The Powerlessness of Talk Radio
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I hate to say it, but David Brooks is right. Or at least partly right. Even the kingpins of talk radio are electorally negligible, for a reason Brooks doesn’t go into: when you divide up a core listenership — not just casual dial-surfers, but devoted listeners — of a few million people among the 48 continental states, you wind up with numbers that aren’t too impressive in a general election. (Those listeners aren’t evenly distributed, of course, but bigger radio markets have more voters of all kinds, so having a million hard-core listeners in the state of New York, distributed throughout several congressional districts, still is not overwhelming.) The cliche is absolutely true: all politics is local. Having an old-fashioned get-out-the-vote machine at the district and precinct levels counts for much more than having a diffuse national following of millions.
The numbers that talk radio commands might be big enough to have an effect in congressional primaries, but Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck don’t often take the time to target a primary in Poughkeepsie. A Senate primary in, say, Florida, on the other hand, is almost certainly too big for Dittoheads to tip.
That’s not to say talk radio isn’t the voice of the GOP. Limbaugh absolutely has more of a following among the Republican base than David Brooks has. When the average, non-political American thinks of what the GOP is all about, he’ll think of talk radio (which he may not have heard, but has certainly heard of) in the absence of any serious alternative. There are no political figures — except Sarah Palin! — or “conservative” institutions prominent enough to stand for the Republican Party in the public mind. No Goldwater, no Reagan, no pre-neocon National Review, just Boehners and Pawlentys and blow-dried Romneys, all of whom make much less of an impression on the public than Glenn Beck.
Filed under: Politics, Uncategorized, media
Top 10 reasons to watch David Letterman:
10. To find out what he DOESN’T say about Palin, which must be what scares Libs about her.
9. To find out how he manages to keep sexual harrassment suits from being a problem in the workplace.
8. To help aspiring comics learn what to avoid, and to provide ideas to cartoonists.
7. To get new ideas for discreet hotels and vacation spots.
6. To remind yourself that there can be something worse than Attorneys and Politicians.
5. To find out how to keep your own family out of the spotlight.
4. To encourage sedentary people to turn off the TV.
3. To serve as inspiration for confessions by lowlifes.
2. So you know what he’s trying to whisper to your wife.
1. So you know what he’s been saying about your children.
Top 10 reasons to watch David Letterman.
In NY20 Rush was a negative factor.
Brooks column on the powerlessness of talk radio is the most encouraging thing I’ve read all week! (what’s wrong with me?)
There is a sense in which committed 24/7 political junkies of all persuasions, by their very hobby thus and their passion when inhabiting it, have more in common with each other than they have with the overwhelming majority of their countryfolk. There is also a sense in which one gets a much clearer sense of the place of Rush Limbaugh in our national life when we learn to see him not in electoral or partisan or political terms, but as simply one more highly-paid entertainer, who shows up each year on the Forbes list around #30 in annual salary, surrounded above and below by dozens of figures of far more general purchase; as a result, when the great majority of people vote, Republicans no less than the Evil Others, they do so far more as fans of Oprah, Kanye, Martha, Angelina, Jennifer, Jerry and Bruce than as voters who have accepted Limbaugh as their personal saviour, the latter of whom, at, let us say, 15 million strong, are overwhelmed by an almost 20-to-1 ratio by the 290 million who do not attend his secular sermons daily, or, happiest of all, at all.
Partisans of all stripes are fond of thinking that deep down, once unduped by the spin doctors of the other side(s), the majority will clear the fogg off their windshields for good and all and discover what they’ve felt all along, buttressed by selectively-interpreted polling data, and embrace its true and inner progressive/libertarian/Saraphim Palinite/5th-Day-Dittoheadventist, &c. It is very easy to fall down that slope, especially if Dear Leader has had a book at #1 on the NYT bestsellers list, for weeks at a time. Gosh, a book at #1? Seems the whole country must be talking about My Guy, right? And as the author makes his book-tour rounds across the plain of the political chat shows and sees clips of bookstore crowds lined up round the block, viewers think the gasbag is taking the country by storm – at #1, no less?
As it happens, even the top-selling book of any given year in this category, that of hardcover nonfiction, sells roughly one million copies – which means that, leaving aside the issue of bulk buying by interested parties with deep pockets, for every American adult who bought your hero’s book in hopes of taking back “their” country in the twele months since its release unto a benighted republic – 225 did not.
Beware the echo-chamber of the members of the political class who mistakes the fact that his phone never stops ringing for the belief that he has America on the line – and who mistakes an anecdote for an antidote.
Best line in the Brooks piece – “They are enabled by the slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.”
“To find out what he DOESN’T say about Palin, which must be what scares Libs about her.”
Heh. Let’s be honest about this. The only thing that Liberals would like more than Palin coming out on top of the 2011 Primaries as the official face of the Republican Party is if she then picked Michelle Bachman as her candidate for VP.
It won’t happen, sadly, but it would be sweeter than angel tears.
