Carville’s a talented guy, who does OK on Crossfire, which is what, a half-hour show? Hour, tops.
The talk radio format is a three hour show. Which means that the political commentator really needs to have a coherent, logical value system enlightening policies rooted in core principles. Otherwise the show pretty much devolves into a random collection of unrelated issues, as Sam Stone puts it.
Advantage: Republicans.
The second thing about a 3 hour format is you need some new ideas to endorse, not just attack. The new ideas belong to conservatives. A funny thing has happened–liberals have become status quo, reactionary types. The conservatives are actually the reformists, whether it’s with charter schools, school vouchers, social security reform, medical savings accounts, welfare reform, tort reform–the Republicans have taken the lead.
A Democrat show would quickly degenerate into 3 hours of attacking new ideas.
See what I mean? The uncomfortable reasons like ownership and advertiser pressure are dismissed totally. Since I remember that Bernie Ward did make mince meat of those typically impertinent right wing questioners, I have to say that that Worldnet article is missing the whole picture (Thanks for proving my point again), I have to say that that opinion piece sounds like a rehash of what Rush said years before, did I heard someone talking about the right having new ideas?
Have you ever actually listened to any of these shows?
Limbaugh and Hannity are nothing but a constant stream of lies and hate. I am constantly amazed at their ability to lie while at the same time sounding so holier-than-thou. Medved is slightly better, but he also lies almost continuously, with intermittent bits of rational thought thrown in there.
FAIR has compiled tons of data on the media, and Rush Limbaugh in particular: Rush Limbaugh. They have detailed the ever-growing list of lies that Limbaugh spews out on a daily basis. Limbaugh even responded to one of their articles, with yet more lies. Check it out.
It’s not like the mainstream media is much better. I watched Tim Russert give a fawning interview to Limbaugh a few weeks ago, for example. And, in general, the media could not be more servile to the current President.
If you really want to understand how the mainstream mass media works, I can’t recommend Manufacturing Consent, by Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, too highly. They put forth a propaganda model to explain the behavior of the mainstream media and then test it with detailed studies of hundreds of situations. What they find is that the media is remarkably servile to the interests of the corporate elite and the state. This is what we would expect, but the degree to which they serve powerful interests is shocking.
Well, GIGO, I just felt like calling you on your “sheep” comment. I understand that you don’t agree with Rush Limbaugh. Fine and good. But what is with this “Nobody else agrees with me. They must all be deluded fools” syndrome? I expect it from certain types, like the Chomsky ditto-heads or the religious right. But it grates coming from otherwise reasonable people. Why not open your mind a little and try imagining that other people might have the same information you do, but might reach different conclusions?
Mmm, Lemur866, I have given examples that show not all is disclosed by those who are giving you part of the truth; of course you should first stop assigning to me quotes that I did not say.
Lets get this point clear: other people reach good conclusions, but to me, they are not good enough, especially if those conclusions were reached by deliberately avoiding all the “ugly” facts. This is something that even Cecil would disapprove. Besides, when even John McCain calls Rush a circus clown, well what more can I say?
And Chumpski: I agree that Manufacturing Consent is the best book from Chomski. My only nitpick with you is that I did not get from the book an image of a media that is “remarkably servile to the interests of the corporate elite and the state” I think it is more complicated than that. For example: the filters that remove reporters with a conscience, can create an organization that does not follow the state’s will.
Wait, were you under the impression that I listened to Rush Limbaugh every day and got my news from him? I’ll concede that Rush Limbaugh is a partisan entertainer who gives only one side of a multi-sided argument.
That doesn’t excuse your labeling your average right-wing radio listener a sheep.
.
You said this, correct? Look, it just rubs me the wrong way. It is elitist, scornful, superior. Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe that the average American makes pretty good decisions for themselves most of the time. So whenever I hear blanket pronouncements of sheepitude (and the right wingers do it too, of course), I get annoyed. Because if the vast majority of people really are sheep, then the authoritarians are right and the masses must be ruled with an iron fist, all for their own good. I don’t believe in authoritarianism, and I don’t believe that the vast majority of people are sheep. I don’t see how anyone who thinks of themselves as liberal could either.
On the first page of the introduction to the 2002 introduction, they write:
“This book centers on what we call a ‘Propaganda Model,’ an analytical framework that attempts to explain the performance ot the U.S. media in terms of the basic institutional structures and relationships within which they operate. It is our view that, among their other functions, the media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them.”
Fine, I see you create quotes and miss quotes too:
I see though, that I need to explain this another way: If the followers of Rush do access alternative sources of information, they are NOT sheep. Happy?
That last reply was for Lemur866, Chumpski, I still see no direct connection with the state there, if you reflect a little, you should realize that the Venezuela case does show a situation were the state is at odds with the powerful interests that control the media. I agree that it could turn the other way around soon.
Oh, I see what you mean. I think we were talking at cross purposes.
I was talking only about the U.S. mainstream mass media, not the media in general. Manufacturing Consent deals only with the U.S. mass media. In the U.S. the state and the corporate elite are incestually intertwined, so that their interests are usually (but not always) the same. This is not the case for every country, though, as is clear in Venezuela, for instance.
It does indeed seem the Democratic party is being bitch slapped around by the Greedy Old Peckerwoods, and on a regular basis…Bad time to try to raise the process by its moral short hairs… and not to say the average Democrat is anywhere near the bellweather of moral fortitude…its all that liberal acceptance of professed immorality that keeps me a firmly entrenched Democrat to this day. Unfortunantly the only one out there that has any real chance to effect change where it would really count is Cain, a Republican. So we Democrats are regulated to sit back and moan until this current conservative bullshit blitzkrieg blows up in their faces. And it seems the Bush Baby is affecting that in record time…Happy days are just around the corner!
As how any one could find the least redeeming attribute to pin to the lapel of Rush Limbaugh is beyond me. I would tune into his parainoid slatherings just for the asshole entertainment value he offered. But that crack about “There finally being a dog in the White House” (refering to Chelsea Clinton, and at the time a greiviously impressionable twelve year old kid), any kick I got out of the buffoon’s ramblings dissolved on the level of unrestrained venom this guy was prepared to spew. And how could you consider giving as well as you get with an example like this?..The Bush girls would provide an easy enough target, but there is a line.
Yeah, it's high time the Dems addressed their venom deficit.
There ain’t a angel to be found in the Democratic Party…I woulndn’t even presume such…And their bullshit stinks every bit as well…Its just the difference in supposed philosophical slants… The Dems make it an easier inclusion for us realitive failures.
Wait, how did I manufacture that quote? Look over what you wrote. If want to clarify what you meant, fine. I took it as a blanket condemnation of a whole class of people. If that’s not what you meant all you had to do was say so. The accusation that I created that quote is untrue. You said it. If I misunderstood, or missed something else you said, then that’s why we’re having this discussion. But I did NOT manufacture that quote.
Are we next going to say that because Jesus used a sheepherder metaphor that he was evil?
Now, now, this is getting silly, I say that is an opinion, you began by creating quotes against me, only later you produced the right one, and in any case I already clarified.
Seriously, I see there was a bigger problem on you saying originally that I hated that group, I never said that, and I am an American also (maybe too much average, I only have a part time job right now) I should have more to complain for having someone concentrating on a distraction rather than the matter at hand.
As I see it there are only nitpicks, and no direct take on my main complaint against AM radio. It still remains a source of news that ignores the whole picture, and then reaches simple conclusions that eventually are shown as incomplete.
