I think this bears repeating.
Its not like there is occassional line crossing on teh Rush Limbaugh Show. There is line crossing almost every single day (he has to fill three hours every day and he keeps people awake by ranting against women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights, social justice), or at least every week. Noone notices because its usually againt “legitimate targets” like Pelosi and Cinton.
I think that this is the major point that we’re trying to make repeatedly here. People like Bill Maher, John Stewart, Michael Moore, and Keith Olbermann are not actually part of the Democratic policy-making establishment. They’re commentators and comedians, but they have no actual influence on Democratic politicians.
Limbaugh, on the other hand, is the Republican establishment. He controls the conversation. He holds elected Republicans to his orthodoxy and he can and does punish those who cross him.
The same is true of the attempted tu quoque whenever liberals criticize right wing extremists like Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. The extreme left wing has no status within liberalism or the Democratic party; whereas, the extreme right wing is a solid and influential bloc on the right.
I grew up in a pretty conservative part of the Midwest, and the main appeal seems to be that casts himself as a regular Joe and speaks their language. Many of the people I grew up with, if on a perfectly clear day Limbaugh said the sky was plaid and Clinton said it was blue, would believe Limbaugh unconditionally. That’s how much antipathy they had toward the Democrats.
The fact that Limbaugh has an audience is the distressing part. There’s a significant part of the population that wants to hear a woman criticized as a slut for having an opinion, and Michael J. Fox as faking his symptoms, and a black man mocked as having a bone in his nose. That might have been common in the 19th century, but nowadays is so simple-minded and primitive. I can see them going to the doctor when they’re sick and demanding that he put leeches on them to draw out the disease.
I’ve always thought that Limbaugh isn’t really the problem. He shows us what the problem is. The fact that there are millions of angry white men that think that kind of ugly material is hilarious or important would be true even if Limbaugh retired and went far, far away. (And the search for his successor would begin instantly.)
Notice that while advertisers seem to be fleeing Limbaugh, there aren’t any Republican politicians going on record criticizing him. So he still represents an important Republican constituency.
Ya. I predicted they would grow some spine and speak up, but so far that hasn’t happened.
I would say that the search for his successor has been active for quite some time. Everyone knows he won’t last forever. It is worth while to study the guest hosts who take over his show when he is on vacation: one of those guys is highly likely to be “The Next Rush.”
(Maybe a bit of a longshot, but my money is on San Diego’s Roger Hedgecock. His radio show used to be moderate, thoughtful, and fun. But for a long, long time – since Rush’s success – Roger has been taking the whiny-voice, nasty, hate-filled, straw-man tactic.)
Fear. Working class and poor whites have been force fed a steady diet of fear that “other people” (blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, etc) are taking their jobs and their couintry and are going after their guns and their religion. These people happily accept their lot in life as long as they don’t have to share it with people that are different.
Rush Limbaugh and FOX News are symptoms of problems more than problems. It says bad things about the political health of the United States that so many people want to believe what they say. Even during the Clinton administration, when the United States enjoyed peace and prosperity, Rush Limbaugh had a vast following.
I was on a lot of political mailing lists, and would sometimes get appeals for funds from organizations that told me that President Clinton had sold military secrets to Communist China in return for campaign funds. For a number of years Jerry Falwell made a lot of money selling a videocassette entitled, “The Clinton Chronicles.” This accused Bill Clinton of first degree murder and drug dealing. When Ken Starr absolved Bill Clinton of any complicity in the death of Vince Foster someone wrote a book claiming that Vince Foster was either mistaken or lying.
There is a vast market for that kind of thing. Millions of white men are full of fear, hatred, and anger. They buy anything that justifies it.
Millions of white men are angry that being white and male does not mean as much as it did in the past. One must perform. Nevertheless, one must perform far more than in the past.
Millions of white men experiencing a declining standard of living would rather direct their anger at right wing hate targets than acknowledge that in an increasingly competitive economy they have nothing of value to offer an employer.
This is where Karl Marx was very mistaken. He had a few valid insights about laissez faire capitalism, but he thought that those who lost the economic struggle would become left wing activists. If they belong to the dominant race or ethnicity in a country they are more likely to be drawn to some form of right wing populism.