Posted on 02/22/2006 12:21:51 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
The man who does my parents' taxes in Green Bay seemed nice enough. He shook our hands and greeted us with small talk as we sat down to go over papers.
But the acrid sounds coming from a stereo tuner near his ancient desk filled the office like dirty smoke. It was right-wing radio, an angry white man on his afternoon shift. I was amazed that this accountant was taking my parents' money and making us listen to this to boot, but I reminded myself I was there to help them.
On this day, the topic was poor Dick Cheney and how the liberal media wouldn't leave him alone after his little hunting mishap.
Soon the accountant was trying to wrench my 80-year-old mother into this angry world. He asked her if she thought such a trifling matter was grounds for Cheney's resignation. She snapped back, saying that she didn't think the hunting incident merited Cheney's resignation but that there were plenty of other reasons for it. She added that the two men with her felt just as she did. The accountant curled his lip in Cheney-esque fashion and went back to work.
My skinny little mother won that battle, but the drone of the angry white men goes on day after day, and they still cling to the myth of the liberal media as some sort of overpowering beast. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who spoke at last year's Fighting Bob Fest in Baraboo, has been keeping a close watch on this. In a speech in San Francisco late last year, he noted that the notion of a liberal media is a right-wing ruse.
"There is a right-wing media, and if you look where most Americans are now getting their news, that's where they're getting it. According to Pew (Research Center), 30 percent of Americans now say that their primary news source is talk radio, which is 90 percent dominated by the right."
Unshackled by any meaningful oversight from the Federal Communications Commission or any sense of fairness, the right has elbowed its way into the mainstream, backed by big bucks. As Kennedy noted, "Twenty-two percent of Americans say their primary news source is Fox News, MSNBC or CNBC, all dominated by the right, and another 10 percent, Sinclair network, which is the most right wing of all." Sinclair also happens to be primarily Midwestern, a broadcast company whose owner makes news employees swear they won't criticize the war in Iraq or the Bush administration.
Right-wing radio may be the most pernicious of all in the way that it sneaks its way into the workplace day after day. If one person listens, then all in earshot must, too. You hear it everywhere, in the places where people work hard for a living.
There's good reason for these people to worry, but not about poor Dick Cheney. We are about one Supreme Court decision away from an end to collective bargaining for working men and women. Anyone concerned? Nearly 50 million Americans lack health care insurance, and many times that face shrinking benefits and growing premiums. Now there's something to worry about. Higher education? It's slipping out of reach for many.
But on it drones, this electronic flatulence. Call it the great distraction. It makes little distinction between Muslim extremists and loyal but liberal Americans. When Al Gore recently criticized the Bush administration for trampling on civil rights, right-wing radio accused him of treason. One can only hope that they didn't sentence him to a hunting trip with Dick Cheney.
The message on a daily basis seems to be that it's OK to hate, to shout other people down, to go about one's life in an angry mood.
Perhaps more frightening is this: If this brand of thinking is now mainstream, what is next? What supplants the right at the far end of the spectrum? What will feed the monster in coming years?
Bill Berry of Stevens Point writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times. billnick@charter.net
Who the Hell is this Bill Berry anyway, and why should I care?
Oh, speaking of flatulence, Hey Bill Baby, yo nuthin but a fart in a windstorm anyway!!
Yep, that cinches it for me, if Robert Kennedy, Jr. said it, it must be so...end of debate.
I was gonna comment on that too. So he's admitting that people who work hard for a living are more commonly conservative. At least he's willing to face up to the truth! :)
Perhaps more frightening is this: If this brand of thinking is now mainstream, what is next?"
I ask, if you were out in public and you inadvertently offended someone, and they responded by angrily "shouting you down" with obscenities and threatening the safety of you and your family: What political party would you guess that person supports?
It's a no brainer from my experience. They are a die-hard Democrat liberal.
Liberals are just so out of touch with the real world.
I guess that comes from not being able to see it very well while looking down from their supeior perspective far above it all.
