Clinton musta thought that one up.
Posted on 07/07/2003 7:46:59 PM PDT by Matchett-PI
After 15 years of saying they needed to find a liberal answer to me, the left has decided that they don't need talk radio because they "own" the Internet. Ronald Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times picks up this latest Democrat talking point in a piece headlined: "With Click of a Mouse, Liberals Find Answer to Limbaugh." Whenever one of these ideas germinates in the liberal wing of the party, it's all over the press. Liberals pass on whatever absurd talking point they hear without analyzing whether it's true or not; they don't think for themselves.
Brownstein distorts the tiny Howard Dean showing in the MoveOn.org primary into evidence that most everyone who boots up a computer is a liberal. In the audio links below, you can hear me debunk this absurdity. Remember: last November, Tom Daschle took a shot at me. Years ago, aboard Air Force One, Bill Clinton called KMOX to scream I lacked a "truth detector." Now, liberals are once again trying to create news out of something that's not news. They neglect to mention this very website, or to point out that no matter what the left has, it can't compare with Free Republic [hot link]. MoveOn has already seen their page views fall like a rock.
Howard Dean has raised $3.6 million on the Internet over the last three months from not quite 45,000 donors. Last Monday, Dean collected "a breathtaking" $820,000 online. These people are having orgasms over this! Brownstein quotes Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network: "This was an historic week where you had for the first time an unbelievably profound use of the Internet to mobilize regular people to participate in politics again." Historic? It's as if McCain 2000 never happened.
Brownstein gushes over MoveOn generating 200,000 e-mails earlier this year. Do you know how many e-mails Matt Drudge could generate if he chose to? I recounted the kind of crowd we drew for Dan's Bake Sale - [hot link] - at a time when we certainly didn't have the news media talking it up 24 hours a day as they did with this online primary. J.P. Gownder's Washington Post column, "An Online Revolution? I Don't See It," sort of shines the light of reality on this latest leftist fantasy. He cites that more than half of the $7.5 million in campaign cash Dean raised in the second quarter of 2003, came from the Internet, but...
"Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi boasted to a Post reporter, 'We have the largest grassroots organization in America right now and we are going to utilize it.' Sounding a bit like a 1999 vintage dot-com business promoter, Trippi said, 'If television took the grassroots out of politics, the Internet will put it back in.'" Not to put down the Internet - certainly not here - but these people are living in a dream world. Gownder exposes the idea of Dean's online support translating into actual voters by citing the over 55,000 "members" of Dean's MeetUp.com group. The meetings the group has held drew only a few dozen supporters on average. And these guys are throwing a party over this? Dream on!
Let me sum it up for you this way: Brownstein doesn't appear to know that I have one of the most-widely visited websites available dealing with politics and current events. We don't run from technology here, we embrace it. Second, there will always be a large audience for the spoken word, assuming those in positions to speak are cutting-edge, entertaining and, above all, informative. Third, unlike reading a newspaper or a website, talk radio can be heard in cars, in the shower, and places where computer access is difficult. And finally, whether talk radio or websites, the left will never dominate either. The problem for liberals runs deeper than the form of communication. It is the NATURE of their communication. Not only are they humorless, their message is negative and their view of the public is condescending. Liberalism is the ideology of elitists, which, by definition, limits the size of the audience.
Listen to Rush...
(...read the Ron Brownstein reprinting of the Democrats fantasy: owning the Internet) (...discuss why the Dean online performance is a fan dance in 'net pants) (...cite the numbers on MoveOn's failure to continue drawing online users)
Those Who Join Mass Movements Are Failures in Their Individual Lives... (Don't Miss Thomas Sowell On Eric Hoffer - 7.03.03) [hot link]
Visit the Limbaugh Archives… (Leader of the Free World Obsessed with Limbaugh - 11.21.02) [hot link]
Read the Articles...
(LA Times: With Click of a Mouse, Liberals Find Answer to Limbaugh - Brownstein) [hot link]
(TIME: How Dean Is Winning The Web) [hot link]
(Washington Post: An Online Revolution? I Don't See It - J.P. Gownder) [hot link]
(Excerpt) Read more at rushlimbaugh.com ...
Whenever anyone brings up a political issue in an e-mail, I send them an FR link to read the real story. It works. Just start sending out links with your e-mails. It's free.
Cordially,
Clinton musta thought that one up.
It was a SLAPP suit (probably ordered by the Clinton White House), designed to cost FR time and money. It was brought before a Clinton judge who secured her position on the federal bench in part through advertisements in the LA Times (which were disguised as "news columns", written by a LAT "journalist" who was actually part of the suit).
Surprisingly (</sarcasm>), the "judge" came up with a four-point test that found that FR was "infringing".
Curiously, with this ruling firmly in hand, LAT/WP allow liberal websites to post full-length articles from their papers. Imagine that!
This very article by Ronald Brownstein is posted in full on the Smirking Chimp (a smaller liberal website, a little larger than FR was at the time of the lawsuit). The Smirking Chimp actually posted the FR judgement article way back when, so the operator can't claim ignorance - and he posts the majority of the articles:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=12123&mode=nested&order=0
It operates pretty much the way FR does, fundraisers, etc.
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