Posted on 07/19/2007 1:28:56 AM PDT by goldstategop
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
A prejudice he seems to have overcome...
I doubt that. Conservatives would call up the "Liberal Rush" with questions based on logic not emotion that the "Liberal Rush" couldn't answer.
Imus and Stern are Liberals who made money and held audiences on radio. But, Liberals don’t want to admit that to be a successful Liberal on radio you have to be like a sniggling, nose-picking teenager.
It is a truism of Conservatism that government subsidies stifle competition, reward the incompetent, and lower quality by removing the disincentive of failure.
I would contend that there has never been a liberal Rush because subsidies available to liberal talk radio, governmental and otherwise, have made it possible for liberals to be on the radio without treating it like a business. NPR will remain on the air, no matter how boring it gets, because the taxpayer is footing the bill. AirAmerica can operate for years without being concerned about making a profit on advertising, because George Soros, Peter Lewis, and others are picking up the tab. So they do not have the daily pressure of maintaining listenership in order to sell advertising slots for the top dollar.
Rush, on the other hand, eats what he kills, as they say. If he gets another Million people to tune in, he makes another Million dollars. So he has gotten very adept at making sure people tune in and stay tuned in. And if Rush were not so good at it, one of the dozens of other conservative talk radio hosts toiling the same field would rise up to replace him, and would make the Million dollars.
But the same motivation is not present on the liberal side of the dial. Tune in your local NPR affiliate and listen for a few hours, if you can stand it. Not only are the politics wrong-headed, but the entire program, any program, is a crashing bore. If you do not pay attention or tune out, that is fine with them, because they don't need you. They can broadcast quite fine and keep all their nice cushy jobs whether you listen or not. Similarly with AirAmerica, which is privately subsidized. The fact that the quality of programming is so low does not matter as long as the host is ideologically pure. So ideology is rewarded and programming quality suffers. As always, people produce what they are paid to produce, and neglect that which does not effect their bottom line.
But the real pernicious effect of subsidies is the way they stifle competition. Suppose, for the sake of argument, some young hot-shot liberal talk radio phenom was to come upon the scene, a liberal Rush Limbaugh for the new millenium. He would have to share the liberal side of the radio listening audience with all the hacks on NPR and AirAmerica, so he would start out with a disadvantage, right out of the box. Furthermore, he would have to operate profitably, which would mean more entertainment, less ideological purity, and a whole lot more "Obscene Profit Center Interruptions". How can he compete in this environment? On the basis of airtime alone, when AirAmerica can ignore profit and run five commercials an hour and NPR runs no commercials at all, how can our liberal firebrand build an audience when he has to devote 25 minutes an hour to paying the bills? People who are driven to listen to liberal ideology will gravitate to the stations without all the annoying commercials, so his core audience is already served, and he does not have a base of listeners to build on.
The solution for liberal talk radio, of course, is to eliminate the subsidies so a native, organic liberal talk radio market can evolve over time. But to make that leap of faith requires a belief in the power of the free market to serve markets and produce the optimal result. Conservatives accept the magic of the marketplace as an given, but liberals suffer because they fundamentally do not trust the marketplace and the profit motive. They are compelled by their ideology to rely on the big-government solution of subsidies and regulation, and suffer the resulting inefficiency and stifling of creativity.
So, in a very real way, the reletive success of conservative talk radio and failure of liberal talk radio reflects the real-world effectiveness of their underlying ideology. Conservative talk radio is bound by the iron law of the marketplace, which requires them to provide the service the customer demands or perish. Those who serve the customer profit, even obscenely so. But those who fail to do so fail early and often. For every Rush Limbaugh, standing astride the AM spectrum like a modern-day Colosus, there are thousands of conservative talkers who did not have the talent and savvy of Rush who have fallen, forgotten, by the wayside.
Liberal talk radio, on the other hand, preserves these mediocrities, and prevents them from failing. They are allowed to florish in a protected environment. Liberal ideology demands an equality of results, regardless of talent, drive or hard work. So the liberal talk radio spectrum is choked with marginal talents who are not removed from the stage by the unrelenting hook of low ratings and failing ad revenues. They are like weeds in a garden, that choke out any desirable growth. But the gardener is not permitted a hoe to remove them. In fact the gardener is prevented by ideology from even admitting the weeds are a problem.
So, if you ever wanted a good, solid, real world example of why free market capitalism is the best system ever devised by man to deliver desired goods and services efficiently to the masses, look no further than your talk radio dial. The free market wins, every time. Even when faced with massive subsidies, the free market still wins, because the subsidized operator soon falls victim to his own inefficiency and perverse incentives.
Rush may not have started out on the radio in order to provide the ultimate proof of the ideology he proclaims on the radio on a daily basis, but his success, and the success of dozens like him, does that very thing more eloquently than a thousand Rush Limbaughs could in a thousand years.
The size of his listening audience, and his attendant pay, say that you are wrong and he is right.
Even Rush knows you can't build a house on sand. Conservatism is the rock hard foundation upon which the success of this nation (and Rush) is built.
Absolutely. I can’t imagine any right of center individual believing otherwise.
No question that he remains -- for now -- the king of the hill. He earned his way there, and he brought political consciousness to many, much to the benefit of the conservative cause.
But every act gets stale. Someone has to be the first to say it: "Talent on loan from God" is no longer a line that makes me laugh.
