In defense of conservative talk radio
The Jacksonville Times-Union comes to the defense of soldiers who want to listen to Rush Limbaugh. U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has offered an amendment to the fiscal 2005 Defense Authorization bill, requiring that the armed forces drop Limbaugh’s show or also add a liberal for balance. Excerpt:
There are plenty of liberal viewpoints on AFRTS, including commentary by Jim Hightower, who once was promoted as the “liberal Rush.” Activists don’t want balance. They want one-sided programming.
AFRTS is broadcast to about 175 countries, plus ships at sea. The purpose is to provide America’s military men and women with programming they want but otherwise wouldn’t get to hear while on duty outside the country.
The programs were originally chosen by the troops themselves.
Limbaugh’s show wasn’t on the selection list published by the previous administration, which also complained about Limbaugh’s impact. Yet, so many people wrote in his name that it was selected for broadcast, placing in the top five choices.
The broadcasts serve military listeners, not civilian political activists. Limbaugh is the most popular talk radio show on the air. It would make no sense to drop his program.
If Harkin and the others want to suggest frequent polls on adding and dropping programs, that would be fair enough. Conservative talk radio is popular and liberal talk is failing, however, so they might be disappointed.
Limbaugh has supported U.S. soldiers, and that has to be good for morale. What is wrong with allowing soldiers to hear someone show appreciation for them while they are in a war zone?
Right on!
This actually brings up something related I wanted to get off my chest: P.J. O’Rourke’s snarky article in The Atlantic attacking Rush and conservative talk radio. I adored O’Rourke in my 20s. Now, I find him so very 9/10 and out-of-touch. And there are tons of bloggers who are so much funnier.
So O’Rourke opines that “the number and popularity of conservative talk shows have grown apace since the Reagan Administration. The effect, as best I can measure it, is nil.” Perhaps he should ask the soldiers abroad who voted overwhelmingly to put Rush on their airwaves what the impact of his show is. Or maybe he should head to Sean Hannity’s Freedom Concert on July 8, which raises millions of dollars for military families. Or maybe he should meet Hugh Hewitt. Or maybe O’Rourke should use some of his frequent flyer miles and do some traveling to major metropolitan U.S. cities, where conservative talk radio offers rare relief from liberal orthodoxy–and where talk show hosts have spearheaded effective activism. KSFO in San Francisco led the Gray Davis recall brigade. KVI in Seattle was instrumental in launching the successful fight against Hillarycare and in support of an initiative abolishing government racial preferences.
A lot of cocooned, Beltway conservative snobs like to denigrate talk radio hosts for preaching to the choir. Yes, not all talk radio is very good. But these same critics have no problem using it themselves to promote their own work. And so it was with no surprise that I heard one P.J. O’Rourke yesterday on one of my favorite talk shows, the Laura Ingraham Show, preaching to the choir and trying to sell his book. Laura was gracious, smart, and witty. O’Rourke was flatter than Lara Flynn Boyle’s chest. It’s not as easy as it looks, P.J., is it?
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Thank you for saying that about O’Rourke. I’ve never much cared for him — although he’s undeniably clever at times — and he’s gotten consistently worse over the years. All snark and no bite, I guess. Still, actually saying that O’Rourke isn’t “all that” is blogosphere apostasy.
It’s sad. I remember P.J. rather fondly, but then I haven’t really read anything of his since 9/11…
Don’t kill em, Malkin.
I also want to point out that talk radio also killed two attempts by Republican Gov. Sundquist of Tennessee to create a state income tax by setting up a number of protests outside of the state capital.
I think Sundquist eventually got his way, but talk radio sure made it hard for him to do it.
And when you look at the landscape created by talk radio and the Drudge Report, along with NewsMax and other internet sources, things would look pretty scary right now. George Bush would definitely not have a job right now and the media would definitely be more Democrat-dominated than it is today.
Also, if you could, check out my blog @ http://expertise.blogdrive.com. I just revamped it and trying to keep it going strong. I think you and Barber are inspirations in regards to what my blog should be, except I add sports into the mix. Thanks and keep up the diatribes.
Lara Flynn Boyle isn’t flat anymore. In MIB II she has a significant chest. (also in various stills on IMDB). One has to assume surgery, but I have no idea.
