I’ve never been a big believer in whitewashing people’s lives just because they died. Most people are some share of good and bad, weak and strong, righteous and venal, and I’ve always thought we should speak truth about the complicated human experience rather than deify someone who’s no longer there to bask in the kind words and spared feelings.
Admittedly, that’s a complicated case that can be litigated at another time, because I’m here to talk about someone who isn’t a complicated case at all: Rush Limbaugh.
That broiled sack of pork fat was an honest-to-gawd monster, and anyone who speaks well of him upon his death ought to be called out for it at the time of their own. I was perfectly happy — elated, even — to hear he’d passed on yesterday.
Quite simply, the world is a better place without him in it. There are vanishingly few names ahead of his on a list of people who have hurt America more in the past 50 years: Rupert Murdoch, probably, and maybe some other TV executives and perhaps a fella named Zuckerberg. But even ghouls like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump can only tip their cap at the trail of irradiated disrespect left behind by a man who had a piece of crusty white dog shit where his soul should have been.
His cruelty is well-documented, and I’m not going to dignify it with details here. He hated women, gays, minorities, environmentalists … basically everyone who wasn’t a white conservative male. The through-line tying Nixon to Reagan to Trump is findable if you’ve read some history; the line between Rush’s casual bigotry and Trump’s “the cruelty is the point” campaign is bright enough to be visible from Mars.
If all that drug-addled bigot did was churn out more Republicans or boost his party’s popularity, it would be bad enough, as the right wing is and will forever be the enemy of progress. But no, Rush’s crowning achievement is somehow even worse than that.
Strip out the brass band and hearty handshake of campaigning and politics is, at its core, an exercise in allocating resources. Should the state spend money to build a new road or invest in the electrical grid? Should a city put more money into the nursing home or the teen job program? Those are political questions, and in that realm, you can have debates on those issues, and then expand outward to tax policy or deregulation or a million other things that are deeply fundamental to how our country operates, but aren’t necessarily interesting or easily explainable topics to most people.
However, voters were at one time quite interested in the outcomes of how those questions were answered. And unless the pol had charisma coming out of their you-know-what, voters could and would boot their ass out of office for failing — even if they were in the same party. (Just ask Herbert Hoover or Jimmy Carter about going from a win to an ass-kicking four years later.)
In a post-Rush world, though, that’s not what politics is any more. Now it’s more important that you talk unceasing shit about your enemies, real or (mostly) imagined. And if everything goes wrong while you don’t do the job you’re elected for? Double down: It’s somehow still their fault!
Look at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott going on Fox News while his state is literally freezing to death to say it was caused by the Green New Deal, which hasn’t even been brought up in Congress yet. Is he going to face penance for sacrificing people on the altar of deregulation? Not unless someone with more charisma and even fewer morals primaries him from the right!
And while those are the only politics the GOP has left, it’s not just them. New York’s piece of shit governor Andrew “Democratic Trump” Cuomo saw his Covid Kumbaya glow-up finally came to an end. Why? Because after delays from Cuomo, the state reported just how badly it botched its nursing home rules in the beginning of the pandemic. His move to save face? Accuse a fellow Democrat — an Asian, of course — of shady dealings with nail salon legislation. But will Cuomo face electoral comeuppance? Probably not!
Hell, it’s not even just in the political realm: Gina Carano can make a stink over getting fired for her “politics” when the reality is that she’s a dull bigot who hurts a corporate brand. And do conservatives feel even the slightest need to say “Gee, y’know, we’re not all anti-Semites or cranks?” No! They gleefully share stories fully admitting their politics are anti-Semitism! Because the other team doesn’t like it … and that’s politics now.
Rush wasn’t a smart man; indeed, he wasn’t even intelligent enough not to fall for his own propaganda when it came to smoking and cancer. (LOL) But he found a niche entertaining millions of Americans by turning politics into a team blood sport, and we’ve seen how that can make democracy in this country wobble.
So yeah, you won’t catch me trying to be polite over Rush’s death. I truly hope the notorious transphobe doesn’t mind being a new gender neutral bathroom … haha, I’m kidding, he won’t have a choice in the matter.
In other news and sportsball …
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/02/17/democrats-biden-recovery-package/ — the stimulus has the votes, but the next round of economic packages could be a bumpy ride for Democrats
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/science/nasas-perseverance-is-about-to-land-on-mars-china-and-the-uae-will-be-there-too/2021/02/17/b747f2d0-5372-4056-876e-8f2aef148eea_video.html — NASA mission to Mars lands today, joining recent Chinese and UAE visits to our next-door neighbor
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/tribune-alden-sale-local-journalism/2021/02/17/04411fc2-712a-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html — more terrible news for the newspaper industry.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30919955/new-york-mets-outfielder-tim-tebow-retiring-pro-baseball — Tim Tebow hangs it up as a baseball player; as some wags on Twitter have joked, he was forced to quit because like Trump, he couldn’t get to 270.
