Monday, December 25, 2006
True Leadership
Once again, Dubya shows us that these times are tough, we need to sacrifice, call upon ourselves to.......do more shopping????
As we work with Congress in the coming year to chart a new course in Iraq and strengthen our military to meet the challenges of the 21st century, we must also work together to achieve important goals for the American people here at home. This work begins with keeping our economy growing. … And I encourage you all to go shopping more.
Once again, Dubya shows us that these times are tough, we need to sacrifice, call upon ourselves to.......do more shopping????
As we work with Congress in the coming year to chart a new course in Iraq and strengthen our military to meet the challenges of the 21st century, we must also work together to achieve important goals for the American people here at home. This work begins with keeping our economy growing. … And I encourage you all to go shopping more.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Will the Adults Finally Sign In.....
One of the results from the confluence of way too many cable channels and the last dozen or so years of right-wing radio and tv entertainment (not news, folks) is an increase in the shrill volume of the talking heads. I hope we as a nation have finally gotten the cheap thrill of this entertainment out of our systems. While Iraq burns and thousands of lives have been changed forever, the cheap name-calling continues ad nauseum. Enough. Where are the adults that will stand up and say "we need ideas and people of accountability among us to get us out of this hole."
This column by Steve Young sums it up nicely:
Twelve years of unmerited influence and half-truths swathed in red, white and blue patriotism met its demise this past Tuesday with a dagger to the heart served up by revelations from the Iraq Study Group substantiating that everything right wing talk radio had said was right about the Iraqi, was wrong.
Born the day Rush Limbaugh mid-wifed Newt Gingrich's Contract For (On) America, RWTRR lived a healthy and wealthy life duping a great portion of the America public into voting against their own best interests.
Right wing talk grew larger and louder over its lifetime, adding names like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Dennis Prager and many more imitators. They each spent three hours a day catchphrasing words and thoughts - no matter how rickety their evidence (if any) - that the mainstream media would give equal time and space along side the truth.
All of a sudden, the truth was only worth 50% of any issue.
Enabled by a gullible mainstream media hoping to hitch itself to the growing Lords of Loud audience, the Rove-inspired red-herrings were greased up even more by talk radio's band of Professor Harold Hills and shoved charmingly down America's throat. And, as with all great con men, these snake oil salesmen sold hole-cloth, betraying the public trust and making fistfuls of dollars doing it.
To be fair, they had to. It's was a Catch-22. If they had trusted their audience with the truth, they'd have no audience.
But November's election and the ISG report finally drained life-giving oxygen from a lying heart. Not only did the public begin to understand they were being duped, but even the FOBIJB (Friends of Bush including James Baker) could no longer ignore the tide. Of course there will continue to be FOBIL (Friends of Bush Including Lieberman), but they will sustain escalating losses, just as the LOL are losing audience in droves.
But the one-two punch of November's mid-terms compounded by the Iraq Study Group's revelations, knocked a terminal hole in any credibility right wing talk may have had left.
Limbaugh admitted he was shilling for Republicans who didn't deserve to be elected, then attempted to hush the death knell rung by the ISG by recasting it, oh so hysterically, as the Iraq Surrender Group. Get it? He changed one of the words. Second-rate comics who are dying on stage always go for the insipidly obvious and as with the comics, it never gets the audience back.
Hannity has gone off the deep end calling everyone else but himself wrong. He persists on telling liberal callers that we found WMD even though Bush doesn't seem to have gotten the same intelligence Sean has while Curt Weldon and Rick Santorum were voted out of office whipping the same dead horse.
Beck asks an American Congressman to prove he's not working for the enemy.
Prager believes the same Congressman holding his bible will bring down American civilization.
O'Reilly can't drum up many recruits to fight this year's War Against Christmas, and how many times can you hear "look at me" with out re-tasting last night's dinner?
And Savage...? Well, just "Savage."
Oh, they'll keep some listeners, but they'll be talking to a choir who doesn't care that they're hearing to a bunch of cloutless charlatans who never had the balls to serve our country but have no problem sending other families into life-changing horror; fans who don't care their heros had it wrong, and had it wrong over and over. And when it came to the war...dead wrong.
