Posted on 06/07/2004 5:50:22 PM PDT by quidnunc
Last year, on a long car trip, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh shout. I usually agree with Rush Limbaugh; therefore I usually don't listen to him. I listen to NPR: "World to end — poor and minorities hardest hit." I like to argue with the radio. Of course, if I had kept listening to Limbaugh, whose OxyContin addiction was about to be revealed, I could have argued with him about drugs. I don't think drugs are bad. I used to be a hippie. I think drugs are fun. Now I'm a conservative. I think fun is bad. I would agree all the more with Limbaugh if, after he returned from rehab, he'd shouted (as most Americans ought to), "I'm sorry I had fun! I promise not to have any more!"
Anyway, I couldn't get NPR on the car radio, so I was listening to Rush Limbaugh shout about Wesley Clark, who had just entered the Democratic presidential-primary race. Was Clark a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton?! Was Clark a DNC-sponsored Howard Dean spoiler?! "He's somebody's sock puppet!" Limbaugh bellowed. I agreed; but a thought began to form. Limbaugh wasn't shouting at Clark, who I doubt tunes in to AM talk radio the way I tune in to NPR. And "Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop!" was not a call calculated to lure Democratic voters to the Bush camp. Rush Limbaugh was shouting at me.
Me. I am a little to the right of … Why is the Attila comparison used? Fifth-century Hunnish depredations on the Roman Empire were the work of an overpowerful executive pursuing a policy of economic redistribution in an atmosphere of permissive social mores. I am a little to the right of Rush Limbaugh. I'm so conservative that I approve of San Francisco City Hall marriages, adoption by same-sex couples, and New Hampshire's recently ordained Episcopal bishop. Gays want to get married, have children, and go to church. Next they'll be advocating school vouchers, boycotting HBO, and voting Republican.
I suppose I should be arguing with my fellow right-wingers about that, and drugs, and many other things. But I won't be. Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with conservatives. The formats of their radio and television programs allow for little measured debate, and to the extent that evidence is marshaled to support conservative ideas, the tone is less trial of Socrates than Johnnie Cochran summation to the O.J. jury. Except the jury — with a clever marketing strategy — has been rigged. I wonder, when was the last time a conservative talk show changed a mind?
This is an argument I have with my father-in-law, an avid fan of such programs. Although again, I don't actually argue, because I usually agree with my father-in-law. Also, he's a retired FBI agent, and at seventy-eight is still a licensed private investigator with a concealed-weapon permit. But I say to him, "What do you get out of these shows? You already agree with everything they say."
"They bring up some good points," he says.
"That you're going to use on whom? Do some of your retired-FBI-agent golf buddies feel shocked by the absence of WMDs in Iraq and want to give Saddam Hussein a mulligan and let him take his tee shot over?"
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Favorite: "My family were all rock-ribbed Republicans; my mother couldn't bring herself to say 'democrats' if there were children in the room, she'd say 'bast@rds' instead"
PJ ping
P.J. is a hoot. I thought the same thing when I saw it.
...more of a Libertarian, I think
PJ has written some brilliant pieces for Rolling Stone mag, as well as a number of books that you might enjoy, including "Parliament of Whores", "Eat the Rich", "Holidays in Hell", "Modern Manners", etc. He is late to the conservative side and considers himself to be mroe of a Libertarian. That being said, his assaults on liberal viewpoints and commentators are devastatingly accurate, and quite, funny to boot. To whit, from an essay about a "Volga peace cruise" written before the demise of the USSR: "Peaceniks love to talk about the glories of the new Soviet man and the wonders of the Soviet economy, but they still bring their own toilet paper when visiting the USSR" (or words to that effect)
I was a Nixon-hating democrat, mad at Ford, for pardoning Nixon, became a Reagan democrat after comparing Carter's misery and incompetence with Reagan's leadership, and became a conservative from listening to Rush.
I can't get Medved here. But Laura Ingraham, Gordon Liddy, and Sean Hannity are all good Conservative hosts. I like them all better than Rush.
But Rush did pioneer the genre, so I have to give him credit.
I like Rush, Medved, Ingraham, and a little of Savage (A little is all I can take of him sometimes. He get's on a free association rant and will work some magic and other times he's just ranting.)
This is exactly what happened to my parents and then my mom fussed at me to listen. We've converted quite a few apoliticals in our time. Got to take what we can get!
The Excerptor strikes again, posting a partial of an article that was not excerpt-obligatory, and where the link didn't work for a half-hour. Thanks for nothing!
My favourite P.J. O'Rourke quote (used by someone here at FR in their tagline recently) is "It takes a village to raise a child. The village is Washington. You are the child."
On the subject of this article - I usually get one laugh-out-loud moment per P.J. column, one per paragraph if he's really on-form. Perhaps he was having a bad day when he wrote this one.
You can get him via streaming audio from KRLA in Los Angeles.
There's a link at http://www.michaelmedved.com/
Well, one wouldn't expect the people who like to refer to themselves as 'ditto heads' to agree with O'Rourke here. Perhaps they don't quite understand the meaning of the word 'ditto'?!
For me it was an easy choice, but I didn't like losing the money the stamp cost. FDR was the most over rated prez until JFK came along and before them both there was Wilson, a real disaster. Darn, how could I forget LBJ, that Texan POC? Or Cahter, that walk-around human failure? All of these RAT idiots were then trumped by Clintoon, the worst ever!
Before I became a Republican, I listened to Rush because I found him to be one of the most entertaining personalities in all media. Eventually, he said all the right things, because I am now a Republican.
Before I became a Republican, I hated Reagan. I developed my current love for Reagan ONLY AFTER Rush taught me the virtues of being a Republican.
So, not even the Great Communicator was able to reach me. Only Rush was able to reach me.
Try it on CR1919 between Seymour and Crowell, Texas. Heck, half of Texas probably can't get NPR (which explains a lot). Get out of the city sometime.
Although I don't listen to talk radio (for some of the same reasons as O'Rourke, in addition to not having time for it), I think that with the media, schools, and universities all taken over by the apparatchicki, if not for talk radio, you wouldn't have a Republican in the White House today. A few million people who voted for Bush in 2000 would not have. That includes both moderates who would have been afraid to entertain conservative ideas that had no apparent social support, and rock-ribbed conservatives who might have stayed home, sensing their votes as hopeless. Not that I'm talking about the majority of people who voted for Bush, but the minority that swung the election.
O'Rouke neglects the fact that talk radio's influence goes well beyond the radio, to books and the Internet. A bunch of bestselling works would never have been published, without talk radio. Larry Elder wrote a book a few years ago that was the #1 or #2 bestseller, in spite of a mainstream media blackout. So, I respectfully disagree with O'Rourke. He's right about the lack of public debate, but the significance of talk radio goes beyond public "debate."
It is good to listen to the other side and see what they are doing. But it is also good to listen to your side too. PJ does not know every thing. PJ would find as the GOP has become a majority party their are all sorts of views in the party. There are people he could learn from. If you only listen to the other sides propoganda, you can become blinded and sucked in and pen such garbage as:
"In 2000 Bush's arguably more conservative son won the presidency with a Supreme Court ruling."
Sorry PJ you should know better. You should know the facts of the 2000 Presidential election you can never hear on NPR. If you listened to some conversevative talk radio or came to FreeRepublic from time to time, you would.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.