The deeply satisfying video of Trump’s former casino coming down in Atlantic City: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/nyregion/atlantic-city-trump-plaza-implosion.html?surface=most-popular&fellback=false&req_id=395343367&algo=top_conversion&variant=3_top_conversion_daysback_4&imp_id=964011613&action=click&module=Most%20Popular&pgtype=Homepage
And now, to the music …
… have a great Thursday, everyone!
Here’s one that gave me a ‘huh? hmh.’ this morning: all that Stonks action from the past year is resulting in a minor windfall fo the US Treasury in the form of capital gains taxes. The bump might offset the costs of the 2020 covid relief bills by itself.
This probably means Robinhood will re-register in the Bahamas somewhere within the next year, after small retail investors notice they’re being taxed more than the large institutional investors who got their tax shelters done with.
Forgot the link:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/18/capital-gains-taxes-surging-469631
I’ve posted before about the power of conservative talk radio. It tends to not get scrutinized much, because it’s not something that most white-collar people know or care about:
“Yet talk radio still somehow manages to fly below the national media radar. In large part, that is because media consumption patterns are segregated by class. If you visit a carpentry shop or factory floor, or hitch a ride with a long-haul truck driver, odds are that talk radio is a fixture of the aural landscape. But many white-collar workers, journalists included, struggle to understand the reach of talk radio because they don’t listen to it, and don’t know anyone who does.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opinion/talk-radio-conservatives-trumpism.html
But it’s completely true. I never hear conservative talk radio unless I’m getting my oiled changed — I’d never play it or listen to it, but millions of people do. I can’t find the other article I posted before, but there are something like 1800 AM stations across the US pumping out conservative bullshit, like some sort of bizarre Radio Free Redneck, and it’s been going on for years.
On the positive side, Limbaugh’s demise is paralleling the decline of AM talk radio. Just like Republicans, listeners are older, grayer, and less educated, and today we have MANY more options available to us through satellite radio, internet, etc. So the outsized influence that Limbaugh wielded (evilly) is trickling away.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/rush-limbaugh-conservative-talk-radio/2021/02/09/97e03fd0-6264-11eb-9061-07abcc1f9229_story.html
100%. And the left (or even the center’s) inability to build any media outreach like it is why they’re endlessly on the back foot while 10 minutes after something happens, every racist uncle’s FB post is already in lockstep on what to say about it. And that matters because a lot of people who don’t pay attention see things like that and buy in!
And per your AM radio link: I’m no Joe Rogan fan for many reasons, but if he’s the Limbaugh replacement for the next generation of listeners, I’m … kind of OK with that? He’s a lot less vile than Limbaugh.
Rush’s “career” is interesting in that he seemed to slide into being a scumbag over time. I distinctly remember him appearing on TV in the 90s or so and basically admitting that “Rush Limbaugh” was a character he played, not him. Kind of like professional wrestling, he was an entertainer and not a complete asshole. I can’t verify that at the moment because it was TV and more or less pre-Internet, but I don’t think my memory is playing tricks on me. But somewhere along the way I think he fell for his own bullshit (and the money) and became his own character.
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
Stephen Colbert took that to its logical extreme in The Colbert Report, but he was firmly parodying Limbaugh and his ilk. Anyway, I think Joe Rogan needs to be careful about just how much he inhabits his character, too.
Didn’t Alex Jones try using that as a defense in the lawsuit brought against him by the parents of Sandy Hook?
Did he? I saw it described as “rhetorical hyperbole” which I guess is kind of the same thing? Didn’t work, though.
…I forget if it was one of those cases or if it was in an earlier bout of legal strife but he has definitely stated in a court that what he does is entertainment not journalism and his on-screen statements & behavior is not something he’d like a court to consider indicative of his actual character or beliefs…I think it was in divorce proceedings that his attorney argued he was a “performance artist” although jones himself might have got all pissy about how that term be interpreted?
The NY Times and NPR and the rest of the apologist media could have saved themselves a lot of travel AND done better reporting if they had skipped the diner safaris and just reported on talk radio hosts, their producers, and their callers.
I can bet the way the typical story is written is that the papers and networks spend an inordinate amount of time talking to DC and state party contacts to hear the spin, write the story, and then drop into Ohio or Iowa to harvest a few quotes and photo to drop into predetermined holes.