Perhaps P.J. should visit a few war zones are learn the truth. He used to have his head screwed on straight. What happened?
Exactly what liberal radio program do they propose to put on to balance Rush or do they wish to create one paid for by the government since they apparently can’t do it on their own. Have they made the same balance proposal for PBR?
I don’t think Peej realises that we out here in flyover country NEED talk radio and Blogs, along with JWR and Lucianne.com, they’re our only sources of news that isn’t filtered through the Alphabet Networks and the NYT, Wapo, LAT and Rueters pink goggles.
Who is Lara Flynn Boyle?
I think he’s just pining for the “old days” when there wasn’t so much competition in the conservative opinion business.
Dead-on about O’Rourke being 9/10, but I’m still actually looking forward to reading PJ’s spiked piece in the “Killed’ anthology despite the presence of Rall in the same volume.
So much for the voice of the people. Can you imagine if it was reversed and a Republican was trying to remove something like “Air America”? The media would be screaming bloody murder! It’s telling that there’s been barely a peep from them over this.
There was a time in the 80s, around when PJOR wrote for Rolling Stone when he was side-splittingly funny. He wasn’t always on target with the political commentary, but he knew how to twist a phrase for sure.
Perhaps he stopped drinking, or started drinking, or made some fundamental lifestyle change, but after a while he just faded from the radar. Not unlike Garry Trudeau.
Bravo Michelle re: the O’Rourke piece in this month’s Atlantic. P.J. is starting to become a little girly-boy and is playing to the liberals now. I guess he likes his invitation to the cocktail parties held the beautiful people.
On a separate note, it’s really sad to see the direction that The Atlantic has taken since the tragic death of Michael Kelly. When I first subscribed they were fairly balanced, now they are drifting back into elitist liberal land. The issue with the O’Rourke-talk radio piece was the last of my current subscription, and I’m most definitely on the fence about renewing at this point.
Has P.J. O’Rourke ever written a book or article that wasn’t snarky? The problem with this particular article is that it is lame, not that it was snarky. Snark, when done properly, is not a bad thing, and much of O’Rourke’s older material is a prime example of that.
Then again, I was the founder of MEChOB (Movimiento Esnarqui entre Chicanos y Otros de Blogotlán, see http://xrlq.com/archives/2003/09/07/726/mechob/), so I might be a little prejudiced on the issue of snark.
No one objected to snark, X. It’s the “all snark, no bite,” or if you prefer, “snark for the sake of snark” that I object to.
Wow. I just read PJ’s article in The Atlantic and I couldn’t be more disappointed.
I give PJ full credit for introducing me to the Republican party back in my early 20’s. I was too young to question my steady diet of liberial bias from the only readily available (to me) news sources at the time, Baltimore Sun and CNN, but I knew that both put out what often seemed to defy my notion of common sense. A book review for “Parliament of Whores,” convinced me to give PJ a try and thus began my journey toward defining myself as a Republican, and more importantly, as an active and avid supporter of the truth.
Now, PJ may not care that today I also get the Washington Times delivered, also watch FOX News every day, cruise blogs of all ideological persuasions and voraciously read books from great thinkers of any and every political bent – all just because of him – but I want him to know that I wasn’t part of anyone’s choir when I chanced across his first big book. I was one of the vast majority of young Americans who didn’t vote and who tuned politics out at every opportunity because what I was hearing sounded stupid and one-sided to me. No, PJ wasn’t the only guy with a conservative-leaning book that I could’ve laid hands on at the time, he was just the only guy (even “old” guy to me), who was able to say something to which I could finally relate.
People wake up to their individual power to think critically in their own time, and by my observation, often accidentally. In America today, there are still far too few rational yet interesting voices for young people to discover as they wade through the tons of self-serving muck that’s spewed out by the media each day. So, the more such accidents, the merrier, PJ! It’s not merely devotees who tune into the only mediums to offer bigger than soundbite-sized segments about important issues. People eventually grab books when they become sick of the homogeneous drone of TV, newspapers and magazines. People eventually explore the AM dial once they realize that all of FM music radio cuts to commercials simultaneously. We need more, not less people to be there ready to illuminate other ways of looking and thinking about the world.
