ZING!
Ahhhhh ha ha ha… I had a good laugh over that mental image.
So… humor = conservative now? Milum, man… you’re off the deep end. No, wait, you’re caught in the damned filtration system if you think that’s anywhere near clever or funny or satirical. Jeez.
No, Berkely, '68. Never calls, never writes, just used me and cast me aside like an old shoe…
I tried to tell her, “the brown barrells are a bummer, stick to window pane”, but she wouldn’t listen, and the next thing I knew, she was staring intently at a TV image of Ronald Reagan and quivering like a chihuahua in electroshock therapy.
Still, I see her on TV and I can still smell the spring breeze wafting up from Telegraph Ave., faint traces of pachouli and tear gas…ah! Condi, Condi, how I long to hear you call me “hunky” again…(well, I think that’s what she said…)
While it may not be dark, it appears to be quite lame …even from a self-professed liberal perspective.
<snip>
I found this bit most telling…rather than attempt to convert more folks to a point of view (which is what Limbaugh et. al attempt to do)…AA seems to be pandering to annoying elements of its own fringe…
Yeah…I see GREAT things ahead for Air America. :rolleyes:
I’ve been a Limbaugh fan for a long time now. (Unfortunately, I’m usually working during his broadcast hours and don’t get to listen as often as I like.) I really don’t think that he tries that hard to “convert” people so much as he tries to give one-liners and talking points to his listeners. At least, I wouldn’t take his denigrating as attempts to win converts. He enables his listeners to have a feeling of being smarter than their political complements.
Inetrestingly enough, a very strong case can be made that he makes fun of his listeners who believe him. If someone would like to buy me a membership to Rush 24/7 I’d be happy to do so. 
The disinclination of Americans to identify as “liberal” is a triumph of advertising, long since recognized. The Forces of Darkness, having more money, hire the best. The term now carries a lot of “freight” - implications of unpatriotic, unmanly, wimpy, elite, etc. A lot of Americans now believe that Kerry is a “waffler” and has few, if any, principled positions. These same Americans couldn’t, for the life of them, actually point to any such position changes, any more than they could tell you why Charmin is superior to White Cloud, or why Marlboro is a more rugged and manly form of poison.
This may, or may not, have much impact on the viability of “liberal” radio. I don’t think it much matters. What am I likely to hear on a radio that I won’t see on a TV, or read on a web site? Al Franken bores Hell out of me - just being right doesn’t make him interesting.
I’m NOT a Limbaugh fan…but do recognize that he has very good radio skills. I don’t know that he sets out to convert “x” number of people to vote Republican…I have listened to him a few times on my commute and have heard him referencing attempts to “educate the masses” about the “evils” of liberalism.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is that Limbaugh has a style that attracts an audience beyond the hard right. I can’t see Air America (at least at this point) attracting an audience beyond the hard left.
I agree with you here. I heard a commentator on NPR say the same thing. He was from a radio trade group and essentially said the same thing as you. What Limbaugh has done is to offer a conservative point of view not really articulated by the National Review or William F Buckley.
Air America has not offered up content that can’t be found elsewhere…and done better.
Link to above audio commentary here
Ah! athelas is kind enough to demonstrate precisely the sort of easy, off-handed mendacity that comes so naturally to our Tighty Righty brethren, by offering a further demonstration by the GOP Committee. (The use of Don King as spokesthing…oddly droll. One might almost expect a sense of humor, which is as likely as expecting facts from the disciples of Baron Munchassen.)
FWIW, I managed to get a bit of WLIB reception on my way home from work Friday. What I heard is essentially along the lines of what I reported earlier from my brother, which is also the impression of the article linked by Beagledave. (Although some have attempted to differentiate between the afternoon host and others - this would presumably be Rhoades, as I listened between about 5:10 & 5:40).
Apparently they had some clip of Bush being asked about the claim that he had asked Rumsfeld to prepare an Iraq war plan on a certain day. Bush responded that he did not know the exact day. He also apparently said at the outset something indicating that he would take one question apiece for him and Tony Blair and later amended that to mean one question total per reporter.
The AA host found this amusing to no end, and spent the entire time that I listened replaying the clip over and over again, accompanied by the same comments. Bush is retarded because he originally said one thing and later changed it. And he is also retarded because he didn’t remember the exact date. (The AA host repeated over and over again “November 21, 2001! That’s the date that you can’t remember! November 21, 2001!”). They even had a recorded jingle of people singing “are you smarter than George W. Bush?”, or something like that.
I could have missed or misheard a bit here and there, as my reception was bad, but that was pretty much the gist of it.
As I said earlier, I’m sure there is a subset of the population that finds this type of thing amusing. But I think it’s pretty small.
Ah, you caught Randi Rhodes, AAR’s answer to Limbaugh and O’Reilly. 
Liberal Radio is back on the air in Chicago.
Good.
I love Randi Rhodes. I simply cannot stand right-winged exclusionist. Now they can be exposed for the CHEATS that they are.
My apologies to you, athelas - I thought you had posted to the wrong thread.
I have a long-standing tradition of not bothering with certain posters, and thus couldn’t tell why elucidator was again trying to pretend that if all the good little liberal boys and girls clap their hands, Tinkerbell will come back and make the cite go away.
I didn’t see his earlier foolishness, and thus didn’t recognize the refutation. So I went back and reread the thread, and saw the context.
Anyway, smartly done.
Regards,
Shodan
Balderdash, sir! Tommyrot!
