40 days and 40 nights
You’ve got to give up something for Lent so as of Ash Wednesday, I am giving up blogging. See you all in 40 days.
Before I go, I just want to comment on John Derbyshire’s recent TAC article on talk radio. Eighteen years ago I’m sure a lot of us, myself included, listened to Limbaugh and other hosts back then because it was a new and entertaining form of media and the only one with a rightward bent. It wasn’t so much lowbrow as it was populistic and funny. Today, talk radio is a form of ideological reinforcement where the members of the “inner party” use the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the world to make sure the masses tow THEIR particular line and where the talkshow host, instead of reflecting upon whether or not invading Iraq was a good idea, happily goes along with something they wouldn’t necessarily go along with if a liberal Democrat was in White House (I don’t recall Rush being an enthusiastic bombardier when it came to Kosovo) in order to stay in with in crowd. This is exactly the kind of totalitarian mindset Austin Bramwell described the conservative establishment as being today in his TAC article “Good Bye to All That – A former National Review trustee surveys the wreckage of contemporary conservatism.” A few people get to decide what the movement thinks and everyone on down the chain obeys, just as Orwell described the world in 1984 or Animal Farm.
Is this not the way the Left works and is this what we’ve been brought up to fight against? And yet we’re doing it to ourselves. We’ve let power and influence and ratings turn us into the very things we supposedly can’t stand. Look at how chasten Georgia Congressman Phil Gingrey became when he dared critize El Rusbo (or is it El Jefe?). Is it the talkshow host we should be blaming here and not the medium itself? I don’t know. It would take a brave host to step out of the mainstream in the face of ostracism that would occur as Charles Goyette will tell you (although Glenn Beck may be headed in that direction) along with a potential drop in ratings and advertising revenue because one isn’t taking the “party line.” Indeed, trying to create shows that appeal to the “middlebrow” audience may sound nice in theory, but I guarantee you won’t find a producer out there willing to put such a show together (What? Conservative audiences don’t go for that NPR “soft talk” crap. They want red meat. They want to be angry and ornery. They want outrage and by golly we’re going to give it to them!) . I’m no expert on talk radio, but it seems to me if you want a successful show you need to find an audience out there willing to listen to it and right now there just isn’t a middlebrow audience for any potential conservative host to reach out to at this point. Conservatives may very well have to find another form of medium to reach out to this group.
Here are some past critiques of Limbaugh and talk radio I’ve written that you can chew on for the next 40 days and 40 nights: “Empire of Limbaugh makes another Conquest”; “The Politics of Rush Limbaugh – The Happy People vs. The Gloomy People.” and “The Enablers – Conservative Talk-Radio Hosts”
(El Rusbo – don’t you mena El RusHbo? Or is it his twin, just like there is dextro- and levo-, and this is the L- version, though in this case L is more for leviathan)
Would reading the three articles be penitential, or a break from the penitence?
You can track Rush slowly abandoning any principle to popularity over time. Now he is popular but irrelevant. He originally had “caller abortions”, and “Gay community updates”. Lowbrow, maybe, but that isn’t part of the DINO-RINO party line. It was “wag the dog” until the dog became an Afghan hound.
‘A few people get to decide what the movement thinks and everyone on down the chain obeys, just as Orwell described the world in 1984 or Animal Farm.
Is this not the way the Left works and is this what we’ve been brought up to fight against? And yet we’re doing it to ourselves. ‘
No, they told you that’s how the left works so that you would be too busy being angry about that to see that it is actually how the right operates. Which is pretty much what Orwell meant. The pigs did what they accused the humans of doing. The right IS doing what it SAYS the left is doing.
Just because you can make a case that the Societs behaved this way does not mean it’s a left wing phenomanom. The Sovieis were authoritarians, anything left wing about them died soon after the Bolshevik revolution.
Rush notwithstanding, anybody who thinks there’s an anti-authoritarian left of any size in this country could do with another reading of Animal Farm themselves.
I feel sort of sorry in a way for any principled ‘conservatives’ at this point… it is sort of like watching a slug crawl through a sandbox full of salt. There is no way small government can regulate big business; limiting our land wars in Asia was what the Democrats wanted; opposing comprehensive immigration reform guarantees losing every election; so you are left with criminalizing abortion, forbidding gay marriage, continuing marijuana prohibition. Must be tough there… unless of course, sanity sets in and conservatives abandon the corrupt yahoo Rush wing of the Republican Party to work on some responsible governance with centrist Democrats. That would be useful, but not exciting… wonder what the choice will be?
It’s strange. I keep seeing these same names making comments about conservatism that are directly contradicted by the content of this website. It’s pretty tempting to define yourself by defining the people you think you’re supposed to oppose. The only problem, of course, is that it requires you to increasingly ignore the reality and depth of your supposed opponent. “If I agree with my “enemy” then what am I?”
That being said, it does sometimes make for good reading, so keep it up.
‘what we’ve been brought up to fight against’
This statement requires examination.