MSNBC and CNN
The typical right winger will laugh derisively, uncontrollably, at the assertion that either MSNBC or CNN is part of the right wing media. They are called “egregiously liberal” by card-carrying, knuckle-dragging right wingers.Perhaps this is so.
But what sort of “egregiously liberal” cable news network gives air time to a certifiable misanthrope and bigot like Michael Savage, and then has to fire Savage for Savage being what he is, what everybody knew him to be, and what everyone said would get him canned eventually (and thus they were right)? Of course, MSNBC did this because it wanted to steal FNC’s audience share and decided that journalistic standards were less important than a race to the bottom. Bottom of the money pit, that is.
As for MSNBC’s prime time line-up, the viewer gets Hardball’s Chris Matthews, mistakenly called a liberal and left winger by the Bush-bootlicking right. But when you tune in to watch Matthews, who refuses to overcome his habit of rudeness in which he never lets any of his guests finish a sentence, he is more likely to play tag team with a right winger in body slamming the left winger. After Matthews, the MSNBC viewer is treated to Joe Scarborough, a former Republican Congressmember and ardent Bush-can-do-no-wrong partisan. You get an hour of that.
As for CNN, while they do not give a right winger free rein to act customarily like the ass that all right wingers will be, CNN will debase itself to getting ratings, and has done so. The invasion of Iraq in March and April 2003 was a shocking example of flag-waving of all cable news networks: Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. Indeed the contrast between CNN, which is broadcast in the United States, and CNN International, which is broadcast everywhere else but the U.S. (but also in selected locations in the U.S. too), was quite striking. The domestic CNN operation took a decidedly uncritical look at the war and the politics that brought it about, while CNN International was clearly biased to reinforcing viewpoints that were entirely critical of the war and questioned its necessity. Firm evidence that news operations tailor their news to fit the audience, rather than tailor their news to report the complete truth.
Neither CNN in the U.S. or CNN International ever lied, of course. They just did not bother to emphasize the truths that would make their viewers have to re-think their positions. Perhaps it is entirely the case that cable news viewers have hardened positions anyway, and all cable news networks know this and do their best to balance journalistic ideals and the need to keep the attention of viewers. When CNN was the only game in town, and both right and left wingers had no choice, and CNN did not report news that reinforced the biases of viewers. Those days are long gone.
The 700 Club
Television production operations that feature on-air preachers have been around long before pretty much anyone. 99% of the preachers were smart and stuck just to theology and kept politics out of it. In fact they dared losing tax-exempt status if they got too political. The Reverend Billy Graham, George Vandeman, the Reverend Schuler, even Jimmy Swaggart pretty much all stuck to what Jesus would do for you if you let him in.Then along came a new breed of clergymen who thought that their narrow thinking on the absolutes ought to be the thinking of everyone. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are the names that comes up in everyone’s minds, of course. Falwell had the nerve to say most of America was behind him as the “Moral Majority.” And Pat Robertson pretty much bashed everyone—Christians too—who was not a church-going, tithe-paying Baptist. That hateful, old bastard is still bashing people in the many moments when his confused mind starts to ramble. Too the credit of a few right wingers, they look the other way when Robertson embarrasses himself with his incontinence.
Morton Downey
Mort is no longer on the air—in fact, the chain smoker no longer breathes air, having died quite a few years ago—but he resurrected a kind of late night TV programming in which residents of trailer parks got their time on the public airwaves. He was Jerry Springer well before Springer thought about throwing chairs on the set. He was the working man’s answer to Phil Donahue and Oprah.Of course, Mort was not so much interested in incisive political debate as he was about ad hominem and getting the blood boiling for ratings. The problem was that Mort was a bit before his time, and so local television affiliates who were scared of their own shadow tucked their tails between their legs and would drop their subscription to Downey’s syndicated show.
Mort knew this, and probably got too timid by the time his production had to fold up shop. He had to balance a show that kept running in enough cities against the appeal his insults had for the base audience. That is a tough balance to maintain.
More importantly, while Mort was slightly to the right in his politics, he was not a mean right winger. Much of the antics he did on his show was for entertainment more than it was to start a culture war between the right and the left.
Table Pounding and Screaming on Political Talk Radio When television was just the big three networks, political talk on television was relegated to the hours on the weekend when everyone was still sleeping late in bed or when lawns were getting mowed before the start of the ball game. With the emergence of 150-channels-nobody-watches-anyway cable systems, television has become what talk radio always was.
