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I don't think enough can be said for how awful Mark Levin really is. I usually flip over to hear him on the way home from band practice each week, and he's just frightening. Rapid-fire switching between shouting in that weenie little voice of his, and quiet fireside chat voice. His broadcasts are complete with childish namecalling of people he doesn't like, making little baby voices to parody them (something I've now heard Limbaugh doing as well), and wholly made-up claims with zero anything to back them up. He'd be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that I think his listeners must actually buy what he's selling. Just a nasty, nasty little man. And that nasal, high pitched voice of his. When he starts yelling, the weenie factor just goes through the roof. Hollis posted:I'm really of the opinion that overall we've lost. I mean it's literally a beast that cannot be stopped now. These people apply to the worst of human nature, fear, racism. Basically of the other. Their audiences are just fanatical. I find the whole thing sad overall, just if there is any decline it truly is because of the propaganda machine that's been in works for 20 years. Rupert Murdoch being the key figure for this, I mean I don't know what the agenda is other than to make so much money but still die and leave a legacy. I don't think the battle has been lost, but there are definitely people out there who are listening (and believing) this stuff who you would maybe expect better of. My bassist is a smart guy (seemingly, anyway) but he sucks up all that Limbaugh / Hannity poo poo. I listened to him unironically refer to Obama as a communist the other day. The facilities dude in the office next to mine is another Limbaugh fan, parrots back some of his stuff to me once in a while. He knows I disagree with him, we still get along. I corrected him once the other day, but in general, I just let it slide off my back. It's wasted effort, you can't change people's minds. Once they're listening to Limbaugh and his ilk unironically, they're lost. And I have better things to do than argue with people about their politics.
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Oct 18, 2012 10:42
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I have literally never heard him support a single statement he's made. And the statements that I have heard are pretty obviously willfully, intentionally deceptive, either through repeating previously debunked falsehoods, or through massive omissions. I listened to him the other night going on and on about how the government wasn't the source of innovation, and how if they would just get out of the way, private companies would produce more innovation "than we can possibly imagine" (which he proceeded to not follow up on with any kind of example / support). And of course, he leaves out the long-standing federal grant programs (NSF, NIH, etc.) that are responsible for providing massive amounts of research money that private companies have then capitalized upon. I wonder - if you took out federal dollars spent on research, how much fully-private (i.e., no federal money involved at any step of the way) industry innovation has there actually been? My guess would be, "not much." "We built this." Right. Walter fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 15:13
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Tibeerius posted:The right-wing messaging machine works because it preys on fear and cognitive dissonance; things that (justifiably) repel most leftists. I think there's also a certain amount of willingness to be "preached at" among a lot of conservatives. I don't get that as much with the left-leaning folks I know. I always felt like Air America came off as shrill and preachy.
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Oct 18, 2012 17:32
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Lord Lambeth posted:If you think Maddow is polarizing I wonder what you think of Keith Olbermann. I like him, but I'll admit a lot of his shows descended into yelling at various conservatives. I thought Olbermann was actually pretty annoying. He tried to beat the Fox News folks at their own game - angry, sometimes nasty, usually overblown, and always bloviating - and it really didn't work. Just like conservatives seem to have problems with the idea of what makes things funny (they seem not to be able to quite get the distinction that laughing *at* doesn't make things funny), I don't think liberals can really pass off that kind of harsh, judgmental approach. It requires a "world is black and white" mentality that liberal thought doesn't handle well, because the world is gray. Maddow's approach, and frankly, Jon Stewart's as well, works because it's evidence-based. She doesn't call names, but she calls bullshit when she sees it. Stewart does the same thing. That's why, I think, Colbert is so brilliant on multiple levels. How he can be funny and yet completely pull off the right-wing parody to the point that many conservatives don't think he's joking, or think he's joking about joking. Either way, the fact is that he does it as a buffoon. The siege mentality of conservatives is such that the same kind of buffoonery just won't work for them, the idea of showing that kind of weakness is not something they're really open to. And humor from the position of strength isn't really all that funny, it just becomes ridicule.