I have always believed honesty to be the best policy.
Therefore I always keep a barbequed baby on hand to munch as I subject the innocent to barbaric doses of deadly right wing talk radio while they are captives in my office.
The automatic ankle cuffs that snap on them when they sit down helps. Keeps them from doing the "right" thing and walking out rather than do business with someone they vehemently oppose for dirty money.
Not only is cold roast baby good, it tips them off not to invite me over for dinner. I hate sushi and tofu.
Someday I may see the Liberal Light and check myself into a Cannibal Management program - but I'll wait and see if my Kentucky Fried Fetus chain next to abortion clinics pays off first. Hey - business before pleasure, right?
Okay. We all know the Kennedy Klan has never been troubled by algebra homework, but if 30 percent of American's get their news from talk radio, then 70 percent DON'T get their news from talk radio. And if 90 percent of talk radio is dominated by the right, then 10 percent of talk radio is NOT dominated by the right. Meaning that of the 30 percent who get their news from talk radio, 3 percent get non-right-dominated news. While 100 percent of those who get their news from traditional media get left-dominated news. Mr. Kennedy's statistics are great testimony for the good guys, although apparently he's not bright enough to comprehend that.
You hear [right-wing talk radio] everywhere, in the places where people work hard for a living.
Yeah. Connect the dots, genius.
If this brand of thinking is now mainstream, what is next?
Oh, I don't know. How about the restoration of America?
What supplants the right at the far end of the spectrum?
I don't know that either. What supplanted the left at the far end of THAT spectrum during the years the moonbats were in power?
What will feed the monster in coming years?
The steaming guts of disemboweled liberals? The wails and moans of diasporized Marxists? The rotting husks of used-up hippies and tie-dyed socialist utopians who found the real world so unbearable they took an eighth-story exit?
Guess the editorialist writes for a paper facing lower circulation numbers each year. [sarcasm] Maybe some federal agency should look into that, just to be fair and to monitor it as he wishes radio hosts to be. [/saracasm]
Ward Churchill, famous left-wing "revolutionary", equated the people who died in the World Trade Center, none of whom he ever personally knew, with Nazis. He suggested they deserved to die, apparently because he suspects they disagree with him. That fits the definition of irrational hatred, in my opinion.
Whenever I go out to counter-protest these moonbats there's an indelible look of misery and hopelessness that's discernible on every one of their faces...........
How true, been trying to point that out for many years.
Some examples: Ed Asner, Norman Mailer, Helen Thomas, Algore, Hillary, T. Kennedy, Carl Levin, Rob Reiner, just to name a very few.
They remind me of the sullen, dreary old Bolsheviks on the reviewing stand in Red Square.
Seems that a lifetime of hating authority figures ( especially daddy and that evil Little League coach) can really do a number on you.
Did this chump ever listen to Al(pants on fire) Franken?
Angry black men: Good
"I learned something a long time ago. NEVER talk politics while you're doing a service that someone is paying you quite well to perform.
"
Clever lad. If you're in a business that serves the public, you might as well serve ALL the public, I always thought.
I propose that all us right-wingers lay off the bean burritos. Problem solved, everyone happy.
Gee, it sucks to live in a free country where you have to put up with people who disagree with you.
Waa, waa, waa, blah, blah, blah.
A work trip led to Washington, D.C., last week. As always, the capital of the so-called free world was fascinating to a small-town boy from Wisconsin.
I remember being in D.C. last year on March 17, St. Patrick's Day, the day President Bush announced on national TV that Saddam Hussein and his bunch had run out of chances, and an invading army would be unleashed. It was a declaration of war. How strange it seemed to walk past some crowded Irish pubs near my hotel that day, just before the Bush speech, and to see great crowds of revelers. They seemed oblivious to and uncaring about the gathering storm, but maybe they were just resigned. I went to a liquor store near the hotel and bought some stiff booze, then headed to my room to drink and curse at the TV.
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