How Talk Radio and Fox News Brainwashed My Dad

I stand corrected..

 

Really?

There aren't a whole bunch of left wing ex disc jockeys bellowing resentement and lies into radio microphones every day.

 

Rush sheds the light of knowledge and truth on people, but the libs scurry like the cockroaches they are! Most libs criticize Rush but have not listened to him much. They prefer Ed Schultz and Rachel Madcow! Disgusting!

 

Limpballs sheds the darkness of fear, ignorance, bigotry and white resentment on a receptive audience.

I have listened to his program from time to time, especially during the GOP circular firing squad.

Several things struck me.

One. Limbaugh's narrative had little to do with reality. A lot of it was bizzarre speculation based on nothing, and wild predictions that did not turn out (like the last two presidential elections). The audience doesn't seem to mind that Limbaugh says things that are blatantly false, and makes wildly inaccurate predictions. They've been told what they want to hear, and since entertainment, and not information is what this audience comes for, that's good enough.

The constant theme of playing to white resentment was striking.

But the thing that really struck me was the advertising.

We know that the average right wing talk radio listener is now over 65. And the advertising reflects it. Lots of ads for snake oil vitamin suppliments, survivalist accessories, reverse mortgages, impotency cures, baldness cures, and a whole gamut of products aimed at old people.

And a LOT of public service announcements. I had not though the Boycott Rush campaign had had that much effect, given the slavish loyalty of an audience that gets its beliefs pandered to every day, but apparantly it has.

We know that Limbaugh nearly got dumped by the syndicator that was 1/3 of its audience because of the drop in advertising revenue. Limbaugh cured the problem by cutting his price.

I think this is a sign of things to come. Neither talk radio or Fox Noise have much of an audience amongst younger people, and there are no virulant right wing youngsters emerging to take the place of the Limbaugh's of the world.

I suspect taht Limbaugh will go the way of Paul Harvey. He'll be syndicated across red states to local outlets where there will be an audience for what he is selling. He'll go on for years that way. But it won't matter on the national stage.

His best days as a major media figure are already behind him.

 

I was never a big fan of Ed Schutz, since he has adopted the Limbaugh business model.

I also have little patience for listening to a bunch of people who know as little or less than I do about the world calling in to validate the host's message. There's nothing to be learned there.

I am a big fan of Rachel Maddow persoanally; but, sadly, MSNBC has decided to be a liberal imitation of Fox Noise.

I can watch ten minutes of the News Hour or BBC America and know more than Fox and MSNBC combined will tell me in an entire evening. I don't need talking head reciting talking points. Alas, Rachel has gone that route.

 

Sigh . . . where to begin? Look, there is a good reason why Fox News has been the number one cable news network for decades now and it has to do with their real business model instead of the one that leftwingers concoct in their minds to explain to themselves why Fox is a business success in comparison to MSNBC which has ALWAYS had to be sustained by continuous cash infusions by its parent companies. Fox wasn't going for parody. It actually set out to be a legitimate competitor of the news side of ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN. In other words to really and truly tell important sides of stories that the other media outlets had gotten in the habit of discarding simply because leftwingers wouldn't like hearing about them. So Fox News set out to tell the rest of the story.

MSNBC, on the other hand, was deliberately created by clueless NBC executives to be a distorted funhouse mirror of what they THOUGHT Fox News was . . . and so they got it wrong. They got it wrong across the board and so instead of becoming a serious news outlet MSNBC became merely a parody of Fox News. So, yeah, it never has managed to be competitive.

As for Schultz following the Limbaugh business model. Sigh! Once again you have leftwingers going for parody rather than actually setting aside their partisanship and bigotry and actually investing any meaningful time and effort analyzing who and what Limbaugh is and how he managed to be a major success. So again . . . Schultz, the clueless leftwinger, got it wrong.

All that said, I too look at BBC for my first take of U.S. and World News before looking at U.S. based versions of the same thing and then only via something like Yahoo! News. If it's important stuff only then will I take the additional steps of seeing what the partisan dedicated sites also have to say about it (both Left and Right).

 

Meanwhile back in the REAL world -

Watching FAUX News causes BRAIN DAMAGE and FASCISM!

Hmmm.... so now we know the REAL reason conservatives hate Obama. That is how they see government and he isn't their brand.

 

Let me get this straight. You are citing a Bill Moyers (who HATES the GOP) group that conferred with another "We hate the Right!" group to determine real answers? Sweet!

 

I'm glad you brought that up. There have been well over 90 scientific studies, some using MRI and EEG machines, that ALL show the same things. Conservative brains simply do NOT function correctly.

