Well, according to this site, over 1/3 of Americans cite talk radio as their primary source of political information. That’s pretty scary/sad, if true.
This site says 40 million Americans listen to talk radio at least once a week.
That makes talk radio an awfully powerful medium, with virtually no Democratic voices. It’s enough to make the difference when Democrats and Republicans are as evenly divided as they are at present.
I’d like to be sure I understand you, Chumpsky. You agree that Limbaugh was accurate on his primary contention, that Spike Lee called Trent Lott is a card-carrying member of the KKK. You agree that Limbaugh was accurate when he reported that Spike Lee laughed. But, you say Limbaugh lied when he claimed that others there laughed. Is that what you’re saying?
If so, you may be right. I heard one noise that might have been Robyn Roberts briefly beginnng to laugh, but I couldn’t be sure. In any event, she didn’t just laugh. She also continued questioning Lee in manner that I interpreted as encouraging him to soften his accusation.
Of course, this isn’t much of a lie, because it’s a trivial point and because Limbaugh played the tape. His listeners could make their own judgment of how Roberts reacted to Lee’s calulmnies.
Wrong. Rush went on a big diet a couple of years ago and is no longer fat. You can see his current picture on my cites.
Yea, on a diet of orphan’s prayers and baby seals!
Rand…Currently filling out the forms to get Rush’s fat pants in the Smithsonian
His diet is from The Zone.
- The statement is not an exaggeration, it is a gross distortion – He calls modern Democrats segregationists because more Republicans voted for the particular Act than Democrats.
- From the the cite you gave:
"Scholars remain divided over how much credit Nixon deserved for affirmative action and what factors nudged him toward this controversial policy. "
<snip>
“Finding little principle behind Nixon’s policy, Hugh Davis Graham emphasized the president’s political motive, enigmatic personality, ambivalence to civil rights, and decentralized policymaking. Graham also noted that Nixon moved away from affirmative action as the 1972 election approached.”
<snip>
"…led him to approve the “Philadelphia Plan,” an affirmative action program for the building trades. Yet when that plan hindered Nixon’s courtship of white blue-collar workers, he backtracked. "
<snip>
“The practice of affirmative action developed neither at once nor according to a single grand scheme”
In short, it is an article which presents arguments made by historians one way or the other. Fine, under Nixon this policy might have gained some sporadic momentum.
But, here’s the deal: As usual, Rush is attacking a straw man with episodic cites. No one is calling the Republican party racist. It so happens the Leader of that party in the Senate made a remark which (as you also have agreed) is retrograde and sounds racist and this issue is about him and his leadership role. The truth is: such and worse debating is the hallmark of talk radio.
What about the other two “essays”?
Come the fk on! This statement is so ludicrous as to border on insanity. It underscores one thing for me - there is no point in worrying about Democrats losing anything to the absolutely stupid morons producing and listening to this shit. Anyone who could listen to this is so far gone as to not possibly consider voting Democrat, embracing a progressive thought, or for that matter, walking 10 yards without saying “right, left, right, left, right, left” under their breath. And posters here defending this - in fact, citing the above statement as a counter-example to the charge of lies and half-truths (and defending the assertion that Rush is fat) are pathetic. Be a man, stand up and say, “Yeah, we (or they, if you choose) did that, and it was wrong.” If you have a shred of integrity, you will distance yourself from an assertion like that above faster than Trent Lott can say, “I support affirmative action.” But “integrity” and “conservative” appear to be about as far apart as the Cincinatti Bengals and the Lombardi Trophy.
I don’t quite see where he called modern Dems segregationists. Can you point it out?
I am puzzled by this remark. Quite a few pundits and politicians have implied that the Republican Party is racist since Lott’s comments. E.g., Paul Krugman of the New York Times.
On the first, I responded to Chumpsky. Actually I’m not clear on what you think was dishonest. He said Spike Lee was an illustration, not the entire media. Are you saying that Limbaugh somewhere wrongly implied that Lee was typical of the media?