Pained me to see PJ reffer to conservatives as “they”. Sounds like one of the folks we should be content to consider merely Republican. Does he have kids yet, that might fix him up. He has a point about not much persuasion going on, but it’s not valid to aim it so specifically at conservative radio.
LFB looked kind of nice in MIB2, which I just saw. I was thinking that she just looked better to me since I’d found out that she’s One Of Us. I want to nominate her for that conservative babe thing Michelle, Coulter, the wife from “Everybody Loves Raymond” and Lisa Kennedy Montgomery got, if I could remember where that was.
Excellent site! You have been blogrolled!
~~~
Matt – I as well remember reading PJOR in Rolling Stone -he was great back then….not so much now…
Once Democrats gain control of the government, they will re-pass the old ‘fairness doctrine’ laws, effectively outlawing talk radio.
So O’Rourke opines that “the number and popularity of conservative talk shows have grown apace since the Reagan Administration. The effect, as best I can measure it, is nil.”
I might be reading this wrong, but doesn’t this ignore the fact that both houses of Congress and state governorships moved from a majority Dem to a majority Rep since the growth of conservative talk shows?
Michelle is so right that P.J. was flat on Laura Ingraham’s show. Maybe he worried about firing off a pox-on-both-their-houses quip with Laura’s audience listening in. Would not have sold books. On the same show, could Laura please pipe down for a minute and let Zell Miller talk?
PJ O’Rourke is quite smug and thinks he is glib. In his book about his travels in the MidEast, O’Rourke likened the State of Israel to the Meshantucket Pequot Indian Tribe in Connecticut that created Foxwoods. O’Rourke snottily said that like the Meshantuckets, the Israelis simply showed up one day and said “We’re back. Get out. We are going to rule”. How absurd? Has O’Rourke never heard about the Jewish pioneers who drained mosquito laden swamps where no one could live and reclaimed the desert? I suggest O’Rourke go to places like Kiryat Shmona and Dimona where there were no cities or towns until the Israelis built something out of nothing.
And O’Rourke has nothing to say about the mass Arab immigration in the 20th century. He just wants to be glib and be popular on the cocktail circuit he loves so much.
“Perhaps P.J. should visit a few war zones are learn the truth”.
He was to a number of warzones: Kuwait and Iraq during Gulf War I, Afghanistan and Pakistan when the Russians still were in Afghanistan etc.
And he’s right about Ann Coulter giving you a headache. He’s way too nice to Bill O’Reilly, though.
to answer p.j.’s question/subtitle, i know someone that was tooling around the radio stations and landed on the new talk radio station here, during michael savage’s show. now savage isn’t what you would call the voice of temperance, but his tirade appealed to this guy, in a howard stern sort of way. he’d have tuned out rush as “boring” two minutes into it, but he’s become a regular listener for savage. i don’t know if he’s voting republican just yet, but i know he’s getting pretty close.
The most recent book of his that I really liked was ‘Eat the Rich’ – then ‘CEO of the Sofa’ was OK, but a bit flat (although it was written pre-9/11 and published after, I think, which definitely changes the frame of reference.
‘Peace Kills’, his latest, really does seem to have been phoned in. Marriage and fatherhood don’t seem to helped his writing.
Still, go for his old stuff and you can have a good time – and he may come back to us yet.
I fear that the campaign finance bill will somehow limit talk radio near the election. How difficult would it to be consider talk radio “free advertising” for conservative candidates? This could turn out to be a real problem if the Left decided to pursue it.
Armed Forces radio has more NPR than anyone could possibly want… the “balance” issue is a red herring to disguise the clear attempt to silence. If this is allowed to pass, conservative talk radio is doomed. The moment Kerry is elected, it really is a matter of time.
Well according to Blackjack at The Hole Card,
even with the hours of Quaalude-ish NPR partisan talk, all they have of Rush is a Single Hour of air time.
Hardly seems like a threat to Liberal Minds and Sensibilities for there to be one hour of Rush.
Yet another tempest in their bongs, er, teapots.
It’s aging. It gets us all in the end, some sooner than others. No bite, all snark, or no bite and less snark.
