On any given weekday, self-professed
conservative talk show hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Sean
Hannity, will draw more listeners to their nationally syndicated radio
broadcasts than viewers of the evening news television broadcasts of ABC, NBC
and CBS combined. As one listens to
these right leaning hosts, their television counterparts and the paid
conservative punditry rail against the “mainstream media” it completely escapes
them that they are the mainstream media. Most of these “conservative” radio talkers
are syndicated, nationwide, on hundreds of stations owned by only a handful of
major corporations.
TV talk hosts such as Hannity, Bill O’Reilly
and Lou Dobbs and pundits such as Brit Hume, Bill Kristol, Karl Rove and Dick
Morris work for NEWS CORP. – a multi-national media conglomerate - which owns the
Fox Television Network, Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network. It also owns the New York Post, the Wall
Street Journal and several other publications in the United States
alone. However, when you listen to the
television and radio hosts and read the op-ed columnists, paid by NEWS CORP.
and other media conglomerates malign the “mainstream media,” one would think
they believe themselves to be maverick broadcasters airing their dissent over
pirated airwaves spreading a message against a brutal dictator, when in fact,
many of them have used their positions at NEWS CORP., Clear Channel Radio, etc. to become
multi-millionaires under the guise of being obscure opinion mavens.
Several of these hosts like to invite
ideologically opposing guests on their program to give the illusion of being
“fair and balanced,” equal opportunity presenters of dissent. But the
guests are frequently interrupted, mid-sentence, as soon as the host realizes
he or she doesn’t like the response. NBC
and MSNBC host Chris Matthews is often guilty of this, as conservatives are
quick to point out, but fail to see this lack of journalistic professionalism
in themselves.
It is now widely known that on the eve
of Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration, the GOP leadership vowed to make
their number one priority the denial of a second Obama term. At that point Republicans, en masse, began to
vote against, and filibuster their own sponsored and co-sponsored legislation
designed to create jobs, spur growth, reduce the deficit, garner bi-partisan
support, and had President Obama’s approval. The GOP legislators who have engaged in this
unpatriotic and destructive practice have yet to be questioned as to why they
found this course of action to be in the best interest(s) of the nation. In their very revealing book about the
severity of the bipartisan gridlock, IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN IT LOOKS, Thomas Mann
and Norman Ornstein point out, “If the politics of partisan confrontation… and
hostage taking has been building since the late 1970s, it has become far more
the norm than the exception since Barack Obama’s election.”
Although the GOP candidates, Mitt Romney
and Paul Ryan, have admitted that the president was left a horrible mess, their
“mainstream media Duper-Pac” has
spent the last three years castigating Obama for pointing out the economic
calamity left at his doorstep. However,
they are quick to defend Mitt Romney for no longer being at Bain Capital
when a plethora of heartache and destruction was leveled against American
companies and American workers. But
those voices in the Duper-Pac failed to
admit that it was Romney’s tenure at Bain that forged the business model
of excessive debt, bankruptcy, the stripping of assets and outsourcing that lined
Romney’s pockets and it is that business model which continues
to live on, blazing a trail of economic destruction against the American middle
class long after Mitt Romney had left the building.
And way before Barack Obama even danced
with his wife at the presidential inauguration, radio host Rush Limbaugh, the
leader of the mainstream media’s conservative Duper-Pac, said he hoped Obama
failed. At which point Sen. Mitch
McConnell and the congressional Republicans collectively abandoned their
oaths and began to take their marching
orders from Mr. Limbaugh. They have
thumbed their noses and hoisted their finger at the American people and refused
to support their own good ideas simply because they could not stomach Barack
Obama’s signature on the legislation. It
is the height of audacity when these weak minded public servants, who bow to
dishonest noisemakers on the public airwaves, accuse the president of lacking
in leadership. Rush says something one
day and the GOP practically recites it verbatim on the daily cable and Sunday news
shows.
In the interest of full disclosure, I
listened to Rush Limbaugh in the very late ‘80s and early ‘90s when he first
came east to New York. He was humorous,
witty, informative and pleasantly thought-provoking. I liked him and I liked listening to him even
when I didn’t agree with his point of view.
I find today’s Rush Limbaugh to be insultingly arrogant, mean spirited,
unfriendly in voice and manner and lacking in humor. In an attempt to decipher this troubling
metamorphosis, my best explanation would be to paraphrase a quote of the
brilliant and incomparable Richard Pryor while in character as the neighborhood
wino describing one of the other
neighborhood denizens. “Them
narcotics done made [Rush] null and void!” Perhaps it is time to begin drug testing and
searching the medicine cabinets of the congressional Republicans. They appear to be sorely in need of rehab.
September 7, 2012
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