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Nov 25, 2012 17:10
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To an extent, it's the difference between deductive and inductive approaches. I think that's probably oversimplifying more than a bit, but the fact is that when you approach the world from a pre-determined conclusion, the tendency is to try to fit evidence to support that conclusion and disregard evidence that counters it. By contrast, if you follow the evidence, it requires a more nuanced approach and a bit more careful reading of the arguments, but it leads to a more accurate portrayal of the world as it is. Which is why the joke about reality having a liberal bias is actually 100% true, if you consider "liberal bias" to be a sign of "evidence-based reasoning." The right-wing worldview requires mental gymnastics and the use of various fallacious debate tactics to de-legitimize those making rational counter-arguments. Which is why folks like Hannity and O'Reilly rarely attack the argument, they attack the arguer instead. If you can cast doubt on the person making the argument, you can (theoretically) cast doubt on the argument, and so throw out those facts that don't play into the conclusion you've already drawn.
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Nov 25, 2012 18:02
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According to Bill O'Reilly, Christianity is no longer a religion, and therefore not subject to the normal problem of church/state separation. It's a... get ready for this... philosophy. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/28/oreilly-bashes-fascist-atheist-christianity-not-a-religion-so-christmas-displays-are-ok/ I have no idea why Silverman's head didn't explode. "Are you kidding me, Bill? That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
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Nov 29, 2012 15:15
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Kiwi Bigtree posted:If only there was a term for a system of moral philosophy based around the principle of divinity. I just... I cannot imagine the sheer mind-boggling amount of effort it must have taken for O'Reilly to make that argument with a straight face. The guy is not an idiot, he knew what he was saying was the biggest line of horseshit possible, and he just continued to make that same argument. How is there a single viewer among the Fox News audience that doesn't say, "What?" to that? Are there actually people out there who listen to that and say, "Yeah, he's right. It's not a religion at all, it's a philosophy. Whoops, off to church!" And to make the argument that "Christianity" is not a religion, but "Catholicism" or "Methodism" are religions... it's just unbelievable to me. The logical response would have been, "Okay Bill, so then Islam is a philosophy, but Sunni and Shiite represent religions within the Islamic philosophy, then?" It's too bad Silverman didn't argue that. I would have loved to see Bill try to weasel his way out of that.
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Nov 29, 2012 16:22
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I figured it probably had to be something like that, but the mental gymnastics involved in convincing yourself that the social institution to which you belong - which just happens to be organized solely around belief in a deity and his immortal son / messiah / savior of humanity - is not classifiable as a religion. That is one of the most nonsensical arguments / excuses I've ever heard, and anyone who offers it in serious conversation should immediately be met with an impenetrable wall of derisive laughter.
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Nov 29, 2012 16:39
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So am I correct in assuming that the people who don't understand marginal tax rates believe that the way it works is, once you hit a higher bracket, all of your earnings are taxed at that higher rate? That's the only way I can imagine that this confusion could play out. Of course the folks who actually make enough to be in the higher brackets understand this, right? If you make that much money and believe you could potentially be subject to a higher rate, you would do the research to find out if that's true or not, right? Or is research a pussy liberal idea? Is math and tax policy now a "gut" thing, too?
