Liberal Radio Is Planned by Rich Group of Democrats

The New York Times ^ | 02/17/03 | JIM RUTENBERG

[MHT]

Liberals figure that money they spend on radio is money spent on campaigns. They figure that Rush gives the Republicans three free hours of advertising every day--and one of Rush's biggest complaints with the McCain election reform bill was that it gave more power to the media by stiffling the voice of those who had a limit on how much they could spend without holding media to the same restrictions.

The argument is valid, but irrelevant if no one is watching, listening to, or reading liberal media drivel.

[Hildy]

Liberals can't listen to the radio and live their lives at the same time.

[surrey]

I've heard that Jay Severin may be syndicated. He can be absolutely maddening at times but he does know his politics and is one of the most articulate hosts on radio.

[pollwatcher]

This just in from The New York Observer (my title "Liberals Never Learn"):

----------------
What happens when a citizen actually believes a campaigning politician’s idle promises?

At a May 24 Democratic National Committee fund-raiser at the M.C.I. Center in Washington, D.C., Anita Drobny and her 16-year-old daughter, Jessica, found themselves sitting at a table next to Hillary Clinton’s. Jessica Drobny, a high school sophomore from Highland Park, Ill., who had met Mrs. Clinton twice before, took the opportunity to tell the First Lady about a project she was working on for history class; the subject was female genital mutilation (F.G.M.) in Africa. Mrs. Clinton had given speeches about it in the past.

"They had a dialogue for several moments," Anita Drobny said.

"She was really interested," her daughter gushed. Following the exchange, Mrs. Clinton wrote down Jessica’s name and address and promised to send her copies of her notes and speeches on the subject.

By Sunday, June 4, however, the promised material had not arrived. The project was due in three days. So Jessica’s mother, who had contributed $5,000 to Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaign, did what any slighted donor would do: She called up the campaign’s Seventh Avenue headquarters to complain. Christopher Fickes, deputy finance director, took the call.

"She was really mad," Jessica later recalled of her mother.

"I can’t imagine that Mrs. Clinton would promise you something and not deliver," Anita Drobny said.

Mr. Fickes passed the problem along to Huma Abedin, Mrs. Clinton’s personal assistant at the White House. What followed, according to a source close to the campaign, was "an urgent and worried game of phone tag" between harried underlings.

The staff reacted swiftly to the mounting crisis. A search was ordered for the missing materials and for the staff member responsible for their disappearance. The task of mounting an attack against new Senate campaign opponent Rick Lazio was ever-so-briefly shelved so that Jessica Drobny could get her project in on time.

Eventually, the speeches on F.G.M. were discovered. The campaign staff faxed them to Jessica Drobny. But it was too late. She had finished her project.

A source close to the campaign said that the delay in sending the copies of the speeches occurred because Mrs. Clinton "had told someone on the White House staff, but she thought she had told someone else on the White House staff. It just kept passing from one person to another."

Lissa Muscatine, the First Lady’s press secretary said, "I have a hard time seeing the importance of this, other than that somebody didn’t get information in a timely matter." (That sounds familiar.)

After Jessica had delivered her report, an envelope from the White House containing Mrs. Clinton’s speeches arrived at the Drobny household. It was a poignant reminder of what might have been.

Without the First Lady’s timely help on the project, Jessica failed to get an A. "It’s very hard to get an A in that class," she said.

Leslie Gray Levin, her teacher in the class (World History Since 1500), explained, "The reason why her grade wasn’t an A was she was missing some of the requirements on the requirement sheet." Besides, Mrs. Levin had seen this kind of thing before. "I had a student last year and a student this year who hosted the parties for the Clinton-Gore benefits."

–Jonathan Goldberg

[desertcry]

Yeah, these rich leftist wackos have money to burn, I just hope they burn with it.

[Boundless]

> Another thing you forget is that conservatives are boring people as a rule...

