I’m after an American perspective on some of his comments.
Limbaugh has popped up on my foreign radar due to a few comments he’s made recently. Wiki tells me he is a radio commentator. I know some radio personalities are retained for their ability to generate controversy or outrage. I also know the political climate in the US is extremely different from what I’m accustomed to. So, I am unable to tell if (in the American context) Limbaugh is viewed as an educated, conservative spokesperson, or if he’s just a ratings puller, pushing fringe viewpoints. Or somewhere in the middle (i.e, crosses the line occasionally, but basically tells it how it is).
So, how does the average American view Limbaugh. Or perhaps, how would the average liberal American and the average conservative American view Limbaugh? How do you view him (and what’s your bias / background)?
Thanks
I chose the “I’m liberal. I rarely agree with what he says” but probably the best description of Rush is “crosses the line occasionally, but basically tells it how it is” with the addendum of “from a conservative view of the world.” I think it is important to keep in mind that he would not be as popular as he is with conservatives if he was not foremost an entertainer. So while he certainly does act as a conservative spokesperson, he does so in a way that can often be inflammatory and designed to stir the passion in his listeners. This gets him in trouble at times and is why so many liberals don’t like him.
Hell, I’m a native American and I can’t explain him.
Rush never lets the truth of the matter get in the way of his rants. If something will sound better with a lie as the basis rather than a truth, he’ll go with the lie every time. He sees no point in wasting money and time on fact checking.
I used to have an old car, and the dial in the radio was worn out, so the five stations that were programmed with the buttons (remember those old car radios?) were what I was stuck with. When I moved to Boston, one of those was the station that carried Limbaugh and the other four were static.
I chose “none of the above” because I don’t remember Limbaugh ever saying anything that was complete and coherent enough to agree with or not. After a drive, I’d get out of the car and think of all the gaps in his arguments, all the questions I wanted answers to. The answers never come. I’ve never heard him put himself up to any intelligent scrutiny. He controls the microphone, he controls the narative, his listeners are along for the ride. I think his gift is to generate fragments of ideas faster than most people can process them. They’re great sound bites for people to flock to, but they don’t add up to much.
I sort of am between Robot’s and Jorge’s views. While his views are fragmentary and shallow, unfortunately many people honestly hold fragmentary and shallow politicial views. On the rare occasions his content holds a grain of truth, he approaches it from the wrong manner, preferring to take the more entertaining or inflammatory spin on it.
So I can’t really click “rarely agree” because I have heard precious little of him in the past 10 years, and what I have heard I have never agreed with him on any given proposition.
There are intelligent conservatives, he just isn’t one of them. He’s like Sarah Palin without breasts (on second thought, he’s fat enough that he may have those, too), he’s excellent at demagoguery but lacks the intellect to back it up. He’s figured out the secret of telling his audience what they already believe and make big bucks doing it. As long as the rubes have money, Palin and Limbaugh will find a way to get it from them. Just don’t look to either for any coherent thought or an actual plan to do anything.
He’s conservative, therefore the SDMB hates him.
The liberal point of view used to hold de facto control over American media. Rush came along and saw that that there was a large, under-served market of conservative opinion nationally, and a cheap medium (AM radio) that could be used to reach that audience.
Most but not all of this “he lies all the time” means that he expresses opinions with which they disagree, or puts a spin on facts with which they disagree. He doesn’t lie any more than anyone else who talks for a living three hours a day, five days a week.
A fairly recent example of the notion that “Rush lies all the time” is his claim that he reaches 20 million people a week. Is that a lie?
According to Time magazine and ABC News, it’s correct. According to Fox News and CNN, it’s high. According to the Washington Post, it’s around that.
Depends on what spin you like. The SDMB and the liberal US media like one kind of spin, conservatives like another.
Regards,
Shodan
I picked “none of the above” because saying that I rarely agree with him overstates how often I agree with what he says. I’m a liberal and I listen to part of his show at least once a week. My view of him is that he’s an old blowhard, of exactly the type that appeals to other old blowhards.
My ultra-conservative mother refuses to listen to him because “I had to put up with ignorant little piss-ant assholes like him in every 8th grade class I taught. Be damned if I’m going to listen to the likes of him now.” (paraphrased)
i agree.
