The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse: Rush the Spokesman for Football Fans

[Ace_Face]

Honest question: has the man ever debated anyone, live and in person? The few times I’ve listened (and it’s been a mercifully long time) it was strictly a one-man show.

[Ace_Face]

I mean other than a short exchange with a caller, of course.

[elmwood]

Even as a liberal, I’m impressed by Rush Limbaugh, and his talents of persuasion.

Rush has a strong knowledge of football, and as long as he keeps politics out of it, so what? When he starts droning on about the “Socialist left-coast San Francisco 49ers,” then I’ll raise a ruckus.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Great. Now I have to mute the sound during ESPN games. What the hell does this wide load know about football? Christ, haven’t we learned anything from the Dennis Miller fiasco? What’s next, Phil Donahue calling Lakers games? Dr. Laura calling the Masters? Please let this hideous trend end soon.

[asterion]

*Originally posted by elmwood *
**

Rush has a strong knowledge of football, and as long as he keeps politics out of it, so what? When he starts droning on about the “Socialist left-coast San Francisco 49ers,” then I’ll raise a ruckus. **

All right! A whole new way to bash the West-coast offense!

[Scylla]

Weirddave:

You’re going to need more than a couple of minutes of listening before you’re qualified to pronounce judgement, IMO.

I didn’t hear him blast Clinton the way you say, but I only listened for about 1/2 hour while driving.

However, if your objection is that he is conservative, and some of his rhetoric qualifies as partisan rubbish, my response is “well, duh!”

[Ferret_Herder]

I don’t particularly like Rush - yes, I’ve listened to him on occasion - nor do I agree with his politics. However, he has a good speaking voice, and if he has knowledge and experience with football I can’t see that he’d be a bad choice as long as he doesn’t get political. Considering that - last I’d heard, which may be outdated now - he’d been having some difficulty dealing with recovery from his hearing loss and subsequent operation, it might be a good career move to have another broadcasting job where he doesn’t have to have quite as sharp of hearing as he might in talk radio.

Dennis Miller used to be known (though he’s changed within the last year) as quite a raving liberal, so I guess I’m not surprised to see a similar uproar about another politically-oriented non-sportscaster joining a sports show.

[Sofa_King]

I just found something very interesting. You may recall Al Franken’s famous dismissal of the Dittoheads:

Now, am I saying that dittoheads are ignoramuses? No. I don’t need to. Listen to Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania:

We just concluded a study of 360 people, whom we watched watch the health care reform debate for nine months. And at the end of that period, we took the people who said they relied on talk radio, and by this, we mean primarily Rush Limbaugh. . . . And we asked them how well informed they felt. . . .Of all the people we watched, they said they were the best informed. And of all the people we watched, they were the least informed.

What a surprise, huh? Limbaugh listeners thought they were the best informed, and yet were the least informed.

How is such a thing even measured? Well, like all the other people studied, talk radio listeners were asked questions of “objective fact” such as: "Which groups (the elderly, poor, middle class, etc. “are most likely to be uninsured?” The Limbaugh listeners were “highly likely” to give an incorrect answer such as “the elderly” who, of course, are all covered by Medicare.

But why would people so woefully lacking in the basic facts of an issue think they were the best informed? Social scientists call the phenomenon “pseudo-certainty.” I call it “being a fucking moron.”(*)

HOWEVER, when I read what I think is the actual study (.pdf file), released after Franken’s book I find the following:

Two conclusions obtain. First, regular listeners of PTR have higher levels of knowledge and correctly think they have higher levels of knowledge than non-listeners. Second, regular listeners of Rush Limbaugh, Conservative, and Liberal/Moderate PTR are no different from one another in actual or reported knowledge. This is true of civics knowledge, general factual knowledge about social and political issues, and factual knowledge about things in the news. The claims are based on knowledge and felt knowledge scores after they are corrected for a variety of controls including education, sex, gender, age, main stream media exposure, and ideology.

The audience of PTR may bring some special characteristics with it to the medium which we are unable to measure. Or the content of PTR may add to or facilitate the audience’s store of knowledge. What is clear is that for the questions we used, no one audience of PTR — Limbaugh’s or others — is different in social or political knowledge, from the other listeners. my bolding–SK

I have no explanation for this change in results from preliminary to final, but I’d sure like to learn more. At any rate, I find it to be something of a relief to learn that this country hasn’t been usurped by a small army of programmed ingnoramuses.

Moreover, the same study seems to bear out something of what Scylla said above:

Mainstream media portrayal may account for the fact that non-listeners view political talk radio negatively. Regular listeners may see in mainstream media a portrait inconsistent with their own experience of political talk radio. This discrepancy may account in part for the finding that listeners are more cynical about mainstream media than are non-listeners.

Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t think Rush is a complete truth-twisting weasel, but at least Rush’s listeners aren’t complete fools, and perhaps they have a point that Rush’s show is unfairly maligned.

I can’t believe I just fucking said that.

(And for the record, Scylla, although we disagree quite often, I for one never thought you were a fucking moron.)

[december]

*Originally posted by Sofa King *
I have no explanation for this change in results from preliminary to final, but I’d sure like to learn more. At any rate, I find it to be something of a relief to learn that this country hasn’t been usurped by a small army of programmed ingnoramuses.

That’s an excellent pickup and a fair-minded point, Sofa King. Three comments:

1. Your first cite from the book mentions a sample size of 360. The study itself says the sample size was 1666.

2. The quote from Franken’s book says the Limbaugh listeners were the least well-informed of all the people the study watched. But, who was in the study? Presumably people who were interested enough in issues to listen to political talk radio. Chances are this group is much more knowledgable than average about politcal issues.

3. The quote from Franken’s book says,

listeners were asked questions of “objective fact” such as: "Which groups (the elderly, poor, middle class, etc. “are most likely to be uninsured?” The Limbaugh listeners were “highly likely” to give an incorrect answer such as “the elderly” who, of course, are all covered by Medicare.

This particular example looks like an ambiguous question. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to interpret it as asking about private insurance.

[Weirddave]

*Originally posted by Scylla *
**Weirddave:

You’re going to need more than a couple of minutes of listening before you’re qualified to pronounce judgement, IMO.

**

Granted, certainly, it’s just that every time I’ve listened, “giving him a chance”, so to speak, it’s not very long before he starts on one of these tirades dealing not with the issues or facts involved, but simply with attacking the people who don’t agree with him, often in the most outlandish way. It’s like listening to radio Collunsbury.

Perhaps it’s my weakness that I can’t get beyond that.

[rjung]

*Originally posted by Ace_Face *
Honest question: has the man ever debated anyone, live and in person?

Not AFAIK – the few times he’s gone face-to-face with anyone who isn’t already predisposed to love him (e.g., David Letterman), he gets his ass handed to him.