Howard Kurtz wants Al Gore and the president to stop whining about right-wing media. Maybe he just doesn’t like the sound of their voices, but his analysis is ridiculous. Take a look at the logic in this paragraph.
Now it’s true that Fox or Limbaugh can boost or batter any lawmaker, and that they can help drive a controversy into the broader mainstream media. But we’re talking here about the president of the United States. He has an army, a navy and a bunch of nuclear weapons, not to mention an ability to command the airwaves at a moment’s notice. And he’s complaining about a cable channel and a radio talk-show host?
Well, it’s true that the president can command the airwaves at a moment’s notice, but he can’t command the air waves twenty-four hours a day like Fox News, and he can’t spend three hours a day, five days a week, hosting a highly rated radio program like Rush Limbaugh. Moreover, of what use is the army, the navy, and our nuclear arsenal in shaping public opinion on immigration or guns or climate change or the economy? I might as well argue that Rush Limbaugh has an advantage over the president because he owns a riding lawnmower.
More to the point, there was a time before right-wing mass media. We still had lunatics in this country, like the members of the John Birch Society. Our racial problems were significantly worse back then, with reactionary assholes at first promoting an apartheid society, and then converting the Republican Party into a revanchist party dedicated to standing athwart history yelling ‘stop!’ But, there were no outlets where people could steep and saturate themselves in that kind of hatred during all their waking hours. There were no feedback loops where the rankest bullshit could be circulated and amplified until a significant portion of the country became convinced that climate change is a myth because Al Gore is fat, or that ACORN is fixing elections, or that the New Black Panthers are more menacing than three dudes with too much spare time.
The problem with right-wing mass media is not only that they trade in hate and fear, but that they actively misinform. They are making people angry and stupid in a way that you just cannot say about NPR or the New York Times or MSNBC. I know it is fashionable to argue that MSNBC is just the flip-side of Fox News, but that only appears to be the case if you focus on partisanship. If you focus on whether or not viewers are better or worse informed after watching The Rachel Maddow Show versus The O’Reilly Factor the difference between the two networks is obvious. Maddow explains how things work. O’Reilly inflames people’s passions. Maddow presents things that ought to scare her audience, like the way corporations are using Republicans to write legislation verbatim per their instructions, while O’Reilly is telling his audience that liberals want to ruin their Christmas celebration.
What Howard Kurtz is ignoring is that one of the main reasons it is difficult to bridge the partisan divide in Congress and get anything done is because the right wing is living in a bubble made of 90 proof bullshit that is created by right-wing mass media. Yes, they are very powerful. They are very destructive. And, no, the president can’t unleash the armed forces on talk radio hosts or order a nuclear attack on Fox News.
You came close to saying but missed it.
The president can summon the airwaves when he wants and call up the Army and Navy at will, but he has a huge restriction Fox and Rush don’t.
He has to be right. He is accountable to the nation and history. Lives depend on it. And that extends to not simply telling the Amercan people bold faced lies and bullshit.
For Rush the bigger lie he says translates to another yacht or bigger sex vacation.
Does Fox consider itself OUTSIDE of the mainstream?
To belittle the immense problems posed by 24/7 rightwing propaganda networks is to be willfully ignorant and a huge contributor to the disaster. For a supposed “journalist” to act as though the spewing of demonstrable partisan falsehoods hour after hour in the guise of “news” is professional malpractice. It indicates monumental ignorance and some sort of weird professional self loathing. Journalist, heal thyself.
Interestingly the little Alan Dershowitz flap that Booman recently covered involves a rightwinger (Dershowitz) whose position is that if a lib’rul argument is to be presented, then simple “fairness” demands that the “conservative” position also must be heard at the same time and same forum. Note this does not apply to the presentation of “conservative” lies…
Anyway, we have exactly the situation one could have predicted when St Reagan destroyed the decades old fairness doctrine–the populace is propagandized with oceans of right wing sewage, all in the name of the “free market”. The fairness doctrine, whatever its flaws, didn’t allow a hate filled monster like Boss Rushbo to command the airwaves with his unchallenged Hitlerian rants for decades. Now Boss Rushbo is simply one “conservative” propagandist out of dozens and dozens, all spewing lies and disinformation to rubes who have self-identified as “conservatives” and who simply refuse to listen to opposing arguments or even be informed of basic facts—which is really all Maddow does as a real journalist.
