[Pharmboy]

The cyber edition left out a few things that the print edition had, a call-out bolded copy and a short note on the author:

Linking consumer preferences to personal values--can the talk radio hosts of the left compete?

Geoffrey Nunberg, a Stanford linguist, is heard regularly on NPR's "Fresh Air" and is the author of "The Way We Talk Now."

Can anyone get the point this linguist is attempting to make? That libs have been picked on by the media? That conservatives have NOT been picked on? Is this guy the dumbest Stanford perfessor ever? Help me out here, Freeps...

And another thing: when Ann Coulter says "my people" she doesn't mean that she COMES from Queens you dolt; she means that they SUPPORT her...

[smokeyjon]

"we needn't go much further than people's readiness to start sentences with "Liberals are . . ." and to go on to describe liberalism as something between a personality disorder and a market segment."

Bingo! You've finally got it!

[Voltage]

Liberalism, at it core, is about raising taxes. Without that revenue it has nothing to offer.

Try selling higher taxes on the radio! Failure is assured.

[majordivit]

Or listen to Ann Coulter, who grew up in New Canaan, Conn., and her paean to the New York's other boroughs, as reported in The New York Times: "Queens, baseball games — those are my people. American people."

Lib charlatans posing as 'journalists' never tell the truth. They know why labels against conservatives don't stick. The truth is that it doesn't matter if a leader of the conservative movement does not come from a'working class' background. If he or she is a true conservative, then he or she isn't promoting high tax, intrusive government, failed welfare state programs, and political patronage designed to keep hard working americans and hard working entruprenurial small business owners down.

[nightdriver]

"Can anyone get the point this linguist is attempting to make?"

Actually, I can't. That is what I thought was deficient in the article too. This pointy head flails and flogs and makes no headway along the lines of cogent thought. Rather typical malady amongst liberals.

[SandRat]

You think of Bill O'Reilly describing himself as a "working-class guy" — this from an accountant's son who grew up in Levittown, N.Y., the El Dorado of the postwar middle class.

One reply is simple and you can cite me. My dad was one of those returning "Greatest Generation" guys who got married immediately after coming home. He went to college for 3 years on the GI Bill (didn't finish because I showed up, he-he-he). Got a job as a Technical Writer of machine manuals for a machine company and bought a Levit-Style home for us.

This was working middle class for our parents and us as we grew up. This for a large segment of america shaped us and grounded us. Libs don't get it, on anything period.

[Yardstick]

This guy brackets Gordon Liddy with Rush Limbaugh, then subtly insults their gravitas and wit. I would agree that Liddy is pretty mediocre, but Rush's gravitas and wit are undeniable.

[demkicker]

"Can anyone get the point this linguist is attempting to make?"

I think he's trying out for the big lib talk radio host. He's got my vote. ZZZzzzzzz

[ProudGOP]

Can anyone get the point this linguist is attempting to make?

Actually, I thought his point was pretty clear. The Conservatives have successfully branded Liberalism. Its not about ideas or freedom or personal responsibility or Government waste or personal finances. Its about branding, and most of the great unwashed masses have fallen for it.

I think thats pretty funny because his whole article reeks of the elitism that is prevalent in Liberal thinking. i.e. that most people are too stupid to see through a slick marketing campaign, unlike the good professor.

[KarlInOhio]

Still others said liberals won't engage in demagogy...liberals are too nuanced.

Nothing is quite as demagogy free and nuanced as having "Nazi" and "fascist" screamed at you because you belive that government is taking too much of your money (and therefore your labor and life) and has its nose in too much of your business.

[No Left Turn]

liberals are boring policy wonks, liberals are too nuanced.

Nuanced, huh?

No Blood for Oil.

Bush=Hitler.

SUV owners are terrorists

Nuanced like a bat to your head.

[sam_paine]

Can anyone get the point this linguist is attempting to make?

This article reads like tubin' out of season in the Guadelupe River, like in February: Drifting aimlessly, no directional control, cold as hell, pretty scenery.