As it happens, even the top-selling book of any given year in this category, that of hardcover nonfiction, sells roughly one million copies – which means that, leaving aside the issue of bulk buying by interested parties with deep pockets, for every American adult who bought your hero’s book in hopes of taking back “their” country in the twele months since its release unto a benighted republic – 225 did not.
That ratio is probably more like 1/300, once the (boorish) people who give away copies of their favorites as Christmas gifts are factored in.
Judging from the responses, most readers of Amconmag are liberal Democrats. Kind of odd, that.
The American Conservatives on this site actually see beyond the two-party sham and will call out stalking horses, such as Palin, as they see them, instead of blindly eating the pop-cons’ comfort food, screaming say it louder.
John King….judging from your response you be from the kool-aid drinking Limbaugh Beck Republican fan club…tell me when they have been right about anything in the past decade….calling people names because you they don’t follow the drivel of the right does not make them “liberal democrats” …it makes them people who have a IQ …something that Limbaugh does not have …maybe he should try operating by freeing up the other half of his brain or just give up taking drugs altogether
The cliche is absolutely true: all politics is local
That’s why anti-regime dissenters should try to get one house of the state legislature in one or more states elected by statewide party-list (open or closed list) PR. You only have to look at the examples of Geert Wilders or the Freedom Party of Austria to see why this makes sense. It’s at least worth a try in some states with initiative and referendum.
Snoobob you dont even get Beck he furthest from a republican cheerleader .. get your facts straight
Did not call him a Republican called him a kool aid drinker ….much like yourself
Radio talk shows seem to be roughly one-third insufferable commercials, and judging by Hannity, another third or more devoted to pointless repetition and self-serving promotion. Beck is even more repetitive. As for Bill O’Reilly, I wonder if he isn’t a false flag operation, judging by his instinctive, progressivist-favoring reactions to reasoned argument on the right. By pre-empting intelligent voices on the right, they concede the field to the left, except of course for their ferocious support of our surrogate wars in the Middle East, where they raise the drumbeat in support of an Israeli strike to the point all reasonable men must conclude they are little more than useful idiots whose putative conservatism serves the greater purpose of melding cultural conservatism with knee-jerk support for Israel among the tailgate class.
In any case, they are missing the critical problem. While they trivialize the issues by chasing after the Van Joneses, Ben Bernanke is quietly and secretly confiscating middle-class wealth through inflation, accomplishing what the left-loon radicals can only dream of amid a cloud of marijuana smoke. Instead of exposing the collusion between Washington and, say, Goldman Sachs, they go after ACORN. No doubt they all see the financial sector as the premier example of free capitalism, when in fact it is a far greater threat to freedom in this country than wacko leftist moles running around the White House.
Dan,
It’s deflation:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/10/deflation-threat-what-deflation-threat.html
icr,
I suggest you check out http://www.shadowstats.com for an accurate evaluation of the current and future effects of Bernanke’s inflationary policies. Where do you see deflation, by the way—in the equities markets, for example? where the P/E of the S&P500 is incalculable, but probably near 100.
The effect of the Fed selling off the toxic assets on its balance sheet remains to be seen, and it may use much of the proceeds to purchase Treasurys rather than extinguish the dollars it receives. Purchasing Treasurys, which is going on apace right now through Quantitative Easing and the Fed’s back-door, undisclosed foreign purchases is inflationary by definition. It’s this simple, icr: the government is using “printing press” money to make purchases or transfer payments in the open market today using money that wasn’t there yesterday. If that’s not inflationary, nothing is.
Dan, your sound points are exactly why I love this site. I’ve been trying to tell everyone about the stronghold the Financial Industry has on both parties. They”re snickering all the way to the Hedge Fund while we fight over ACORN and Socialism and the Olympics.
I was wondering why there are so few hypocrites on the left.
Then it hit me. You can’t be called a hypocrite, if all you’ve ever aspired to be is a weasel.
That’s why Senator John Edwards is not a hypocrite. That is why David Letterman is not a hypocrite.
That’s why President Obama is not a Hypocrite for not replacing Ben Bernanke.
That’s why you couldn’t even get a left-wing talk show or news show off the ground, even if you raided the local children’s charity fund, or sold weapons to Iran.
It will never occur to the left-nut shills and sabatuers that the reason talk radio and cable news doesn’t cover their favorite issue, is NOT because it wasn’t chosen by the person they love to denigrate. Rather, they don’t hear themselves on a national stage because the US is mostly conservative, and, except we make a mistake and give them the stage every few years, mostly, nobody cares about your strawmen.
Like a huge boat, the US will right itself in a few years, and we will begin taking stock of the damage done, this last time we let our NOBILITY and IDEALISM override our common sense. We let the desire to be cared for, override our independence and ability to take care of ourselves.
We let our sense of racial equality, and desire to help the poor, hand power to the crooks, creeps, liars, and con artists that were waiting in the wings.
I just hope we can also find a way to spank a few crooked Republicans in the process of finding our way back to respectability.