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Health & Fitness

Politokos. 4 Our Coarsening Dialogue

Talk Radio, especially Rush Limbaugh, has contributed to coarsening our political dialogue.

Politokos. 4

March 7, 2012

 Our Coarsening Dialogue

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 Have you ever driven westward in the past few years and tried to listen to your car radio?  What do we hear?—mostly country western music, religious sermonizing and talk radio.  I have often wondered if this is driven by ad agencies, deciding that the lowest common denominator, the best chance of a sale, all lead toward the sort of audience that seems angry at the state of the world and is on the brink of downing a whiskey with a beer chaser.

 Perhaps the quintessential talk radio host is Rush Limbaugh and his soundalikes.  What characterizes these types?  Anger first; they are mad, mostly at government, which they believe is at the bottom of our –their—problems.  Government picks our pockets via taxes; government restricts our freedom of action (“you will have to pry my gun out of my cold, dead hand”); government gives hand-outs to the undeserving poor; government has created protections for the deviants (homosexuals), for the victims of prejudice (non-white people), and above all has undermined the traditional family of working father, stay-at-home mother and deferential kids.  The culmination of these trends –ascribed to the march of liberalism—is the election of Barack Obama.

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 A sizable percentage of Americans still believe that Obama is a Muslim, that he was not born in the USA, and that he is intent on creating “a European-type” welfare state here.  It is hard to believe that Obama’s opponents are really concerned about the expansion of health care coverage, after they accepted President Bush’s enormous expansion of that coverage with his attachment of prescription drugs to previous health plans.  It is hard to believe they really worry about the expansion of the role of government when they unquestioningly support the expansion of defense spending. 

 So what do they want?  I think they want the return of the world of “Father Knows Best,” and Andy Hardy, when a man could come home to his pipe and slippers, when his wife had dinner on the table, and the only problem with the kids is whether they have finished their homework.

 That brings us to Rush Limbaugh and the latest skirmish in his war on women.  He represents the state of the art radio attack jock, who, more than anybody, is responsible for the decline of political discussion in this country.  He has been on the air for maybe twenty years.   Since Obama’s election, he has likened him to Hitler, questioned his citizenship, his religion and all of his policies.  Most of us are now familiar with Limbaugh’s off-the- wall attacks on Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown Law School student, who had the temerity to support President Obama’s plan to mandate coverage for contraception in all employers’ health plans, including those administered by religious orders, such as Catholic hospitals.   Over a three day rant, Rush called her a “slut” and a “prostitute.”

 So, now (finally?) thirty-some advertisers have withdrawn or threatened to withdraw their radio sponsorships, despite Limbaugh’s statement that his “choice of words was not the best.”

As Limbaugh once said, he is really an entertainer.  Well, it ain’t funny, and it will be sweet irony if this Limbaugh lurch begins to drain the swamp of talk radio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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