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The problem is, talk radio can never effectively answer those frustrations and complaints, because, for a talk radio show to succeed, it must keep those frustrations and complaints alive. After all, without a simmering source of grievance, people won't listen. In this sense, then, talk radio is the quintessential "arena for angry minds" that Richard Hofstadter wrote about in his seminal 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style In American Politics." Although Hofstadter was writing a quarter-century before Limbaugh took his show national, the hallmarks of the paranoid style that Hofstadter listed-- "heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy" --read like a perfect description of talk radio's most relevant characteristics.

This was at the time of the peak of the 1960s liberals' attacks on Goldwater and the emerging modern conservative movement. Those attacks included the charge that conservative criticism of JFK caused Oswald to assassinate the President. "Racist!" "Bigot!" became the 1960s' liberals standard rebuttal to any disagreement with them. It was also the the time when liberals used the FCC "Fairness Doctrine" to shut down conservative talk radio. Yes, if you disagreed with them you were engaged in "heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy."

We cannot allow them (with the likely support of RINOs) to bring back a "fairness doctrine." After they fail "fairness" will be the plan.