28 years of listening to Rush on the EIB. I have learned so much it’s incredible. I do a radio show here in Buffalo, just a fillin but people call me the Rush of Buffalo. It’s humbling, I couldn’t fill his shoes but, he was the father of Conservative talk, a mentor to me actually.
Everyone of my friends have put out pleas for Prayer. I wept and started praying before he ended his statement today.
Praying EVERYDAY Rush we love you please FIGHT with everything you’ve got you can not be replaced!!!!
I was on Long Island, and WABC had conservative talk - esp. Bob Grant - on before Rush came on the scene there. But initially the EIB wasn’t what we heard from Rush on WABC. Recall that before the EIB, the conventional wisdom was that a talk show had to be local. And therefore Rush had to agree to do a local NY show in addition to EIB - and that was what I heard of Rush initially (I want to say no less than a year, more like three years).So altho I’ve listened to Rush for 32 years, I’m not actually a charter EIB listener.
In fact - it has to be said - Rush’s local NY program didn’t stand out in WABC’s lineup. I was a desultory listener to that local show. So it was a revelation when suddenly Rush’s slot was the national EIB feed, the existence of which I previously hadn’t even suspected.
I have trouble reminding myself that, for many years - up to the Carter Administration era - I myself was a “news radio” fan. My daughter was shocked when I mentioned that, because all her sentient life she had seen me treating “news” like it was an advertisement for something I wouldn’t buy on a bet. Which is precisely what it is.The reason is that “If it bleeds, it leads” commercial journalism is an entertainment format which is dedicated to bad news. This negativity is augmented by the superficiality induced by short deadlines - let alone “breaking news.” Compound that negativity with a claim (direct or indirect) that “journalists are objective,” and you have a perfect socialist storm. Why? Because the idea that “negativity is objectivity” is a cynical conceit.
It would be incoherent to be cynical about one thing, and simultaneously be cynical about something which is the opposite of it. Journalism is cynical about society. And, correspondingly, journalism is naive about government, which is the opposite of society. And, pace the blather about “government ownership of the means of production,” IMHO “cynicism towards society and naiveté towards government” is what defines socialism. “Socialism" should more descriptively be called, “governmentism.”
Establishment Journalism is a cartel induced by the traditional dominance of news dissemination by the wire services. The wire services are virtual meetings of their members/subscribers, and those meetings have the effect Adam Smith would have predicted:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.As I pointed out, journalism inherently promotes socialism, and consequently the “conspiracy against the public” resulting from the wire services is simply an amplification of that effect. The raison d'être of the wire services was the conservation of expensive telegraphy bandwidth in the widespread dissemination of news to the newspapers. But in the Internet era, telegraphy bandwidth is dirt cheap, and the wire services are no longer “too big to fail.” They should be sued into oblivion under antitrust law.Such a lawsuit must also attack one of the worst excesses of the Warren Court, the unanimous 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision. Sullivan effectively eliminates the ability of politicians and judges to sue for libel. It does so on the fatuous rationale that
". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment”As if the First Amendment had ever been thought to touch libel law! It hadn’t, for the simple reason that the Bill of Rights was crafted to suppress controversy over the preservation of the rights of the people under the new, tenuously ratified, Constitution. The Federalists had their greatest desire - a strong federal government - subject only to their satisfying the public that the Constitution changed nobody’s rights. The Bill of Rights was therefore profoundly conservative of rights - particular rights, but also Common Law rights. “The” freedom of the press was freedom as it existed in 1788 - freedom subject to libel and, e.g., pornography restrictions.Whoso claims that politicians don’t have protection from libel because “freedom of the press” might just as well claim that politicians have no protection from having their windows shot out of their houses because “right to keep and bear arms.” It’s nonsense. And the effect of that nonsense is to unleash socialist propaganda against “conservative” (we are classical liberals) politicians and commentators. And - see Kavanaugh, Brett - conservative judges. The journalism cartel defines “objective,” “liberal,” and “progressive” to mean “in accord with the journalism consensus” (with the caveat that “objective” is applied only to journalists, and “liberal” and “progressive” never are). Thus, no “liberal” is ever libeled, so their nominal inability to sue for libel is moot.
“The freedom . . . of the press” protects the expression of political opinions from tyrannical government. The Sullivan decision overextends the idea that the press is threatened by the government. It overreaches in “protecting the press" by establishing the journalism cartel as a quasi-religious priesthood which is able to reward its acolytes and punish its opponents. Ironically the press, directly and by its influence on the government, persecutes advocates of limited government. Under cover of Sullivan’s suggestion that the press is persecuted if its ability to propagandize against limited government is limited at all.
Where can I find that statement? I was in the hospital and missed a lot.
Also, I would love if would FReepmail about how to break into talk show hosting. It’s kind of my dream job and I’ve already started researching.
Thanks!