Please pass the idebenone and the baby aspirin.
Wait, so you disagree with O’Rourke’s thesis that most talk radio is aimed at listeners with political leanings in agreement with the host? His point wasn’t controversial, he was simply observing that the Limbaugh show has a target demographic just like the New York Times and Roll Call do. Do you write your pieces with illegal immigrant Bolivian Marxists in mind, or are you aware that most of your readers (myself included) are quite conservative? Seriously, relax. O’Rourke has never misrepresented himself as a serious heavy, and everyone seems to be picking a fight with him because he pointed out something fairly obvious.
By the way, if everyone was a little more familiar with O’Rourke, they wouldn’t be so quick to condemn him as somehow out of line (or “9/10″):
http://www.nationallampoon.com/flashbacks/ww2/ww2.html
He was 9/11 long before 9/11.
I`m not a big fan of P.J.`s, but, I`m afraid Rush is a bit of a gas-bag.
P.J. is a print guy and has never done well on TV or radio. He does a good job reading for audiobook editions and his high points in TV/radio appearances are typically just that: reeling off a chunk of text he knows well and invested a fair chunk of time in shaping to his satisfaction. Plenty of good writers are bad at spontaneous conversation.
O’Rourke has never been in lockstep with the official GOP wisodom and that is one of theprimary reasons he reaches many of us who were once arbitrarily opposed to anything touted by conservatives.
He has some valid points from my perspective. Ann Coulter can be fun and immeasurably more pleasant to behold than the like of Al Franken or Michael Moore (she could go a three day booze and chocolate binge and still win that contest) but she can also be incendiary if brought into play in the worng company. O’Reilly is just tedious. His vocal mannerism grate and he all too often falls back on ‘it just is’ as a rationale for his stance on a subject.
I once detested Limbaugh but found him more listenable in recent years. I had change but just as importantly, he changed, too. A lot of stuff he used to alienate those he was supposed to be winning over to his side has become calmer and more reasoned. A bit.
One thing about O’Rourke. He has long made a career of venturing among people who oppose everything he believes in and bringing back interesting observations. Between trips he had reasonable people to hang out with and preserve his sanity. Many of us lack that option. We find ourselves seemingly surrounded by self-destructive insanity that calls itself fairness. Sometime that guy on the radio is the only reminder that we aren’t alone.
http://imdb.com/name/nm0001223/
Shame on you for your catty remark about LAra Flynn Boyle. She may skip too many meals but she does have a admirable and proportionate rack that doesn’t appear to be storebought. This can be seen in movies going back to her teens.
OTOH, I am guilty of at first expecting the above headline, ‘The Malkin Toy Chest,’ to be some sort of self-deprecating remark about your own petite figure. It’s so hard for us bachelors to see the picture at the top of the page and remember you’re an old married lady with a kid.
Sigh.
Michele:
I was going to leave an explitive-laced comment but that would seem so Cheney-esq. Seriously, you are quite a looker and I assume that is how you got most of your jobs. I cannot understand, however, how an Oberlin College grad turned so right-wing. O’Rourke is correct about conservative radio talk shows. I understand why he listens to NPR – for the same reasons I listen to Rush and Hannity – not only to laugh at the other-side’s asinine attempts at critique but also to listen for the occasional small nugget of accurate dissent. Let’s face it – conservative radio is all about ratings, not accuracy or real advocacy. I’ll tell you, it really was amusing to hear the defense of “Big Time”’s foul language on the airwaves the other day. Go on, give the men-in-uniform their Rush — he does more to benefit liberalism than to hurt it.
I haven’t seen much of P.J.’s work lately so he’s fallen off my radar, but in his heyday, he was excellent. His intro to “Parliament of Whores” explaining why God was a Republican and Santa Claus was a Democrat was brilliant and he was the first writer I saw who explained how the savings & loan scandal happened in clear layman’s language. If he’s gone native, it’s probably because he still believes he’s an outlier in enemy liberal territory and doesn’t realize that he’s drifted relatively to the left.
Methinks P.J. is 65% libertarian and 35% conservative. That’s not always a happy marriage. He’s still pretty much on our side, though. Kind of.