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Nov 30, 2012 12:16
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Typical Pubbie posted:Yep. I'm honestly of the opinion that civility in public discourse has already been torn down from one side. There needs to be some pushback from the other side. Comments like this need to be actively described as stupid, and then the person calling them that needs to explain (in simply terms) why it's stupid. The fellow on O'Reilly in the link I posted earlier (Silverman) did a reasonably good job of telling Bill he was nuts, although I think he could have gone a little farther to make the point of what a stupid argument it actually was. The reason these statements are made, and these people who make them don't have the good sense to be ashamed by the bullshit they're peddling, is that no one is calling them on it in ways that are clearly obvious and can get around the "liberals <eyeroll>" response. If someone on a news show says something stupid like this about taxes rates, you say, "I'm sorry, but that's not how it works. I'm surprised that as someone who makes over $250K, you don't understand this. For this $250K tax increase, only the amount that people make above that is taxed at the higher rate. That's how it works. It's that easy." On O'Reilly, Silverman should have just said, "So, Bill, based on those grounds, Islam is a philosophy, too. Is that what you believe? Because that's the argument you're actually trying to sell to your audience." The trick is to make these people look stupid to their target audience, and make it clear that they are bullshitting their audience. You have to appeal to the "common sense, y'all" attitude that saturates them. I'm starting to think that the only solution to the kind of bullshit these people peddle is straight up ad hominem attacks, because the target audience appears to prefer argument from authority to actual facts. If you take away the authority, people might actually start questioning that poo poo. Walter fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 16:46
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Tonight is band practice. That means a late-night drive home, during which time my local NPR station will be playing classical music. Not that I'm not a fan, but I usually switch to the local right wing station. At that hour, Mark Levin is on. The guy is a frothing psychotic. Nothing I've ever heard him say remotely resembles the truth (except maybe for his product spots). John Boehner isn't conservative enough for him. Neither is Eric Cantor. This guy is the embodiment of the Tea Party. Michelle Bachmann is his hero, and like her, the things he says are utterly devoid of reason. I've never heard so many unsupported assertions, half-truths, and straight up lies in such a short stretch of time before. The guy is in a league by himself. Add in the random yelling and occasional screaming at guests, and all I hear is a cartoon character on the other end. He's got to be a massive troll. The only other option is that the guy is quite literally insane. Walter fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Dec 4, 2012 |
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Dec 4, 2012 12:52
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You have to love it when Levin rants about Boehner at night, and then you get on in the afternoon and Limbaugh is ranting about Rubio and Ryan, who apparently aren't quite as willing as Rush thinks they should be to throw people in the street. Yes, Rush, we should cap unemployment at 13 weeks and food stamps at 2 months and then cut people off. During a recession. I suppose there's a certain Malthusian logic there. If our unemployed are dead, they're not really unemployed, right? Our unemployment figures will drop, and we'll be magically out of a recession. Right?
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Dec 5, 2012 23:35
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KomradeX posted:Among the college aged group you're gonna see a shift from the social conservative types to more libertarian smug. I see it happening at my college (which is a CUNY so raging against the government while benefiting from it directly just seem so stupid to me). I could be wrong though, hell I know more than few libertarians of the Randian/Paul type that are fundie Evangelical Christians Any student at a public university (particularly if they're classified as in-state) who identifies as libertarian (in the now common "no taxes / socialism is bad" mode) deserves to be publicly and mercilessly ridiculed.
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Dec 6, 2012 14:06
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Count Freebasie posted:I'm a social liberal and pretty conservative, fiscally Not to pick on you here, but Christ, I wish people would stop saying this. It's meaningless bullshit. I assume what it means is that you like gay people and black folks, but think taxes are too high or some such thing? Am I close?
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Dec 7, 2012 21:19
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Yeah, that was pretty much my point. I hear lots of people say this, and I don't think they really think through the actual implications of the two positions. They don't go well together. Not persecuting gay people for wanting to get married, having a few black friends, and thinking weed should be legalized doesn't make you "socially liberal."
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Dec 7, 2012 21:46
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All Of The Dicks posted:Limbaugh is actually good at it, though. Savage is just a madman. It is good to have a switch to a less charismatic rear end in a top hat. But is Rush really all that charismatic, when you get right down to it? How many people is he winning over with his rhetoric? Re: Kids going through a libertarian phase... I never did. I must have been lucky. My parents both have advanced degrees, working in a field that paid enough to keep us comfortable (although in retrospect there were probably many discussions about coming up short that I was not privy to as a child). Regardless of that, my folks never bitched (or even resented) taxes they paid. I think it came from the fact that they both had parents who went through the Depression and consequently understood what social programs are for. My folks are liberal through and through, and the most conservative thing I can say about them is that my mom was a little taken aback the first time my brother told her that he was moving in with his girlfriend. That lasted about five minutes, though. Both my folks voted for McGovern in 1972, and my dad has said before that Bill Clinton was too conservative for him. The funny thing is, neither of them were ever hippies or even took part in much of that 1960s counter-culture stuff. My dad was into jazz and didn't care much for the sound of amplified overdriven guitar, neither of them drinks (my mom didn't ever, I suspect my dad did), and even though we never went to church (and neither one of them is religious) most of our neighbors would have sworn that we were churchgoers from the way we behaved. The point is, I managed to avoid every bit of the conservative mindset from the womb onward. And I never even heard of Rand until libertarians started bringing it up online. I avoided all that bullshit entirely. I never went through a libertarian phase, or even a mildly conservative one. It's probably unfair, then, that I have little patience for little shits who parrot the bullshit talking points of their conservative parents, or the middle class white privileged libertarian nonsense. I respect the lot of you that managed to climb out of that pit of FYGM. I just wish more people would. And if I never hear "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" again, it'll be too soon.