Rush is convinced that there can't be a Liberal Rush
because his show derives the bulk of its entertainment
factor from the actual behavior of liberals... the
contradictions & hypocrisy (e.g.Lahey on fillibustering
judicial nominees, Daschle on Iraq), and the jaw-dropping
zealotry (.e.g.PETA complaining to Arafat about suicide
donkeys, but not about the deaths of human bombers or
their victims).

Franken is gonna hafta make stuff up, and you just can't
top the truth when it comes to wacky entertainment value.

> Sure you have a Trent Lott now and then...

There's only limited entertainment value in Lott
apologizing for something that didn't need to be
apologized for (unless it did).

[sweetliberty]

One of the things I find most humorous about this whole idea is that they actually are choosing to go opposite Rush. Do they really believe that they are going to entice listeners away from Rush using such a ploy? Oh, a few Rush listeners may tune in once or twice to see what they're trying to do and get a good laugh. Rush himself will probably be on it and report, but if they think they can seduce Rush's listeners with more liberal propaganda and whining on the national airwaves I think they are in for another confusing disappointment.

[sweetliberty]

"A buzz word, or a simple sentence with a few simple words is all they can understand"

Actually, I think you overestimate their capacity for understanding, or at least for caring. If they really understood the terms they throw around or if they really cared about them, their approach to them would be very different.

[SuziQ]

"I think the audience isn't there for a liberal Rush," he said. "Because I think liberals don't want to hear that kind of demagoguery."

ROTFL!! THAT statement, without a doubt, is going to be the most laughable I will hear all day!!

[Grampa Dave]

You are probably right about most of their Darwin candidate/dark side voting contingents.

[Gothmog]

"Some radio executives said they simply did not believe liberal radio could become good business. Among them was Kraig T. Kitchen, chief executive of Premiere Radio Networks, one of the nation's largest radio syndication arms with the programs of Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Reagan and Dr. Laura Schlessinger, among others. Though Mr. Kitchin said he was a conservative, he also said he would have pursued liberal programs had he thought there was money in them. He ascribes to the popular view in the industry that liberal hosts present issues in too much complexity to be very entertaining — while addressing a diffuse audience that has varying views."

Kitchen is an idiot. He makes the same mistake, with the same unthinking nonchalance, that libs always try to argue. That being; conservative radio simply blasts a simple message to simple people.

Anyone who reads FR knows there are many interesting, complex issues we discuss here. It would be like saying 'FR is more popular than DU because it's simple-minded audience responds better to simple arguments. They can not understand complex issues.'

Screw them. Any objective observer (horrors -- an Ayn Rand alert) of FR and DU (extend to conservatism vs. liberalism) realizes it's Democrats who rely on fascist marching orders to simply spout the same inanities over and over again.

Hey, Kitchen, with no broadcast experience I'll tell you why this effort will fail. Liberal talk radio fails because the population that drive those numbers (mainly blue-collar white males) is out listening, while the population that might drive lib talk radio is watching soap operas.

This is a broad characterization, but IMHO, Rush gets a lot of his audience from white or other blue collar males who are driving delivery trucks, making stops as carpenters or plumbers or own small businesses, etc., places unlike the white collar office environment where listening to a radio while you work would be considered a distraction.

For example, contrast this with Donohue's old demographics. He used to be on during the afternoon when the 'soccor moms' were at home watching soaps (I have no problem with chicks watching soaps,if they enjoy it, fine with me) but that demographic group is more likely to sympathize with his liberal message. Putting Donohue on at night, where the audience is expecting a 'harder' news analysis and his arguments fail. (Notice, I'm making the point that a 'big thinker' like Donohue was really important because he was 'entertainment').

I've said this a few times, but just as a refresher, the two voting blocs that matter most in politics (and will continue to until at least 2014 and maybe past) are blue-collar white men and women. They were Nixon's silent majority and fueled Reagan's revolution. Demograhically, they are the gorilla in the room. Not the black, asian, hispanic, etc., vote. At least not for over a decade.

These people are the ones who have work in environments where they can listen to talk radio -- and right now, they don't agree w/ the liberal crap.

