Your definition of vulgar is a bit antiquated. Calling the commoners vulgar would be like calling many of us liberals. In the classical sense of the word it might be accurate, but it has taken on a new meeting. You’re probably a good guy but you’re coming across as a snob. What’s so common about Rush? He’s the Babe Ruth of his industry.
“You’re probably a good guy but you’re coming across as a snob.”
Not that coming off as a snob is high on the list of things I care about, I wish you would pay more attention to the point I’m making than the supposedly antiquated words I use to make it. Liberals can get away with calling Rush divisive, controversial, or whatever, because although people don’t listen to everything he says, they have this picture in their head of him shouting into a microphone and putting on a blowhardy, self-satisfied show. There is this sense that he says things to get attention, whether or not he fully believes them, and for good reason. It’s true. That’s exactly what he does.
This format, which we’ll call infotainment or whatever you want to call it, is not out of line. Not by any means. But it is emotional or—if you want to go along with the libs to get along for the sake of argument—perhaps angry enough to serve as foundation for their claim that he “stokes the flames of fear” and “plays on the prejudices of his uneducated and quick-tempered audience”. What would otherwise be hyperbole is granted a modicum of credibility by Rush’s own tongue-in-cheek pomposity.
Now, a modicum of credibility is not, in my opinion, legitimate grounds for ostracizing Rush from polite society, let alone the social universe of the NFL. Especially since said modicum fades into insignificance when you view Rush’s place in the media, or better yet pop-culture, universe as a whole. Herein lies the significance of my admission that Rush is vulgar. I don’t do it because comparing Rush with Shakespeare and Michelangelo is useful. It isn’t. I do so only to make the point that all of pop-culture is vulgar. And in that sense, Rush isn’t after all vulgar, at least not relative to his environment.
If he spends most of his time scrutinizing the trash turned out by the MSM news machine, and doesn’t so much throw stones from below or scowls down at it from above, but attacks it from the same intellectual plane, how can he be any worse? How can anyone say he’s worse than the commentary regularly broadcast on CNN? Indeed, I say he’s better, for at least he actually listens to his listeners from time to time. He gives them a chance to make their points. Whereas cable news talking heads spend their time interrupting and shouting down eachother.
Libs love to play this game, pretending conservatives are out of line. They’d be right, if only libs participated in Algonquin roundtables. But they don’t. They’re up to the same thing. If Rachel Maddow yells less than Bill O’Reilly, she just as reactively dismissive. Case in point, look at how sports media snobs like Bob Costas breezily characterize Fox Sports as vulgar. It’s almost an adjective these days, everyone knows what Fox-esque coverage means. To belabor the point, what does it mean? Lots of graphics, loud music, attractive chick sideline reporters? I don’t know, I’m not up on my broadcast sports knowledge. I think it means, in short, flash over substance. As if there’s a network out there, or a newpaper for that matter that’s any difference.
That’s what Costas relies on, that whoever’s listening to him forgets for a second that the rest of the sports world doesn’t operate exactly as does Fox News. All I intended to do by calling Rush vulgar is admit the obvious, that is that he’s not Beethoven. I admit this so that we can move on to another obvious point: no one else is, either. Not in radio, news, or football, at least.