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Dec 8, 2012 13:05
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If I ever needed any indication that at least some of the people on Fox News are spewing their invective solely for a paycheck rather than out of any personal belief, I suppose this does it. Next, I want to find out that Hannity is secretly voting straight Democratic ticket, and that Twitter pic or whatever it was of his ballot was just a phony.
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Dec 8, 2012 23:52
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Spacedad posted:Here's REAL traditional America, whose traditions ACTUALLY came under attack: Not to nitpick or anything (and this is slightly tongue in cheek), but that's one very small part of traditional America. This place was almost like Africa in terms of cultural diversity before whitey got here. Seriously, it's amazing.
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Dec 13, 2012 00:01
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It's amazing, I just realized that as near as I can tell, my hometown (in Virginia) has no right wing radio. Maybe there's an AM channel I'm not aware of, but back where I live in Tennessee, there're two wingnut talk radio stations. It's weird to not have that here. Kind of a relief, as well. SilentD posted:Heck the wiki article you linked to states that the film maker found most of the family to be rather nice people in person. Not to put too fine a point on it here, but there's no way the Phelps come out as "nice people" either way. Either they believe all that stuff and they're world class bigots and assholes... ...or they're just trolling, in which case these people go to funerals where people are in emotional pain and, one what is one of the worst days of their lives, they do everything they can to be as offensive as possible. I'm sorry, but the Phelps are human trash regardless of whether they buy into what they're selling or not.
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Dec 26, 2012 14:59
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Joementum posted:Frum is enjoyable specifically because he's losing his mind in apostasy. That's only entertaining for so long, though.
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Dec 30, 2012 14:46
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eggsovereasy posted:The best part of Levin is how angry he gets all the time, I love his shrill yelling. I listened to him again on the way home from practice two nights ago. He was going on about the Republicans in power again. He had tacked on Mitch McConnell to his list of "Republicans who I won't talk to." The guy comes from so far right that he's almost swung around and coming from the left again. Actually, scratch that. If he actually has any influence at all over voters, maybe that's his plan. Since at this point, the only Republicans who he seems to like are Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin, the only thing I can figure is that maybe Levin is a deep cover Democratic operative. A sleeper agent since the days of Reagan, who somehow predicted the party's downfall decades ahead of time and is now trying to bring the the GOP down from the inside by sowing discontent among the party's most faithful, farthest right voting constituency. Walter fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jan 5, 2013 |
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Jan 5, 2013 19:13
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Business Gorillas posted:This is a pretty good point. To be fair though, I don't think we'd have the crotchety old man McCain we have now, that disgusting campaign, and Sarah Palin if McCain had a pretty comfortable election season for him. We'd probably have something closer to the guy who was somewhat tolerable. John McCain has never been tolerable. The man is a spoiled piece of poo poo, and the only reason he seemed tolerable during the Bush years was because he was pissed off at George W for getting the GOP nomination, and so went contrarian out of spite. It just so happened that being contrarian to the Bush administration put McCain on (comparatively) the rational side of a lot of arguments. John McCain is a petty, vindictive privileged rear end in a top hat who has managed to cloak himself so thoroughly in his past military record and POW status that he has for years (and continues to) received a pass on a multitude of issues. Incidentally, I think it's too bad that McCain's Naval record was subjected to the same kind of scrutiny that John Kerry experienced during the '04 campaign. The only detailed accounts of McCain's military record that I've read do not exactly portray a stellar officer or military man, and I wouldn't be the first to suggest that he represented the military version of what George Bush was in the private sector: the privileged son of an important figure (a line of flag officers, in McCain's case) who was given multiple opportunities that someone of "lesser parentage" would never have received. *Disclaimer: I am not able to find very many sources that are what you'd call "impartial" to back the above up - those details seem to come predominately from two biographies by Robert Timberg and John Karaagac. The fact that most other accounts are fairly short on any kind of detail is interesting, though. In any case, McCain has (I think) benefited considerably from the fact that most people are unwilling to subject a former POW with visible physical damage to the same kind of scrutiny (and falsehood) that John Kerry had to endure.