Just to stress, my opinion/comments are discussing a wide variety of people and are meant as a general characterization and not criticism of any of the mentioned groups.

[miss marmelstein]

Thank you! You finally gave the real answer to liberals' lack of success in the media.

[WillVoteForFood]

That's just it. They know whoever they put up in their liberal whinefest will absolutely be pummelled. What I predict will happen will go something like this:

1. The liberals will announce with much fanfare that there is a new sheriff in town to take on Black Bart Limbaugh. Of course, they will use all of their buzzwords in their promotion and will call their show the "progressive" alternative to Rush, "progressive" being used because liberals are quick to hide that they are liberal.

2. In a short time after the start of their abysmal failure, the libs will note very publicly that ratings for the schmuck they put in front of the fools gold LIB microphone are in the toilet and will begin to blame the VRWC for their low ratings, but more importantly, for keeping their new show from getting play on mainstream stations around the country.

3. A group of libs will attempt to organize some kind of boycott against the major players in radio (Clearchannel, Infinity, etc), much along the lines of the attempted boycott against Limbaugh, but they will attempt to organize against all the major conservative commentators.

4. Having seen the boycott fail and with ratings still in the toilet, the sponsors of whine fest will announce privately, yet publicly, that the show will likely not survive past another month, and point to this as an example of conservative media bias pervasive in society.

5. Once the show fails miserably, Phlegmocrats in Congress will attempt to springboard this failure into new legislation to put limitations on radio shows like Limbaugh's, in order to get "fairness" back in the media.

The libs and Phlegms have already made noise in this direction. This attempt to put on a liberal show is nothing more than a means to get America to believe conservative media bias exists.

[From The Deer Stand]

Ah ha! In that case I'd buy a one-channel one-volume radio and smash it with my splitting maul. Then I'd get out the guitar and entertain myself!

[mewzilla]

No, Severin's no Clintonoid. He has appeared on MSNBC, though I haven't seen him on in a while. Severin has an incisive mind and is entertaining as heck to listen to.

[blackdog]

The humor in Lott was his post-foible attempts to 'splain himself sort of apologize. A fine example of the "stop digging" analogy. There is also the male cheerleader thing.....Lott has always bothered me for serious reasons. Every time I saw him those little hairs on my neck stood on end. That's not entertainment, that's a natural God given response to a smarmy spineless parasite.

On the upside to Al Franken et al, doing their show is that it will provide endless buckets of coffin nails to seal their own coffins. Unlike e-mail and FBI files, what goes out over the air cannot be burned, shredded, erased, or forgotten. And you don't need an order from Lamberth to find stuff out. Any guest on liberal talk radio had better keep his/her yap shut cause Bill and Hillary will have the tape rolling. The format will be as spontanious and informative as Hillary in a deposition. 14 hours of "I don't know about that Al, but........those old fart rich republicans are the real evil in our society Al......" will not be very funny or entertaining.

[buffyt]

Al Franken radio host GAG BARF URP! Will we listen in so we can make fun of them here, or will we just ignore them for the irrelevant *ssh*les they are????

[Congressman Billybob]

I hope these fat-cat, Dem-libs do exactly what they are talking about, and dump their money into a new "liberal" talk radio network & programming. The common characteristic of Dem-libs is that they lack the competence to learn from bad experiences.

If they want to dump their money into a venture that doesn't match the market, that's okay. If they want to create another financial sink-hole like salon.com, that's a win-win situation. They waste their money and effort on a losing cause, rather than putting it into marginal Democrat campaigns where a few more expensive media lies might produce a Dem win. So be it.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column, "Using the Old Noodle," now up on UPI and FR.

[blackdog]

I wonder if this may become a cause in the DNC? I mean will we start finding dead conservative radio hosts about the countryside? Who was that radio guy that got whacked in the early 80's for his views?

The whole hate radio thing.....It's not like anyone in DNC circles does not offer that solution at least once during each meeting on strategy!