Now any relevance these cascading Lords of Loud might once have had, if not dead, is on life support. And if there are some in the legitimate media who still choose to give these mongrels of misrepresentation any time, space or air, they do it at the risk of their own relevance.
How true. We need to get ourselves out of this gutter and find real adults....
One of the results from the confluence of way too many cable channels and the last dozen or so years of right-wing radio and tv entertainment (not news, folks) is an increase in the shrill volume of the talking heads. I hope we as a nation have finally gotten the cheap thrill of this entertainment out of our systems. While Iraq burns and thousands of lives have been changed forever, the cheap name-calling continues ad nauseum. Enough. Where are the adults that will stand up and say "we need ideas and people of accountability among us to get us out of this hole."
This column by Steve Young sums it up nicely:
Twelve years of unmerited influence and half-truths swathed in red, white and blue patriotism met its demise this past Tuesday with a dagger to the heart served up by revelations from the Iraq Study Group substantiating that everything right wing talk radio had said was right about the Iraqi, was wrong.
Born the day Rush Limbaugh mid-wifed Newt Gingrich's Contract For (On) America, RWTRR lived a healthy and wealthy life duping a great portion of the America public into voting against their own best interests.
Right wing talk grew larger and louder over its lifetime, adding names like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Dennis Prager and many more imitators. They each spent three hours a day catchphrasing words and thoughts - no matter how rickety their evidence (if any) - that the mainstream media would give equal time and space along side the truth.
All of a sudden, the truth was only worth 50% of any issue.
Enabled by a gullible mainstream media hoping to hitch itself to the growing Lords of Loud audience, the Rove-inspired red-herrings were greased up even more by talk radio's band of Professor Harold Hills and shoved charmingly down America's throat. And, as with all great con men, these snake oil salesmen sold hole-cloth, betraying the public trust and making fistfuls of dollars doing it.
To be fair, they had to. It's was a Catch-22. If they had trusted their audience with the truth, they'd have no audience.
But November's election and the ISG report finally drained life-giving oxygen from a lying heart. Not only did the public begin to understand they were being duped, but even the FOBIJB (Friends of Bush including James Baker) could no longer ignore the tide. Of course there will continue to be FOBIL (Friends of Bush Including Lieberman), but they will sustain escalating losses, just as the LOL are losing audience in droves.
But the one-two punch of November's mid-terms compounded by the Iraq Study Group's revelations, knocked a terminal hole in any credibility right wing talk may have had left.
Limbaugh admitted he was shilling for Republicans who didn't deserve to be elected, then attempted to hush the death knell rung by the ISG by recasting it, oh so hysterically, as the Iraq Surrender Group. Get it? He changed one of the words. Second-rate comics who are dying on stage always go for the insipidly obvious and as with the comics, it never gets the audience back.
Hannity has gone off the deep end calling everyone else but himself wrong. He persists on telling liberal callers that we found WMD even though Bush doesn't seem to have gotten the same intelligence Sean has while Curt Weldon and Rick Santorum were voted out of office whipping the same dead horse.
Beck asks an American Congressman to prove he's not working for the enemy.
Prager believes the same Congressman holding his bible will bring down American civilization.
O'Reilly can't drum up many recruits to fight this year's War Against Christmas, and how many times can you hear "look at me" with out re-tasting last night's dinner?
And Savage...? Well, just "Savage."
Oh, they'll keep some listeners, but they'll be talking to a choir who doesn't care that they're hearing to a bunch of cloutless charlatans who never had the balls to serve our country but have no problem sending other families into life-changing horror; fans who don't care their heros had it wrong, and had it wrong over and over. And when it came to the war...dead wrong.
Now any relevance these cascading Lords of Loud might once have had, if not dead, is on life support. And if there are some in the legitimate media who still choose to give these mongrels of misrepresentation any time, space or air, they do it at the risk of their own relevance.
How true. We need to get ourselves out of this gutter and find real adults....