And I think sometimes that talk hosts, like congress critters, should have term limits. After so long a time, it becomes really more about their celebrity status, their golf, etc., than about the concerns of the people who "sent them there" or who "keep them there."
You heard it here first.
You said: And I think sometimes that talk hosts, like congress critters, should have term limits. After so long a time, it becomes really more about their celebrity status, their golf, etc., than about the concerns of the people who “sent them there” or who “keep them there.”
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Ah, but there is an election every day, every hour, in talk radio. Those who find Rush unworthy of their time may simply change the station or turn off the radio. I have done so from time to time when the topic didn’t interest me. I agree that some of Rush’s schtick is less funny than it was when first introduced, and I lament that he had fewer “updates” than in years gone by, but there is no real dispute that Rush remains King of the Hill. Laura Ingraham is good, and Sean Hannity is loud, but they don’t really touch Rush. I like Levin, but he is a little too abrasive for many.
But the article dealt with why there is no liberal version of Rush, and the answer to that is simple. The liberal point of view cannot be intelligently discussed over a three hour time slot. There is just too little to it. Just as liberal callers to Rush and other conservative talk shows usually last less than a minute before insults and name calling take over, liberal talk shows cannot maintain substantive discussion for any meaningful length of time. They inevitably rely upon bashing the opposition rather than promoting their own agenda, which is government baby sitters for all but the powerful, and the butt of a gun for those who think they don’t need government help. Check out the Young Tur(d)ks on Air America sometime, or Randi Rhodes, if you can stomach her. Listen for the liberal point of view to be explained, and you will be listening a long time.
How odd it is that the most successful person in a business that’s 100% about hearing can’t “hear” himself.
Rush is a phenomenon. I marvel at how in tune he is with his audience. He is very bright, great memory, and funny. Sometimes he’ll lapse into faux arrogance (ha ha) but I feel a tinge of sincerity that he may be approaching the edge of really being arrogant (he does not well suffer fools. But at other times he is humble, and becomes sincerely touched by compliments. He can be schmaltzy and a “sentimental slob”. He is patriotic, and a shining example of the Mississippi (Moon) River heritage from which he sprung (Mark Twain?). The trouble is he will not be forever. He’s been behind the golden EIB mic for what? 18-20 years? With his vast wealth and all his other distractions (hostile treatment in Florida, cigars, gold, other venture offers, etc), he may choose to walk soon, and in no event will be be there longer than 20 more years, then what? No one is like him. Glenn Beck and Shawn Hannity try, but they are not close to pinging upon all the facets that Rush delivers. Than God we’ve been able to be here when he was.
I think the difference with Stern is that he might be a liberal or a libertarian or whatever but his show is not really about politics...it’s more about strippers, and midgets, and deviants and stuff. He delves into politics sometimes but then moves on to a drunk calling the show.
With Imus, I think he became famous as a Top 40 DJ and then slowly moved into politics. I don’t believe he’s necessarily a liberal, although his guests were overwhelmingly of that breed and he does seem to dislike Bush intensely. I recall him ripping Clinton pretty good too though.
Whoops. Meant to say “golf” as a Rush distraction, not gold. Freudian slip.
Another sexually inappropriate comment from this self-satisfied jerk.
On the other conservative talkers, I completely agree with your comments. Completely.
But Rush has the big microphone -- which he earned -- and I frankly do not believe he did a good job on immigration. Although he laid out the threat very admirably and in some detail on a few days, on other days he expressed his annoyance with the constancy and fever-pitch of the debate. He wanted to talk about his damn golf.
We almost lost the immigration debate. It mattered a lot that someone with an audience of the size of Rush's would come on the air on some of the critical days and DEFLATE the ferver of people upset at shamnesty, explaining that he no longer gets too upset by these things.
He no longer gets too upset by them, because he is not the least angry anymore, as all conservatives need to be. What has he got to be angry about? He can build his own wall, have his drivers carry him about in Hummers. He doesn't shop at Walmart. Nobody is going to put a car up on blocks in the yard next to him. He cares about golf and fancy restaurants and a celebrity lifestyle. Good on him...he earned it and he has a right to enjoy it. But he is not longer doing much of a service for the conservative movement, IMO. I'd like to let him play golf EVERYday and give over that golden EIB microphone to someone with some fire in the belly.
In my (NC) area, Rush is the ONLY conservative national talkshow host who is on a stations that covers the market. When he is slacking, it hurts the cause.
I still chuckle at it after 17 years of listening, not because it is funny (it never was funny to me) but because of the tweak it gives to libs. I know any lib who is listening and hears it is going nuts. Besides much of the stuff that may seem stale to old listeners, new listeners are hearing for the first time. As long as there is politics Rush will be fresh. It's indisputable that he has a knack for quality entertainment. To be enterataining while informing the audience at the same time is a Rush trademark. He does it best.
Talk radio has to be a bit about personality and not just about issues. There has to be a bit of showmanship.
The music signature, the cute phrases (e.g., talent on loan), etc., are part of the shtick. And they do slowly transition.
What separates Rush from others is his insight. He really does have a unique take on things that has so often proven to be right on the money in in predictive ability.
Don’t miss the forest for the trees.
I’ve got to disagree with you - I think Rush was primarily responsible for informing people well enough that they became motivated to fight the immigration bill. He didn’t give people “marching orders” - he never does, but I think that’s a wise choice.
I honestly think if Rush hadn’t stood up in opposition to the Powers That Be in the Republican party, the bill would have gone through.
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