[Nick Danger]

the skepticism that might greet the formation of a pro badminton circuit.

This may come as a surprise to people, but there actually is a pro badminton circuit.

Professional Badminton Players

[Tacis]

Liberal is an old term that evolved from "commie-liberal," not a benign concept. Commie-liberals were in NYC, the US State Department, and wherever Soviet-loving, anti-American, elitist media types congregated. Their objective was the destruction of the US and its replacement with a soviet style paradise where they would be in charge.

Senator McCarthy stopped them cold but was then destroyed by them and their liberal media. The commie-liberals still control the old time media, newspapers and non-cable TV.

The key aspect of the liberal media is that it represents failed concepts and must lie about those failures. Liberal media must lie about the folks who it relies on for political power, the democrats. Thus, when the the democrats tell the liberal media to lie about the personal corruption of one of its leaders, the media follows orders. And, this is why any attempt to build a viable liberal talk radio/TV cable position is doomed to failure.

Liberal talk radio hosts will be allowed to mouth only the lies of the dems. If most people wanted lies, they would watch CBSNBCABCCNN or read the Times. The classic is Begala. He is a pure liar; nothing he says is not for a propaganda purpose. So, there is absolutely no valid reason to watch or listen to him.

The beauty of liberal talk radio is that it has to fail. On one hand, the host must first be a dem liar. But, OTOH, if he is not and tells the truth on only a few issues, he will have to become a non-liberal radio host. Honesty is the flush to liberal s**t.

[Howlin]

For a man who wrote a book entitled The Way We Talk Now, he has a horrible time getting his point across. Frankly, I didn't understand very much of this article at all.

This poor man doesn't realize the reason there are no "funny" liberals is because nobody laughs with them, they laugh AT them.

[ricpic]

"Can anyone get the point this linguist is attempting to make?"

He's trying to expain away the hostility to liberalisam as a reaction to liberal snobbery or to liberal tastes, in short, it's a matter of style. Who knows, he may be shallow enough to believe his own argument.

Confiscatory taxation, the elevation of group entitlements over individual merit, the assault on private property rights in the name of the snail darter; the list could go on and on. The liberal assault on liberty is the real reason why the very word itself has become anethema to so many.

Maybe it's for the best. The liberal style, it's disconnect from reality, will render liberals less and less relevant in the serious times we have entered.

[Dan from Michigan]

Let me spell it out for this guy.

The problem is this
Rich and upper middle class(wannabes) liberals are the worst type of hypocrite. They also aren't much fun to be around. They blast 'greed', etc, while they have more money than anyone else around. These are your Hillary Klintons.

They are a bunch of phonies, and that's why the charges stick. Us "hicks" can see through your crap.

[Eala]

Conservatives said that liberal dogma couldn't withstand the rough and tumble of talk radio (which is "ultimately about ideas," as Thomas Sowell put it), the implication being that the left has no thinkers with the gravitas of a Limbaugh or a Liddy.

He almost gets it... and then misses the target completely.

The reason "liberal talk radio" won't succeed is that liberals don't operate that way. They live in a world of "command structure" -- they tune into NPR, for example, (where's the feedback there?) in order to understand what they should be thinking today.

Conservatives, by contrast, tune into to talk radio in order to share, compare, argue ideas in "the rough & tumble" with the Limbaughs and Liddys.

This is a broad sweeping generalization, but I think it explains the differences, and why "liberal talk radio" just won't succeed,

[davisfh]

I've heard this guy a few times on "Fresh Air." What he
really needs is a lot of fresh air. As Laura Ingraham is
fond of saying, "This guy is a real pant-load."

[NittanyLion]

The author misses the boat. There's a sizable segment of conservatives who enjoy spending hours discussing/listening to politics; their liberal counterpart just isn't there. They are the people watching soap operas and talk shows all day.

[Montfort]

The problem for liberal talk shows is that selling liberal content in our current media market is like selling sand in the Sahara.