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Jan 6, 2013 14:51
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OMG JC a Bomb! posted:In his younger days, his junk was seeing JFK levels of action. And by all accounts, today he's a crass, petty rear end in a top hat whenever the cameras aren't trained on him. Maybe not crass when the cameras are on him, but pretty much always petty as near as I can tell.
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Jan 6, 2013 17:50
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radical meme posted:Well I was just listening to the Mark Levin show and heard an exchange between Levin and a call that self identified as an Obama supporter. The exchange gave a great deal of insight into what Levin believes constitutes a legitimate discussion with another human being regarding his, Levin's, rhetoric. ... Well, you gotta remember that these guys aren't actually interested in having a discussion, they're selling books and how Obama and liberals are going to steal your stuff, they're selling Lifelock, they're selling gold in case the world comes to an end, and so on... Levin is a loon. As I listened last night on the way home, he was referring to Chuck Hagel as "Schmagel" (presumably because Hagel is Jewish?), Joe Scarborough as "Jo Schmo," and MSNBC as "MSLSD." Repeatedly. Like a kid who won't stop saying the punchline to a stupid joke because he's convinced that it gets funnier the more times it's said. This is a guy who namecalls like a 10 year-old. There's no rational discussion to be had with someone like that. Levin only ever accepts callers that disagree with him so he can yell at them and look like a big man to his radio audience. And frankly, he's so unbalanced and right-wing that I have trouble believing anyone who actually matters takes him seriously. It's comical, really. I worry a lot more about guys like Limbaugh, who are capable of sounding relatively rational most of the time, and whose screeds generally are broadcast in a spoken tone, rather than the suddenly high volume shouting tirades that Levin is known for. That's carnival behavior - "when is he going to start yelling at someone?" The guy is a sideshow act.
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Jan 10, 2013 14:29
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MaxxBot posted:In a sane society no one would but the other day he said that he had US senators calling him on his cell phone begging him to not call them RINOs over voting for the fiscal cliff deal. It's absurd to think of people with that much power groveling to this complete lunatic but with the climate of today's GOP I totally believe it. He's a megalomaniac who is absolutely not above bald-faced lying to his audience. A story like that makes him sound like he's a major player, and for that reason alone I actually suspect that it's 100% pure unadulterated horseshit. Frankly, if I were a GOP senator in danger of being called a RINO by Levin, I would never call him to beg. I'd be too afraid Levin would out me on his show.
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Jan 10, 2013 22:51
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Crasscrab posted:Mmm yes. Trump is going after Rove now. Trump is an intellectual lightweight whose entire arsenal of comebacks consists of variations on, "No, you."
