Talking Themselves to Death

It hasn't been a good year for talk radio. In spite of their blustering and arm flailing right wing talk radio hosts failed in their efforts to undo John McCain's quest for the Republican nomination. Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos," a mischievous effort to drive registered Republicans to Hilary Clinton in order to wreak havoc in the Democratic campaign also didn't amount to much. Delve a little deeper than Limbaugh's crowing and you find the 9% of Republicans who voted in the Texas primary actually favored Barack Obama.

And then we had the Kevin James meltdown. Last week on Chris Matthews' Hardball James suffered one of the greatest live television humiliations since Senator Joe McCarthy was asked if he had no shame. On most cable shows the Los Angeles evening talker would have been in his element, lustily endorsing George W. Bush's shameless speech before the Israeli Knesset in which he compared those who would negotiate with terrorists to Hitler appeasers. Matthews, sensing perhaps that exposing his guest as a fraud would be more interesting than the actual discussion asked Kevin James if he could explain what The Munich Accord was. In an instant it was clear James had no idea. Matthews persisted for three minutes, asking 22 times for James to show even a passing knowledge of the notorious historical incident finally prompting an exasperated James to shout "You're not going to trap me!"

Trap you? By asking you to explain a seminal moment in history that you are referencing in your efforts to shape opinion in the present? Has there ever been a more telling reveal of what fatuous, ignorant, self-important, braying jackasses most talk radio hosts are then this? At least when Toto pulled back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz the old man turned out to have a modicum of charm.

But this is American talk radio and political cable. An empty show in which right wing talking points are shouted to the conservative base. It exists like a parallel universe in which the Iraq war is going swimmingly and the economy is fine. In this bizarro world evolution and global warming are hoaxes, Hilary Clinton is a murdering lesbian and Hollywood is an insidious plot against America. The courts are run by activist social-engineering judges, the media is a liberal conspiracy and the education system is a leftist indoctrination machine. Anyone who says otherwise is part of the problem.

This distorted and paranoid world view survives quite nicely in the bell jar of talk radio and friendly cable television shows. Debates are more like debriefings where outrageous contentions go unchallenged because everyone is on the same page. And the partisan lockstep of the radio gabbers cannot possibly be exaggerated. An hour by hour analysis conducted in 2007 found that at the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial owners 91% of the content was conservative. In some markets there's not a single talk radio host who doesn't think liberals are "plotting and scheming against America" (Bill O'Reilly).

The Kevin James takedown may prove to be a pivotal event in the history of talk radio. Conservative talkers have complained for years that the mainstream media ignore them. But almost every time one of these benighted morons is allowed into a real world debate they make a fool of themselves. Without the power of screeners who filter out intelligent adversaries and the hang up button to eliminate a caller who might be winning a point the majority of talk radio hosts are like overturned tortoises. Talk radio and cable have become a Barcalounger for the loony right causing it to grow intellectually fat and lazy. The movement exists in a hermetically sealed echo chamber where conservative truths are believed to be self evident. New information that might challenge this highly distorted world view burns up on re-entry into a self created and sustained universe. In a fair fight these yahoos simply don't have a chance. Shouting, which most of them resort to doesn't make demonstrably wrong things true.

James will no doubt return to his evening roost in Los Angeles and explain to his devoted fans that he was ambushed by a liberal in an orchestrated plot to eliminate a conservative who has become too big a threat to the mainstream media's control of the truth. But any reasonable person knows Kevin James is a man so lacking in his knowledge of history and reason as to be unworthy of a microphone and an audience.

John Moore is host of the drive home show on Canada's number one Talk Radio station NewsTalk 1010 CFRB. He can be heard at www.cfrb.com

Comments

[blaqntelligence]

John Moore said: "Has there ever been a more telling reveal of what fatuous, ignorant, self-important, braying jackasses most talk radio hosts are then this?"

Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Lou Dobbs......just to name a few.....

[SamThornton]

One of the deliciously funny things about the Bush invocation of Neville Chamberlain's political overreach on the Munich Pact is that, in a way, it's the perfect metaphor for Bush's political overreach in his "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Bush's actual words may not have mirrored Chamberlain's, but the tune was identical.

[jrb35]

Great post. A couple corrections:

McCarthy was asked "have you no sense of decency?" Not if he "had no shame".

Matthews asked Kevin James "What did Chamberlin do?" He didn't specifically ask what the Munich Accord was. Sure, the signing of the Munich Accord was the thing that Chamberlin did that went down as an act of appeasement. My point is that Matthews' question is actually easier to answer than one which demands a definition of the Munich Accord. James was handed an easy question and made a fool out of himself. A total clown who can only yell and repeat the same lame talking point.

I only wish the rest of the MSM (ABC News, I'm talking to you) would seriously analyze such comments or arguments rather than just repeating the quote. Most coming from the Right just don't hold up under the least bit of fact checking. It also shows that in addition to teaching our kids history that goes beyond a list of dates of important events (WWII is more that just Dec. 7, 1941 & June 6, 1944) we really ougt to be teaching them the skill of critical thinking. Far too many listen to right wing talk radio and believe whatever they're told by ignorant fools like Kevin James.

[pfc1369]

I especially liked when James mumbled,"Erahhhkk em 1938, 1939...."

As though he knew so much about it, he could discuss it year by year. As soon as he said that, I was certain the cretin did not know squat.

[oldpotsmuggler]

The wingnuts are convinced that they are still winning, and that their margins are even growing. After they lose, they'll be convinced that they won, and there will be no way to get them to admit otherwise.

It must be hell on the psyche to call a "culture war' and then get your ass kicked by the other three quarters of your fellow citizens, but there we are.

[Merlin7]

Well, the problem is, the conservative media moguls are winning -- and I suspect they will be responsible for McCain's winning in November. As a Canadian you probably wouldn't believe the amount of sheer ignorance that permeates the American electorate. Most of these stalwart Americans don't read anything; they get all their information from the right-wingers on radio and the blathering conservatives who dominate CNN Headline News, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Those bizarre "facts" you cited above, as described by conservative broadcasters, are believed to be gospel by many, many Americans. And then there's the still-powerful racism, which is showing up in the lop-sided Hillary victories in the cracker states. Consider all this together and things don't look good for Obama in the fall. Knuckle-dragging Americans are likely to condemn our nation to another four or eight years of unprecedented corruption and stupidity in government.