Usually Michael Hood at Blatherwatch writes about radio in Seattle, with an emphasis on talk radio. Today, Michael (clicking on Rush will being you to Michael’s blog) writes about the shameful way the talkers on hate radio are behaving. I have copied his text whole here because he does such a wonderful job of saying what many of us feel.
I also added two video clips from today’s Father Coughlin, Glenn Beck. The first is Beck’s comment on Arizona. The second, even more chilling, is Beck imitating President Obama’s daughter.
If you choose to comment, I suggest doing so at Blatherwatch.
Michael Hood writes:
Right-wingers love to be victims. The blood had not yet been wiped off the sidewalk in Tucson they were already whining: “We did nothing!”
The $100 million a year man, Rush Limbaugh thundered three hours Monday denying any culpability for the Tucson shooting, dragging out the bedraggled strawman of the Fairness Doctrine. “I couldn’t be surprised if somebody in the Obama regime or some FCC bureaucrat or some Democrat congressperson’s already written up legislation to stifle and eliminate conservative speech… that’s what this is all about.” [emphasis ours]
Poor talk radio. O endangered conservative speech, once again poised to be censored and stifled… Reality: it never happens. Never has. Never will. The Fairness Doctrine, a long-shuttered FCC policy that endeavored to balance the POVs that came over publicly-owned airwaves has never – could never – come close to again being a reality.
No matter the excesses of talk radio, no matter what violence it may or may not excite. No matter who they offend or try to wound, conservative talk is widespread in the country, and inarguably the most pervasive political point of view in the nation’s media.
And once again, when it reasonably should be introspective and considering self-correction, it’s instead taking the offensive and protecting its interests, and let’s face it: they’re business interests.
Fairness, censorship, even self-regulation will not happen. Talk radio instead is circling its wagons; again it’s rallying the troops by playing the beleaguered First Amendment victim while liberals – again the true victims – lay bloody on the street from the bullets the extreme right always seems to save for us.
Rush, Beck, even Dori Monson, (Seattle’s last extreme-right talker) are product, assets. They’re valuable and they will be kept warm and dry as any business would keep any expensive inventory.
When a talker blows through the walls of what the public deems acceptable speech, they will help him or her weather the storm. Sometimes he or she needs to be withdrawn and cleansed as was Don Imus, but he or she will not be banned forever, not if they’re earners… as Don Imus was, is. The media moguls are amoral like Tony Soprano: he’ll put up with any brutish act by one of his guys as long as he earns.
Talkers who say crazypants things get the headlines they adore, the little ratings spike; the breathless media mini-drama: will they be spanked? will they be fired?
They’re ritualistically spanked, put through the motions of chastisement, but never fired or censored.
Don’t forget: it’s a multi-million dollar a day business. It’s huge; it’s national; it’s been honed down to a small group of big-money earners who are marketed like Safeway to a honed, well-researched boutique audience in markets where local talent has been or is being eliminated. It’s an apple cart that will not be upset by anything short of an earthquake, a hurricane, and a tsunami.
Everything the media companies do: whether it’s to try to stifle and defund NPR, or lock up the Internets for their own commercial use, has nothing to do with politics… it’s business. And business is business.
They’ll be “responsible,” if someone could make ‘responsible’ work to make them some dough. There’s no reason to believe that anyone is trying to figure out how to do that- and besides, the low-information, ditto-headed, hate-talk loving crowd they’ve developed wouldn’t put up with it.
Talk radio can sleep well tonight.