Other studies have shown that conservative brains are incapable of generating the proper amount of electrical energy in the region of the brain that is supposed to tell us when our beliefs contradict reality when its staring us right in our faces.

As the Moyers article I quoted above states elsewhere:

 

The studies does not conclude that liberals actually put that gray matter to use.

 

I suppose that would be rather difficult for a conservative to judge considering that they don't have that gray matter to begin with. That might sound like an insult but its not. Its actually a WELL DOCUMENTED medical condition.

 

No insult taken. I am not the one posting studies that are inconclusive at best. Just a guy enjoying my morning spicy Bloody Mary with celery and olives.

 

In science EVERYTHING is ALWAYS inconclusive. That's why science is always ADVANCING. But when study after study shows the same results its reasonable to think they are on to something.

 

I am on to my next Bloody Mary.....that is a conclusive fact. What is your intent with the studies? Pearl, do you like Bloody Mary's?

 

I am a big fan of Moyers. He's the best journalist on TV.

No one who watches Fox on a regular basis even know what that concept means!

 

Rush Limbaugh uses questionable methods of convincing people about what actually IS true in most cases.

That is to say, Rush is correct about Liberalism, he just doesn't have enough sense to say it civilly.

 

I thought it was an interesting tacit admission on your behalf that you adopted my language regarding Fox's business model.

Fox is not a news organization. That is not the business they are in.

They are right wing talk radio with pictures, a fun and (now) highly profitable model.

It has nothing to do with journalism, facts, or being "fair and balanced" (unless you substitute slogans for reality).

Fox is not news at all. They have the smallest number of bureaus of any television news operation, practically no foreign offices, and few real journalists. They have a lot of low paid and no paid interns, which has given the network its well deserved reputation for sloppy reporting and rampant inaccuracy.

But none of that matters. As a full time public relations operation for various right wing causes, Fox has no interest in either news or journalism. But it does derive benefit from being able to pretend to be news for people who don't know any better.

Fox New's product is carefully designed to entertain its audience and pander to their narrow views and build on their resentments. Ailes crafts his massage in a memo every day, and the commentary of the various presenters is choreographed with the same precision that top 40 disc jockeys use to work a playlist. (it's EXACTLY the same idea, too, only phrases, and buzzwords are substituted for records in heavy rotation).

This is not a matter of ideology, although Fox is commercial first, ideological second, Republcian distant third, and journalistic in name only.

They are number one because they have a small (by overall television standards) and very loyal cadre of aging White viewers.

It tells them what they want to hear.

None of this makes Fox a legitimate news organization, which is why so few people take it seriously. But it does make a lot of money for Rupert Murdoch.

 

My intent, as always, is to find and expose the truth. Toward that end it occurs to me that if one were to read the studies I posted (particularly the first one about FAUX News) then form a hypothesis about how someone who was a FAUX viewer would interpret what they view as compared to what MSNBC broadcasts it would be EXACTLY what Gatewood wrote. Isn't it AMAZING how ALL of the pieces fit together so well when you have laid the proper foundation?

No, I don't do Bloody Marys. I don't like any kind of vegetable juice.

 

Well to be honest the Bloody Mary when mixed right is one tasty treat. Anyways....I was trying to find common ground with you. As for your statement below I am glad you found all your pieces, makes for a better day.

 

Here's an update on the study that shows FAUX News viewers to be the LEAST informed Americans:

FAUX's response is a CLASSIC example demonstrating exactly HOW they distort the news. First they IGNORE the question of whether their viewers actually believe an bunch of lies. Then they trot out a single source of information which describes University of Maryland as a "party school" with the "least studious" students.

Meanwhile back in the REAL WORLD:

 

Maybe I'll take a sip sometime. My mother in law loves them. What kind of music do you like? Do you play any instrument? I'm a fairly accomplished guitarist myself. Mostly blues and classic rock.

 

You have to remember that Fox couldn't dispute the survey, since there are several such studies now dating back about ten years that all say the same thing.

And, since anti intellectualism is one of their core themes, they decided to attack the messenger.

Consider this study by Fairleigh Dickenson ,that came to the same conclusion:

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/

 

You know how you can tell when conservatives KNOW they have lost the argument?
No, they won't admit it. EVER! Instead they just get real quiet.

The next question is, why can't they LEARN from that?

 

But wealthy people and entrepreneurs tend to have higher IQs and education than poorer or less educated people.

So when the left pits "the working class" against "those rich elites", that's similarly a form of anti-intellectualism.

 

Lol, what's a conservative brain? Before I even look at all that, I will need to see the scientific studies that determined what a conservative brain looked like, and then the studies that confirmed that these folks did in fact, have said conservative brain.