But of course the facts (and science) have a well known lib’rul bias that Boss Rushbo needs to be able to counter thru his ranting lie-filled monologues. No on the spot arguments indicating Rushbo is (always) full of shit wanted. That’s “conservatism”!
“the right-wing is living in a bubble made of 90 proof bullshit”
90 proof bullshit is 45% bullshit.
I think you meant 90% bullshit (180 proof!), or at least you should have meant that.
good point. I wasn’t talking percentages, though. I was talking about power to fuck up your mind.
In that case, it would be a Drano and Antifreeze cocktail, with bullshit floaters.
Bottoms up, GOP!
It’s almost as if Kurtz has never actually listened to what Limbaugh says.
So the Village media pundit, who lives in a bubble of 90-proof bullshit goes to bat for Fox and Limbaugh who live in a different bubble of 90-proof bullshit. Interesting continuation of the relationship that formed during the Clinton administration. One would almost think that Kurtz had the Powell memo pressed under the glass of his desk.
So what prompted Kurtz to write this little diatribe? Could it be that times are changing and the President and Gore have discovered that Limbaugh’s and Fox’s ratings are slipping? Somebody thinks that Rush and Fox need a leetle boost.
Remember two things. 1.) Kurtz is married to a GOP operative. 2.) Kurtz has a penis fixation. How do I know? Anyone who lived through the Bill Clinton presidency can attest to that.
Kurtz is a stupid mofo.
plain and simple.
No. Kurtz is a right wing operative in mainstream media clothing doing everything he can to enable the wurlizter. Not stupid at all. Evil, perhaps. Venal, certainly.
See my post above. Kurtz is married to a GOP operative.
I’ve posted about this before and I think it’s a serious matter. I don’t listen to the likes of O’Reilly or Limbaugh because I recognize them for what they are: shills. I was outside this past summer and a neighbor was blaring his radio with Rush ranting about something. The point is, I didn’t even have to hear the topic; it was all in the tone. The anger, the hatred, the foaming-at-the-mouth outrage was loud and clear.
If the hate radio guys were actually serious about all the shit they throw out there, they wouldn’t need to scream it or incite rage. They know that firing up the masses raises their own profiles and that means millions of dollars. They’re sneering all the way to the bank.
When has Kurtz ever written an honest piece about the impact of right wing media? At least people like Brooks and Parker sometimes can’t stand the the right wing crazy anymore and write a piece that reeks of their despair … of course, their next piece will be a study in both sides do it pablum.
But Kurtz is special. As the Post’s, the Beast’s and teevee’s most visible “mainstream” media critic, he has consistently minimized the abuses on the right, minimized their power over a significant block of the American public. I can think of no other person in “mainstream” media who has played such a central role in enabling the right’s lie machine.
See Tarheel’s post below.
How did you miss this?
Bingo!!!!! I had forgotten her name, but I knew he was married to a GOP operative.
Thank Phoenix Woman at firedoglake for that reminder.
😉
I would have gotten it had I looked at Kurtz’s Wikipedia page. You had already posted it here by the time I got to the bottom of the comments.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his blowjobs depend upon his not understanding it.”
Sinclair Lewis (modified slightly)
has never understood the notion of the false equivalence. he uses it all the time. If a Dem drives a mile over the speed limit, while a Repuke kills the husband of his adulterous lover, Kurtz would say “Both sides have something to hide”. It’s beyond annoying.
It is also a comment which is totally ignorant of human history, the facts, and the experience of the 20th century. Propaganda works. Repeat something often enough, and it sticks. The mighty rightwing wurlitzer is a powerful device. The mere exposure of the unprepared mind to the crap on Fox does change you.