Media Matters Casts Net For America's Next Top Limbaugh
"Are you paying attention to what's being said on your radio?" asks Media Matters. And the answer, for me anyway, is: "No! I thought that's what all the iPods and Hulus and porn-on-demand were for, to keep me away from radio!" Also: "What's a radio?" Well, as it turns out, for many Americans the radio is a constant, deafening clatter of unhinged right-wing nuthatchery. Now that the election is over, Media Matters has taken stock of it all and, not surprisingly, deemed it disturbing.
One important point worth noting is that while one thinks of these sorts of shows as providers of political content, these talk-radio jocks are not just out on the air, offering praise for the candidates and policies they support and criticism of candidates and policies they dislike. In fact, all too often, the target of their ire isn't politicians or career policymakers at all, but average American citizens:
As Media Matters for America documented, the nationwide network of conservative radio hosts -- personalities without the national prominence of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh -- engaged in an all-out effort to foment hate and suspicion of Barack Obama by participating actively in an echo chamber of smears and falsehoods about the primary candidate and then Democratic nominee. But these same radio hosts were by no means discerning in their vitriol and did not save their ire solely for Obama. The smears ran the gamut, both in the context of the 2008 election, as Media Matters noted in the previous report, and beyond. Immigrants, female politicians (and women in general), the LGBT community, the poor and homeless, minorities, progressives, unions, college students, and even autistic children were targets of these radio personalities' invective.
To summarize the points of view of the wide array of radio personalities surveyed by Media Matters, here is some shorthand: They hate people like you and me because we are immigrants with subprime mortgages that rape statuary and have never learned to use a toothbrush or toilet paper and carry terrorist machetes because we're "little bitches" that won't stand up to Sarah Palin's panty lines and are homeless, in desperate need of sterilization because we are ugly, lack "American names," and who have "puckered butts" and screech like monkeys to summon our army of Bulgarian women to sacrifice Trig Palin to Artemis while burning synagogues and marrying animals and spreading AIDS through border-crossing tortillas, just as you'd expect from a bunch Hitler-loving leather fetishists that are suspiciously good at using floor buffers.
That is basically, literally, what they say everyday, in their radio bunkers. And they have a point! The big question is: WHAT IS IT THAT DRIVES SO MANY OF US TO RAPE STATUES?
ANSWER: That $3M overhead projector at the Adler Planetarium that Obama wanted funded, for William Ayers to mindfreak us.
RELATED:
Women, minorities, autistic children: Conservative radio's vitriol not reserved for Obama [MMFA County Fair]
Your Who's Who On The Right End Of The Radio Dial [MediaMatters]
Loading comments…
First Posted: 11-13-08 01:45 PM | Updated: 12-14-08 05:12 AM