the reports from Google that are picked up from the major medias such as MSNBC, etc. and that leads me to a story. On the picture of TIME magazine about two years ago, maybe three they had a picture of Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh. I say pictures, but it was really caricatures under a headline that read "Mouths that Roared" and inside was a story trying to show the similarities between the two. Anyone who has ever watched or listened to Howard Stern knows that his program is soft porn (and somtimes hard porn). To compare Stern with Limbaugh (who approaches his program as an opionated conservative talk show host trying to deal with the events of the day) is to attempt to cheapen his image so as to keep people from taking him seriously.I tell you this story to show the epitome of how the main stream media views Limbaugh's program and himself. If you had been exposed to enough of this in an entirely inquisitive state, then when you did listen to him you would be looking and listening through colored attitudes.
Your disertation above concerning Vince Foster sounds more like you had been listening to G. Gordon Liddy. I occasionly listened to some of his radio program, and he is a real nutcase. He would talk ad naseum about Vince Foster's covered up murder and would give voice to every conspiracy theory there was. I do recall(let's neither one go back and re-read old books, we will go from memory and suffer each other's) Limbaugh covering all of the details of the Vince Foster suicide story due to callers trying to call in with bogus information and he did in fact list those people who have come into contact with the Clintons who have died. As for the TV show where the picture of Chelsea came up when he was talking about the dog, the very next show he covered it, stated that it was a mistake made by the hands on the back up monitor, and apologized for the error.
As the the drug addiction, he did say all that you mentioned about weakness of character, etc. After his 28 day cure, the very fist program on the air, he talked about how much he had learned about himself and human nature and that he has learned a lot more about compassion.
In short, Limbaugh's show is a show driven by his opinion of the news events of the day. It's about what he thinks of things. He prides himself on being right (which is a matter of opinion in itself) a very high percentage of the time but I do find that the NEWS part of his program can be relied upon more often than not.His opinion on the other hand is a matter of whether you agree with him or not.
Thursday, July 07, 2005 4:19:00 PM
Fair enough, and you are right on one point: I used to listen to quite a number of different Right Wing talking heads, and Liddy was one of the ones I heard, I very well may be melding them all into one. Another was Jay Severin (spelling approximate) and there was yet another, out of Boston, whose name escapes me at the moment. Carr? Maybe Howie Carr? That sounds right.
Anyway, I have to admit that they all kind of meld together in my head. Then again, I sort of did the same thing to the Liberals on “Radio Power” with my posting as well. I listened to three or four of them (in small snippets) and certainly some were more reasonable than others. There was one guy who was ranting (and I use the word in its most literal form, he was actually screaming into the microphone) with some of the most vitriolic and conspiracy theory laden garbage I've ever heard. On the other hand, one of the other guys seemed perfectly reasonable. Anti-Bush, yes. Pro-liberal, yes. But not prone to the same sort of blanket accusation that the conspiracy theorists will go to.
(For reference, it was the ranting guy who kept insisting that there were reports that Cheney was dead, and that no one had seen him in weeks).
I did not see nor hear about the apology regarding the Chelsea Clinton picture, I remember the look on Rush's face after it happened, it didn't look like an accident. Then again, embarrassment can look like other emotions, perhaps it is exactly as you report. If so, I apologize for bringing back up an unfortunate mistake.
But your last paragraph begins with my problem with Limbaugh's show (as well as Liddy's, Severin's, Carr's plus the three or four liberals on Radio Power, whom I didn't listen to long enough to remember names of). It's not that he doesn't have a right to his opinion, he does. It's not even that he doesn't have a right to state that opinion on national radio. He does that as well. It is that he spends so much time touting his correctness on all matters that there are a lot of people who have lost the ability to differentiate opinion from fact. He (and those on both sides of the political spectrum that came after him and copied his model) have (in my opinion) had an ill effect on much of the electorate.
These are the people who I believe have lost the ability to consider an election with the critical eye necessary to determine who will honestly be best for the country. These are the people who would no more consider voting for anyone out of their own party than they would consider going up to a random homeless person and giving them a big, wet french kiss. Not those who generally vote one way because they generally agree with that party, I'm talking about those absolutely couldn't conceive that anyone from their party might not be the best person to run the country. Democrats who voted for Kerry just because he was a Democrat. Republicans who did the same for Bush.
And as to the news part of his program, it is definitely slanted. It may not be INCORRECT, but the news stories are definitely filtered to those that support his viewpoint. (Again, exactly the same as I heard on Radio Power the other day, so I'm not saying he's alone in this tactic, only that he's hardly unbiased, the same issue I had with Radio Power).
I guess the gist of my problem with the show is that we all need to listen to BOTH sides or neither. If I listen to Rush (which I can't any more, he's not on up here), then I need to also listen to Al Franken or Thom... whatever his name was. If I listen to Liddy, I need to listen to the crazed Italian guy (Tony something that ended in “iano”). I (and all of us) need to listen to both sides, both so we have access to all of the information in order to form our opinions, AND so that psychologically we don't end up, through repetition, becoming indoctrinated into the belief that the only point of view you hear must be the only valid point of view.
Liam.
[CORRECTION: My wife assures me that Rush is back on the air up here. About 3 years ago, Rush and a few others (including Liddy and Dr. Dean Edell, who I liked listening to) were taken off of the air up here when the company that distributes their shows bought a competing set of stations, and while they didn't plan to air the shows, they didn't wish to compete with their own programming. Apparently something has changed. I do not listen to talk radio since I got a CD player in my car (except occasionally NPR), so I was unaware, but in the interest of being truthful, now that I've been given the correction, I need to apply it here as well.]
Thursday, July 07, 2005 6:14:00 PM
Liam, you are right about the news portion of Rush's program being slanted in that he is only interested in news that supports his views. As for Dr. Dean Edell, I also like to listen to him when he sticks to the medical parts. He seems to be more informed about the most recent medical news. NPR on the other hand I consider to be blatenly on the liberal side with a slant to the news and the opinion pieces. I do listen to it when there is no other talk radio on so I feel my opinion on it is experienced.
Thursday, July 07, 2005 8:13:00 PM
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