On #3, I thought you agreed that Limbaugh was not inaccurate. Even one accurate example would mean Chumpsky loses his challenge, which was: “present any Limbaugh political writing or transcript of at least 200 words, and I will point out at least one lie.”
quote:
From Rush Limbaugh - In reality, as we covered on Monday’s program, and today’s morning update, it was Republicans who passed the Civil Rights Act and implemented affirmative action – and it was the Democrats who were the segregationists.
And we know that because… you say so? There are three statements made by Limbaugh. If they are as ludicrous as you say, please provide evidence:
Who passed the Civil Rights Act (of 1964, presumably)?
Please provide the voting records that show it is ludicrous to say that it was the Republicans.
** Who implemented affirmative action? **
Who introduced legislation and who were the key figures in getting it passed?
** Who were the segregationists? **
This is possibly just the opposite party to that with the most votes for the Civil Rights Act in the first point.
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. I just do not accept it is a valid contribution to a great debate to assert that statements are “ludicrous” without providing any evidence.
Those who criticize Rush should take a look at what he’s responding to. Here’s another example.
By modern, I meant post Strom Thurmond as Democrat era. So Rush is responding to Krugman? Why doesn’t he say so? Remember that he is making a statement that Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act (consciously loosely worded) and implemented affirmative action (again a stretch) and that Democrats were the segregationists in the middle of some diatribe against Jesse Jackson. No context, nothing.
As for the Spike Lee thing, he starts his essay with:
"To illustrate, my friends, that these accusations of racism are a one-way street, we have sound bites from Tuesday’s Good Morning America, where film director Spike Lee ranted about Trent Lott with GMA host, Robin Roberts. "
Who is he talking about as the accusers? Spike Lee? The opening sentence is consciously vague suggesting that there is an entire group of people (media, presumably) who are hypocritical and don’t charge Democrats with racism. But, the entire essay is on Spike Lee and how he called Lott a KKK member and how Byrd was one. (Spike Lee is clearly used as an exemplar of his opening statement)
As for #3, please, some reporter faked something on TV. The whole lie thing is between you and Chumpsky. I am only pointing out what I find sloppy, ill-intentioned writing.
Several liberals made similar attacks. Note the Clinton quote above, which is worse than Limbaugh’s.
I think this is a fair criticism.
Valid point, as far as it goes. Yes, Rush implies that there are many one-sided accusers in the media. I know he has supported this POV by observing those who focused so much on Lott’s racist statement but ignored Byrd’s racist statement. (BTW I don’t necessarily agree with him here. I don’t see these situations as fully parallel.) Anyhow, on this particular show, Rush addressed only Spike Lee. However, his lead-in was not a lie, because he believes that there is widespread media bias.
CongressLink
discusses the vote on the bill that would late become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the House of Representatives
On the consideration of the equivalent bill by the Senate
It was obvious that a majority of Senators supported the bill, but of course with the Senate’s tradition of unlimited debate (which could only be stopped by a cloture motion supported by two-thirds of the membership, at the time), that was not enough. It was this cloture motion, not the final vote, which decided the fate of the Civil Rights Act.
And finally
Something we should all keep in mind is that political parties in this country are exceedingly loose and have little ideological consistency, especially between reasons. I find it kind of disingenuous when people pretend they don’t know this. Add in the fact that the political parties have changed profoundly over time, and cheap talk of which political party “thought” and “did” what (as if political parties were monolithic entities capable of discrete action) becomes pretty much useless.
Rush Limbaugh doesn’t usually aim his venom at Democrats per se - he doesn’t holler about Grover Cleveland or Adlai Stevenson or George Wallace. He rails primarily at contemporary, mostly northern and western, “establishment liberals” - people who supported the civil rights legislation of the 1960s earlier and in greater numbers than the Republican Party they eventually needed for passage. Everett Dirksen - the Republican who save the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - is hardly the 1960s equivalent of a “Limbaugh Republican”; if Hubert Humphrey and Mike Mansfield were alive today Limbaugh would demonize them constantly.
