Thursday, January 27, 2005

How do you render a right-wing radio host impotent?

So I just read a brilliant article about Gavin Newsom. It gave me all sorts of reasons to admire this guy. Check it out. Then today I hear some jerkwad on KNEW 910 AM in San Francisco rant about how Gavin is rarely in town and that San Francisco shouldn't be spending 100 million to deal with it's "bum" problem.

I wanted to do something to stop this nutball from spreading his insidious views. But frankly I don't know what to do. Has ANYTHING ever worked to discredit or shut these nuts up? I really don't know what will work. Scandals don't work. Rush had his drug scandal, he's still spewing. O'Reilly had his sexual harassment scandal, he's still spewing. Savage/wiener told a gay caller he hopes he gets AIDS and dies and he is still spewing. Is there anything that would cause their listeners to turn away from them? It turns out that host, Jeff Katz, has been driven off the air in Sacramento. He urged listeners to use their cars to hit illegal immigrants trying to cross into the U.S. from Mexico. But now he is on the air in San Francisco! Why do right-wing incompetents fail up?

I used to think that Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage/Wiener and their ilk (I love that word! ilk, ilk, ilk) could just be ignored because surely sane people wouldn't believe it. But now I realize that their listeners adopt the arguments, code words and ideology from the hosts. It is much easier than critical thinking. Convenient too!

How do they weasel their way into people's minds and drive out all good thoughts with selfish, fearful thoughts? Here is one way. Say some listeners are inclined to believe a certain view, such as "people should be responsible for themselves." A fine view, very "rugged individualist". Concurrently they might also have the view that we should try and help our fellow man when they are in trouble. Now every day they hear someone in "authority" saying, "People who help others are suckers. It's not our responsibility. Those people should pull themselves up from their bootstraps. They are not connected to us. By not taking care of themselves we no longer have to help them. In any fashion whatsoever.

Now if you hear this enough times and there is no counter balance saying, "We are not all perfect and capable of caring for ourselves. As human beings it is the right thing to do to try and help our fellow man." That voice of empathy and humanity gets drowned out. Stink tanks and right-wing talk show hosts spend thousands of hours coming up with clever ways to support ideas that on their face are morally repugnant. Think of the most heinous acts humans can commit. Now think of how a right wing talk show host or a stink tank will try and justify, excuse and finally encourage that idea. Most recently they did it with torture.

According to the Taguba report, we Americans drown, beat, sodomized with sticks, raped, unleashed dogs on and crushed to death humans beings. In the race to erase these images radio hosts compared the acts to frat hazing and said "Saddam did worse". Instead of ramping up any moral outrage they felt it necessary to tone down recast, minimize and cover up the atrocities. And in the case of Michael Savage, he thought it was great, he said it didn't go far enough!

The constant repetition of these corrupt thoughts has taken a toll on the minds and then the hearts of the American people.
I find it interesting in the same segment in which he agreed with a caller that bums should be rounded up and given jobs cleaning toilets (good jobs which are being taken by illegal furreners!). He talked about teaching his children values. I often hope that this is all an act to rile people up (it's called "churning the audience" in radio) and he doesn't believe the things he says, but maybe that is my own bias that I tend to believe the best in most people. Maybe if I listen to these hosts enough my mind will be corrupted from that view.

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Very, VERY, well written.

GradeSchoolTeach

4:08 AM  
ellroon said...

I think we have been so PC for so long that it feels good for someone to go rabidly over the edge. (Look at the Victorian era porn or slapstick humor, look at Lenny Bruce etc. for more harmless examples of pushing the envelope.) So when we have been saturated with lessons on being nice to your neighbor, and someone suggests beating him up instead, we are fascinated.

Maybe the movies and video games have deadened our compassion? Where we think this is all a game and there is a reset button? Hasn't anyone in history class been listening? Have we learned nothing from the wars that came before?

Maybe the problem is we as a mammal need this swing between building up society and taking down, kindness and cruelty, peace and war? I keep on thinking that if we could get some of the soldiers to start talking about the realities and actual ugliness of war, we would stop feeding the macho fantasies of the Armchair Brigade (or the 101st Keyboard Division?). I keep thinking we will see the one photo that strips away all the propaganda and brings us up short.

But some are willfully blind. Some want to debase the human experience. Some only love aggression.

7:01 AM  
thehim said...

Baby Stewie on the Family Guy is the perfect example of the extreme right in this country. Talks big about world domination, yells about how they don't need to be cared for, but really needs someone to change their diaper, or they'd just shit on the floor and starve to death.

9:12 PM  
listener said...

If the so-called left wing was a bit more level headed and balanced there would be no need to listen to these guy's. Despite my saying that ,I'm pretty much in agreement with your article in regards to helping American citizens who are in need of it at taxpayers expense.

5:58 PM  

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