Talk radio was being outrageous and earth-shattering long before television hoped to be. Because of the lower overhead in setting up a 10,000 watt AM radio station compared, and the fact that no one cares that an opinionated and/or knowledgeable radio host looks like a Ken or Barbie telegenic airhead, the radio listener is more likely to get intelligent, thoughtful discussion on any of the frequencies of the AM band than he would tuning into a cable shouting match.
But then he is also just as likely to get right wing bombast and the hysteria that an alien craft has landed and that the creatures emerging from the ship called themselves “Democrats.”
Rush Limbaugh
The late 1970s featured one memorable radio program that talked about many issues political and otherwise. It was broadcast late at night and into the dawn twilight, and was Mutual Broadcasting’s Larry King Show. King pretty much did was he does now on CNN. He poses his own questions to VIPs in politics and entertainment, then lets the audience take over. Of course, he did it for hours on end when he was doing radio. In one part of the old Mutual show, King did “Open Phone America” where the caller pretty much was given a short time to spout off on whatever he wanted to say (expletives deleted, of course). Some callers would ask King a personal question about his beliefs. I learned more about the United States Constitution and the meaning of America listening to Larry King and his guests and his callers than I have ever learned in other ways (a testament to how awful the public schools are in civics, by the way).Of course, the right wingers claimed that they did not have a voice of their own up against King and the rest of the “liberal talk radio” out there. Not that King was really a flaming lefty—I think I recall him describing himself directly or indirectly as a libertarian—but with right wingers, a lefty view on one issue makes you a lefty through and through.
KFBK in Sacramento is an all-news-and-political talk radio station. They were broadcasting the King show late at night on their 50,000 watts, covering much of California, Nevada, and beyond.
They also had an obnoxious local personality on in the morning calling himself Rush Limbaugh; you were immediately struck by the odd name, but the amusement of the name soon yielded to the shock of the opinion. I used to listen to Limbaugh from time to time when he was at KFBK in the mid-1980s when I was a graduate student at a nearby university.
I did not listen to Limbaugh because he represented a counterbalance to “left wing” radio. One does not counterbalance what does not exist on the other end: there was no such thing as “left wing” radio. Rather it was that Limbaugh was brazen about the fact that his show represented extreme right wing opinion. Limbaugh did not describe it as extreme or right wing, of course. Like all right wingers do, Limbaugh said that his opinion was that of the good Christian, moral—he refrained from using the word “white”—majority of citizens out there, and that all those who opposed him were gay/lesbian, tree-hugging, Ted Kennedy-loving Democrats. The underlying tone and intention of Limbaugh was to suggest to the listener that his enemies were all pedophiles and Satan worshippers.
It was really hard to tell if Limbaugh was sincere in his political commentary, and whether the right wing agenda was not really the schtick of Limbaugh the Entertainer. Limbaugh would occassionally get a caller named “Charlie the Communist” (don’t recall if that was Limbaugh’s name for him or Charlie’s own), and he would use him for a punching bag as to all that was wrong with Democrats, liberals, socialists, pedophiles, terrorists, gun control advocates, and the National Education Association (a union of public school teachers).
Of course, Limbaugh went national, which was a shock to all Sacramentans who had more than half a brain. We figured that all of America could not be half as dumb as the inbreds of Sacramento who tuned in faithfully to Limbaugh. Boy, was we wrong [sic].
Laura Ingraham and the Also Rans
Of course, Limbaugh was a major hit, and the millions of mouth breathers out there finally felt they were represented. They could now peacefully fall asleep in front of the television, after doing the nightly six-pack of beer, and know that Limbaugh was out their defending a way of life that those with advanced university degrees ridiculed.Of course, what is a circus if it has only one act?
And so it was not too long before not only was there a syndicated right wing show like Limbaugh’s, but that entire radio networks were formed with hundreds of affiliates to talk about the issues of importance to Redneck America twenty-four seven.
It has already been mentioned that Sean Hannity and Michael Savage pollute the radio ether with their mix of hate and bigotry.
Quite a few others have managed to stick their feet in the door and find a place in right wing lambaste. They usually exploit a personal quality to get on the air. Laura Ingraham uses the fact that she is an attractive blonde with a postgraduate education. I think men both liberal (like myself) and conservative are disarmed by her looks at first, and she uses that to get the lance in them before they have a chance to lose their erections and focus on the subject, which Laura has already won anyway, because time’s up. Don’t confuse Laura with another blonde right winger who makes frequent television appearances: Anne Coulter. The difference between Laura and Anne is that Laura has every marble (of sanity) that she was born with, whereas Anne is clearly not serious about taking the lithium her health care provider admonishes her to do.