It’s a process that thinks what people are hearing and saying offscreen is irrelevant.
This a million times over! Thom Hartmann talk’s about this all the time and even tried to get Tom Steyer to spend his money on a liberal leaning talk radio network.
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Billionaire-Activist-Tom-S-by-Thom-Hartmann-Billionaires_Clear-Channel_Impeach-Trump_Radio-180626-223.html
I know a bunch of people that were brainwashed by the AM evil echo chamber and don’t think they could ever be deprogrammed.
There’s a lot of reporting about the influence of Fox News and how older people are literally brainwashed by watching it all day every day, but there’s very little about AM radio. It’s assumed that people who have jobs don’t have time to listen to it, but as the article points out, a LOT of them DO.
It’s playing over speakers in garages and warehouses and company trucks, and it reinforces all the petty bullshit grievances blue-collar workers have against almost everyone except the rich people who are actually responsible for these workers’ situations. It’s right up there with religion as an opiate for the masses, fueling and exacerbating all that misplaced anger and providing convenient and WRONG targets for it.
I honestly don’t think liberal talk radio will ever be a thing. It’s been tried over and over again at least since the early 90’s and has never gotten much of a foothold. I don’t know what it is, but my guess is the work environment disparity. You’re not going to find a lot of liberals in work environments where the right wing bullshit gets aired (and those that do know better than to complain because they will get targeted until they quit). Whereas there are right wingers in white collar environments and you can bet your ass they would complain loudly if Thom Hartmann’s show was aired in the office. Plus, office environments just don’t lend themselves to radio of almost any sort. Hence the proliferation of people wearing headphones at their cubes all day.
Work environment is definitely a big part of it. As a minor aside, when I come across something dubious at the office, I Google that shit. Truck drivers and mechanics and construction workers don’t really have the option to fact-check on the job, even if they were inclined to do so.
I also think there’s a psychological aspect to the whole thing as well. Conservative talk shows speak to anger and frustration and they give it a mouthpiece. Liberal programming doesn’t have that type of a “hook” to appeal to an audience. I also think that a lot of the blue-collar anger stems from their personal situations, and the person sitting in the cubicle in an office is typically earning more and not performing back-breaking labor. So they aren’t as likely to fall into the whole faux-oppression thing. And there’s obviously an education gap between the two audiences.
It’s a good point about blue collar workers not necessarily being in a position to fact check stuff on the spot.
But it’s silly to say liberal media can’t or doesn’t appeal to anger and frustration. There are plenty of outrage machines working on the liberal side too. Our whole culture seems to be founded on outrage these days. It’s exhausting.
You’re not wrong, but it’s a different type of … perpetuation? Conservative (and I should say right-wing) talking points seem to be highly repetitive and consistently hammering the same (often incorrect) points. Liberal outrage seems to me to be more outrage du jour and moves fairly quickly along to the next “incident.” Right-wing outrage tends to target groups while liberal outrage targets individuals, which I also think increases the “permanence” of the messaging “Those people always do …” as opposed to “Ted Cruz just fled to Mexico while his state is freezing to death.” It’s not that right-wing messaging doesn’t target individuals (ask Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama) but they are targeted as representatives of a group (women or Black) rather than necessarily as themselves. Also right-wing propaganda has NO fear of lying, period. Even when liberal outrage is overblown, it’s pretty rare that it’s not based on some sort of facts.
There’s no fine line, but I don’t think anyone can deny that right-wing propaganda is more simplistic, repetitive and dishonest than liberal messaging.
That’s a great distinction. I was mulling over how it was different, and I definitely thought about lies as a distinguishing factor, but the generalizing is also a really important part.
It gets argued that NPR is the opposite of conservative talk radio, but the problem is that NPR is awful in terms of news and entertainment value. They are addicted to the same old tropes and they are stuck in a format of presenting four minute incremental updates so that they can’t do meaningful reporting.
Nobody in charge sees any reason to reevaluate what they’re doing in any meaningful way.
Depends on the NPR program. I’ve found that the Marketplace programs are actually very informative and well reported. But, I don’t bother listening to the general NPR programs like All Things Considered or Morning Edition.
Also, NPR is not–and never has–claimed to be the opposite of anything, much less right wing radio. Their listenership is pretty evenly split between conservative and liberal demographics.
And that’s the thing, I have no idea what it would even be, because I think it’s safe to say lefty talk radio is a failed idea at this point. But there are other ways of getting at it and I would love to see them really invest and promote something — anything — as a counterbalance to the thousands of hours of Levin/Beck/Hannity going out across the nation.