For a conservative Republican to try to claim credit for a law passed by liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats because conservative Democrats opposed it is pretty foul.
“between reasons”? Uhhh … I don’t know how that slipped in there, and believe it or not I did previous. Political parties have little ideological consistency between regions.
Pardon me, but how does someone evaluate the truth value of something filled with so much slang and invective as this? The headline is “Lesley Stahl Faked Algore-gasm”. Is this truth or lie?
How in the world should I know? First, I’d have to know what an Algore-gasm is. Actually, before that I’d have to figure out who Algore is. Is he a different person from Albert Gore?
Does he really know what is going on Lesley Stahl’s head? What if I watched the interview and decided Stahl didn’t sound particularly “surprised and shocked”? Would that make me a liar?
My point is not that I don’t know if Limbaugh is lying or not. My point is that insulting someone does not constitute truth or a lie. If someone said “Rush Limbaugh is an unpleasant, repetitious, reactionary imbecile who gives Republicans a bad name by acting like Colonel Blimp”, is that true or false? It is simply not a factual type of discourse.
In order for Chumpsky to find a lie in that piece, he would have to prove that Limbaugh didn’t really think Stahl sounded “surprised and shocked”. Or else prove that Michael Dukakis isn’t an “expert on losing”.
Thank you, Boris B. It also looks as if the split in the vote may have been more on geographic lines than party. As the Democrats held more of the southern seats, then more Democrats voted against the act than Republicans did.
I’m still trying to figure out why it is that Republicans seem to read more than Liberals as well? Judging by book sales, that seems to be the case. And why is it that Bloggers on the net are probably 80% Conservative? And how come conservative magazines like TechCentralStation and National Review Online are thriving, while the more liberal magazines like Salon are struggling?
It just seems that conservatives are much more engaged. Sure, lots of people listen to Rush, but it’s a far stretch to say that that is their ONLY source of information. That’s like saying because Donahue has an audience of 2 million liberals, that 2 million liberals only get their information from Donahue. Hell, most of them are probably there just to watch the train wreck.
Does a lie in the headline count as a lie? Byrd left the KKK after he discovered what it was truly about, six decades ago. “It’s Democrat Byrd In the Klan, Spike” … sounds pretty present tense to me, unless “it’s” is a contraction of it “it was”.
I feel like, as usual, I’m probably killing this thread by posting several times in a row late in the game. Please don’t hate me if that happens, but I can’t let this drop just yet.
From example #2
The only reason that’s not a lie is because of careful phrasing. Limbaugh carefully insinuates that somebody, somewhere has said that Republicans were “the” racists in the old South, pretending as usual that parties and ideologies are or were one and the same. Just because the deep south went Republican in 1964 doesn’t make Barry Goldwater a racist, and as far as I know nobody says otherwize.
Limbaugh is implying that somehow Jackson asked Lott to change parties because the Republican Party is inherently racist. If he had stated it outright, it would have been a lie.
One more time, and then I’ll be quiet - ideologies and parties are not the same thing, Rush.
I ventured a guess: talk radio and the internet may have provided an outlet to many Americans who saw mainstream reporting as titled towards the Left.
BTW, your assertion that Republicans read more than Liberals comes from:
(a) 80% bloggers being conservative: cite please? + how does this logically mean conservatives read more? Even if you only include “web-reading”, does reading more blogs mean something w.r.t engaging in intelligent discourse?
Hypothetically, an entire community could be rapaciously reading anti-semitic literature.
(b) RE: best-sellers - I recall Stupid White Men making the list along with entertaining pieces by Ann Coulter and O’Reilly. Says a lot about best-sellers!
© RE: magazines, Can you provide cites to prove that many more liberal magazines are floundering than conservative ones, and again EVEN IF this were true, it doesn’t mean much. We are talking $$$, marketing and selling stuff here.
To reiterate, my overall take is that a large market that was largely untapped was finally drilled into and talk radio, web magazines etc are just being lapped up by them.
Boris, keep it coming. I didn’t bother digging deep into the examples, because even if they were true, there were fallacies floating on top.