We are offered a cite for the GOP as being an objective source for facts? Its hard to know which is more preposterous, that you might be kidding or might not. Am I given to understand that if I post MoveOn.org as a reference, you will fall back in disarray, stunned by the probity? Please.
Yes, well done athelas. You did exactly what elucidator said you would do, and failed to identify one supposed change of position. I clicked on the link, and got some crawl and something apparently supposed to be like a boxing match, but after 30 seconds of nothing, I found it to waste my time.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? Say you’re going to have something about Kerry’s sandals, er, flip-flops. Have a big production about them. Then…nothing. The whole thing reminds me about the joke about Grandma’s Whorehouse, which promises you a good screwing by Grandma, with lots of signs and doors and build-up and handing over of money, until you find yourself in the back alley with a note in your hand that says, “You have just been screwed by Grandma.”
Could you, yourself, please state one flip-flip? Pretty please? Or is the whole thing to spread a bullshit lie and have people have to spend time saying the words “Kerry” and “flip flop” in close proximity to one another? Kind of like “Hussein” and “9/11” or “Bush” and “compassionate.”
You’ve just been screwed by Karl Rove.
I have never heard Bill O’Reilly, and I haven’t heard Limbaugh for several years, but I used to listen occasionally when KFBK would air the show late at night and I could pick it up on my radio here. So take these observations with a grain of salt, but here’s my take on Limbaugh’s popularity in particular -
First, he’s a hell of a speaker. He has a great radio voice. I also think his gimmick of including studio sounds like shuffling papers, tapping pencils, and the like is done very effectively. It makes the whole show feel more conversational.
Second, he’s a good entertainer. When I used to listen, he’d liberally sprinkle his show with comedy bits like fake commercials and ‘testimonials’ from whack-jobs on some pop-culture thing. Does he still do stuff like that? Some of it was very funny.
Third, he’s fairly hip. Who ever thought a conservative talk show host would use The Pretenders as his bumper music?
Then there’s his message. And here’s where I think the big difference is between Limbaugh and the people on the left who try to emulate him: Limbaugh’s message is essentially upbeat (and even pandering). America is great, the average listener is smarter than liberals want to give credit for, etc. This is what Reagan had going for him as well - the ‘shining city on a hill’ rhetoric. Limbaugh is like a Tony Robbins - he’s selling a formula for happiness. Vote this way, listen to me, and you too can be a great person in a great country. Sure, he gets his digs in at liberals, and sometimes his invective gets pretty heated. But in the end, what he’s selling is optimism and feel-good politics.
The Liberals that I’ve heard try the same thing miss this point entirely. Donahue’s show was just one tired rant after another. Liberals are really good at pointing fingers at Republicans and placing blame, but they have very little in the way of a positive message to offer back. At least, liberals of the Garofalo/Franken variety. Their message is downbeat - the world is going to hell, the environment is being raped, the poor are downtrodden, the evil rich are pulling the strings, yada yada yada. True or not, it’s depressing.
If you want to get people to tune in every day, and you want to hold their attention for more than a few minutes, you have to do something more than just bitch at them or whine about how terrible everything is.
This is also true in electoral politics. Reagan won landslides because he offered a positive, sunny message to a nation tired of ‘malaise’. Bill Clinton won a second term because he refused to play the whining game and instead had a pretty good time. And the country had a prettty good time right along with him. He was likable, and his messages were positive ones. This is how America can be better. This is how we can live up to our potential.
This is John Kerry’s biggest liability. The man has a dour countenance, an aggressive manner, and the only thing he’s offering so far is an endless litany of how Americans have been mislead, lied to, failed, etc. No wonder Bush is moving up in the polls.
For “Air America” to succeed, it needs to be more fun. More comedy. The political message has to be delivered with something less than a sledgehammer. Working clever points into funny satire can be done - just ask Jon Stewart.
The kind of optimism that Limbaugh purveys is precisely conservative optimism. It rest on the presumption that things are really pretty good, power and wealth is in the hands of the deserving and wise. The sunshine of justice falls on every upturned face, and the populace is primarily comprised of people who are sensible, down-to-earth, and inherently skeptical of fanciful schemes that involve change. Or worse, prying power from the hands of the deserving and wise, and scattering it amongst the lower orders.
It is the optimism of a man who believes that his own good fortune is clear proof that the world is ordered, for the larger part, precisely as it should be.
I beg to differ. In fact, I insist.
elucidator, that is unfortunately a big advantage Republicans currently have: the general optimism, that America can do anything it sets it mind to. The new attitude started with Reagan, and continued through the likes of Giuliani and younger Bush. Elder Bush wavered from the optimism, and he lost.
For Kerry to win, he has to out-Bush Bush. That is, he has to promise to be much better in the areas Bush is allegedly good at. He has to say things like that Bush is soft on terrorists, and stick to that message. Young Bush used this technique to win elections. Kerry may have to do the same.
Liberals used to sing “We shall overcome”. Now it is conservatives who sing the song now.
elucidator, that is unfortunately a big advantage Republicans currently have: the general optimism, that America can do anything it sets it mind to. The new attitude started with Reagan, and continued through the likes of Giuliani and younger Bush. Elder Bush wavered from the optimism, Clinton picked it up, and Elder Bush lost as a result.
For Kerry to win, he has to out-Bush Bush. That is, he has to promise to be much, much better in the areas Bush is allegedly good at. He has to say things like that Bush is soft on terrorists, and stick to that message. Young Bush used this technique to win elections. Kerry may have to do the same.
Liberals used to sing “We shall overcome”. Now it is conservatives who sing the song now. It is not enough to claim they are singing off-key.