Rush is entertaining. Even when he’s dead wrong (and knows he’s wrong), he’s not going to let the facts get in the way of a good story. His job is also to be controversial, which feeds ratings.
He’s pretty much a comedian playing to a particular audience. If he could get better ratings by playing to a liberal audience, he’d start switching immediately.
The only difference between him and John Stewart is that Stewart admits he’s a comedian.
The problem with Rush and his ilk is that they often don’t actually lie per se, so much as “stretch the truth” or work hyperbole and raise suspicions that they know the ignorant base will eat up with a spoon.
For example, on Friday he was making great light of how Obama will now nationalize the oil industry, for the safety of the country.
We all know that’s not REALLY going to happen, and he said it just jokingly enough that he can say it was all a joke, but you KNOW some folks are now getting their gas tanks filled extra quick before the Marxist-Communist that is our president can do exactly what Rush said he’ll do.
Shodan, I think this is oversimplifying a little.
I don’t agree with Rush on a lot of points although I think he’s a smart and canny guy. I listened to him a good bit back when I had a more conservative bent. Even when I agreed with him, he made me cringe because he did go out of his way to be inflammatory.
Now it’s a good business decision for him to be a jerk. It’s the jerk statements that get picked up and talked about. So I completely understand why he makes the conscious decision to be a jerk. I even believe that he’s probably not a jerk in real life.
That said, on the job he is, well, a jerk. So I don’t really like the guy. I feel the same way about Hitchens and Dawkins. Politics are nearly irrelevant to the issue.
He’s a liar, and therefore the SDMB hates him.
Conservatives will tell you that we hate him because he’s a Conservative, but this is, in fact, wrong. It’s entirely possible to disagree with someone without hating them, but this view doesn’t appear to be held by some of our more Conservative boardmembers. Go figure.
He says whatever it takes to get good ratings. Telling his viewers what they want to hear- facts be damned- brings him more money, so that’s what he does. A good example is his latest insistence that the oil slick in the Gulf isn’t anything to worry about, that nature will take care of it. He has no basis for this view, but it allows his listeners to chuckle at the “bedwetting Liberals”, so that’s what he says.
He’s an entertainer, nothing more… no matter how much some on the Right want to elevate him.
One thing you need to remember is that Limbaugh’s estimated audience of 20 million, while huge by American radio standards, still represents a small fraction of the total U.S. population. However, his show can be heard almost everywhere, so almost everyone has had the chance to sample him at least once.
In a nutshell - Rush irritates the hell out of liberals for two major reasons:
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He has a schtick and he does it specifically to irritate liberals. It annoys conservatives, too, but we are willing to put up with it because
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He’s right far, far more often than he is wrong. And that irritates the hell out of the liberals because they can’t refute what he says, so they resort to ad hominem attacks against him.
Don’t you have shock jocks where you live? Their main purpose is to entertain by being obnoxious. If there ever is a valid point buried deep within the rubble, it’s obscured by fallacious arguments and general douchebaggery.
I agree with this. The thing about Rush is that nearly everytime somebody gets all frothing-at-the-mouth furious about some horrible and stupid thing he said, it’s usually because he was employing hyperbole and ironic exaggeration, and people who aren’t familiar with him took him seriously. “Yeah, Rush actually believes that people who support health care reform want to steal his kidneys with a blowtorch!”
This is hard to get if all you do is read his quotations in the newspaper instead of listen to him talk.
Being a conservative, but more of a libertarian and not the blowhard-type, I find he gets on my nerves, anyway.
Exactly. If he and others of his ilk like Beck, Hannity, Savage, etc. tried presenting themselves as rational, respectable conservatives, they wouldn’t be raking in shitloads of money. They’re basically shock jocks who found their niche talking about politics.
He’s a demagogue. He’s not a commentator or a political analysist, he’s just a demagogue. He’s also a particularly mean-spirited one who uses xenophobia, race-baiting and homophobia as his stock in trade along with such charming tactics as mocking and ridiculing people with disabilities or other powerless people. He’s also incredibly dishonest, but I think that goes without saying. He’s also a religionist idiot who believes in creationism, and thinks that the volcano in Iceland was God’s revenge for Obama passing healthcare reform (seriously, he said that).
The guy is a blowhard, a buffoon, a bigot and a liar. Those are the reasons that liberals (and even moderates) detest him. Not because he’s a conservative, but because he’s an asshole.