I married her, and look what happened to me,
PLEASE, I BEG OF YOU, KILL ME NOW
Posted on 03/05/2009 10:58:45 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
He talks for hours every day. He gets paid to talk. Just talk. Doing it well is no small thing; witness the number of people who have tried to be him, or be the NOT-him, and failed. But he doesn't have to build a coalition. He doesn't need the votes of the other side to earn his check. He doesn't have to write the legislation, convince Olympia Snowe, raise money to keep the lights on, put his name on the ballot. All the things he doesn't have to do give him the freedom to be as effective as he is at what he does.
Trying to beat him at his own game when your own game is played by a different set of rules is a losing proposition. He knows that.
The Republican Party's chairman and even some of my Democratic friends need to remember that.
When I first started doing talk radio, I listened to Rush Limbaugh in the morning to figure out how to do it. I don't mean, obviously, that I studied Rush to figure out my positions on issues; I've been doing issues my whole life. I studied him to figure out how to do radio — how to talk about issues in a way that engages people, creates a community of the audience, makes them want to hear more, connect, join the club. Rush is wrong on almost everything, by my lights, but the lessons I took from him weren't about substance, but about craft. By my lights, no one is better at it.
To dismiss Rush as mere "entertainment," as Michael Steele, the Republican Party's chairman, did this weekend, understates his abilities and influence. To a very large extent, all of us who do television news or politics are in the business of entertainment. President Barack Obama's speech craft is a form of entertainment. Fox News (for whom I work) has mastered a sort of lively and engaging approach to delivering news that, regardless of the content or what you think of the perspective, is quite simply more fun to watch than many of its competitors. The best and most successful news-oriented Web sites are also, frankly, creative and engaging and, yes, entertaining.
But he is not the leader of the Republican Party. He may be the guru; he is certainly a powerful voice. But his job is not to write the opposing bill, to decide when to compromise and when not to, to participate in the process of making the sausage. He doesn't need to reach out to the middle, the way politicians do. Calling him "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party," as Rahm Emanuel did, only gets him more attention and more power, and it makes it more difficult, not less, for the Republicans, whose votes the president ultimately needs, to defy his naysaying.
That is not to say Rush should go unchallenged or unanswered. The blogoshpere is full of smart, savvy, creative progressive voices, who can and should engage Rush. Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann should give him their best. It always has disappointed me, frankly, that there are so many Rush wannabes filling the radio waves and so few opposing voices.
One of the many decisions I regret in life was the one I made to turn down a very generous offer to fill the hours against Rush on what was then Los Angeles' major talk station; I said no because I was too loyal to the host I would be replacing. That host ultimately was replaced anyway and insisted on my weekend slot when he did. So much for misguided loyalty.
But the fact that Steele felt the need to apologize to Rush attests to the fact that it was a mistake to attack him in the first place. The attention Rush is getting right now from the White House chief of staff and the chairman of the Republican Party will increase Rush's ratings, but it is far from clear to me that it will make it any easier for Republicans to cross the line and vote with the president. Harder, I would think. Rush wins this game, which is why those who play on a different field should stay away from his.
______________________________________
WASHINGTON (CNN) - Democratic strategist James Carville avoided saying Wednesday if he had been in contact with the White House over ongoing efforts to portray talk show host Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party.
-snip-
UPDATE: Begala, asked in a separate interview whether he was coordinating an anti-Limbaugh strategy with the White House, said: "I don't take orders from anybody, except CNN. I don't work for any politicians. I work for the network."
"My strong suspicion is that the White House has bigger fish to fry," Begala told CNN.
The former Clinton administration official said he has "been speaking out against Rush Limbaugh for as long as I can remember."
"I do what I do out loud," he said. "I'm a cheerleader and not a drum major, so if I'm saying something and people repeat it, I think it's great."
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/04/carville-blames-limbaugh-for-starting-political-feud/
WTH?? Can someone decipher that?
I am curious as to why Ms. Estrich wants the mutts to back off?
We know she is no white knight.
So capitalism doesn't work and socialism does??? There are hundreds of examples, and each one shows otherwise. The only way for socialism to work is riding off the back of a strong capitalistic system. Obamabi does not get this. He just thinks he can keep growing socialism.
She could have stopped after the first paragraph...she hit the nail on the head.
I married her, and look what happened to me,
PLEASE, I BEG OF YOU, KILL ME NOW
The Obama Administration: speaking power to truth.
Right. What needs to be studied here as a phenomenon is the liberal fascination with Rush. Liberals listening, stupefied, and flying into rages. It has been observed before that liberals are addicted to self-flagellation, self-punishment. I will suggest that the so-called Clinton "War Room" was a creature of their fascination with Rush. And the Manichean strategy which came out of it, what Hillary described as "bashing" the opponent's "brains" in, should be studied as a mental disorder. Liberal Rage Disorder. Also, the paranoid group of psycho liberalism which came out of the Dukakis War Room. These are Rage Disorders. And you can bet the participation of women with Post-Abortion Rage Syndrome. The Myth of the Battered Liberal (with a persecution complex) becomes more interesting in that light. Directing anger at what they perceive as a domineering white male authority figure is in that syndrome.
Thanks Val. Strange, ain’t it, that the partisan media shills are bitching about Limbaugh 24-7 instead of covering the only real story — that of proposed budgets and budget deficits that dwarf anything that came before, a President claiming to be against wasteful spending (even though spending is, well, “that’s what a stimulus is”), and looming tax increases which will crush the economic recovery bound to follow behind the 2/3rds drop in the price of crude?
Which echoes Limbaugh's own admiration for Larry King.
The liberal claim of listening just to "study" Limbaugh's technique sounds a little like clergymen claiming they read Playboy "just for the articles."
I didn’t know that. I’d never have guessed. Larry King is a bloody bore.
She had a show? Who knew?
Rush admires Larry King?
I confess I've barely watched King on TV, but I remember when the guy had a late night slot on radio. His show was mediocre at best. He was listenable only as long as he had an interesting guest. Compare that to Rush, who never has guests, except for an occasional call from the VP or three guys in Kennebunkport wanting to congratulate him on his show's 20th anniversary. It takes real talent to do talk radio without guests!
Larry King also had a unique knack for cutting off interesting callers early and letting the bores run on. But, then, Larry is a libtard. Libtards don't like it when some folks do better than others.
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