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Feb 8, 2013 19:10
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Anyone else hearing various right-wing news guys shilling for email addresses at Reagan.com? I've heard a number of them talking about it, but today I heard Rush going on about how your Reagan.com email address makes a statement - you're a high-information, intelligent person. Okay, sure. It's finally here: the right wingers (well, Michael Reagan, anyway) are literally making money directly off Ronald Reagan's name. Not that I'm surprised, but It's just funny to see them selling the Gipper for $40 / annually. It's only a hairsbreadth away from the Ferengi practice of family members selling pieces of their dead relatives (Star Trek stuff). Walter fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 22:21
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It's pretty obvious from Rush and other guys lately that the marching orders from on high are based entirely on the public polling that indicated that if the sequester happened, Republicans would get the bulk of the blame for it. So the order has been, "The sequester isn't that bad, it's not even really cuts, it's just that we're not increasing budgets as much as we would have" (what Rush said the other day before I vomited a little and changed the channel). It's so transparently obvious from someone who doesn't live in a right-wing bubble what's going on, but when you only get your news from these propagandist gently caress sticks... If someone could manufacture a reputable-seeming set of poll results indicating that most people associate green, not red, with Republicans, I suspect that you could pretty easily track an uptick in the right wingers discussions of how red used to be associated with communists, it's a lefty socialist commie color, why are we using red when a good, American color like green - the color of real American farmers' John Deere tractors - would be a better representation of the Republican party's ideals. A Winner is Jew posted:I think a goon has either throwjizz@reagan.com or throwacid@reagan.com. He sure showed those conservative guys what's what by buying an offensive username from their pay email service. AsInHowe posted:Needless to say, was I surprised when Republicans all decided to say stupid poo poo about rape? Of course not! Because when one Tea Partier does something stupid, everyone has to do it out of solidarity to ignorance. The issue of rape, something that has pretty much been decided in this country (it's wrong and evil), suddenly kept coming up as a talking point without any prompting. If a Tea Partier gets criticized, even if it's for something completely appropriate to criticize someone on, everyone else has to join in. Or you aren't a 'real American/Tea Partier/Republican/patriot'. The Tea Party is almost literally the Know Nothings with email and websites. It's like the shot-for-shot "Psycho" remake from a few years ago. Walter fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 13:27
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Monkey Fracas posted:I hate Saturdays on NPR, usually. And Sundays. It's like NPR (at least in my area) goes into full parody mode for what conservatives *think* NPR is all the time - obnoxious, self-satisfied upper-crust liberal bullshit. "The Splendid Table," "On Being," "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," and "Prairie Home Companion." I would rather listen to an hour of Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin than ten minutes of Garrison Keillor's poo poo. Or Lynne Rosetto-Casper smacking her lips and going on and on about French wines and roasted beet reductions. And yeah, the "jokes" on WWDTM are the worst.
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Mar 15, 2013 18:03
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A Winner is Jew posted:To be fair the US collectively lost it's poo poo with 9/11 and I don't know anyone, no matter how liberal, that didn't want to "kill towelheads" to some extent. I did not, I honestly did not. I was angry prior to 9/11 when the Taliban took over Afghanistan and started destroying cultural heritage, because it was out of blind, stupid religious fanaticism. And I was very glad to see them overthrown, but I never once had any kind of indiscriminate "kill towelheads" feelings at all. If you understood the history of that area, you knew quite well why they wanted to do what they did. It was a horrible act, but the damage that we've done to our country in the years since then has massively outweighed anything they could have accomplished on their own. I'm disappointed in my country for the reaction to 9/11. Walter fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Mar 17, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2013 21:45
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Dirk Pitt posted:I do this. I listen to NPR when I am in my car, all the time. Morning edition, All things considered, and BBC news hour(if I finish early) keep me entertained for my commute. I typically go to Whole Foods for lunch, and loathe my local stations' eleven o'clock hour programming which includes The Splendid Table, You bet your garden, Dr. zorba doesn't know what the gently caress he is talking about, and some show where people call in and have there poo poo appraised. I flip to Rush for his opening monologue because I can't stand the mindlessness of those other shows. If I hear Zorba on NPR, I lunge for the buttons, even if it's a choice between the right wing station, with its paid advertisement for "Purity Products," or the local top 40 station, where I can choose from the remarkable musical stylings of Usher talking about boobies or Ke$ha. If I catch Zorba at the right time, though - mid-laugh - I can't resist mimicking it, because it's so damned annoying. Fact is, I've actually gotten to the point where I flip to the local right wing station first when I get in the car in the mornings, rather than NPR (which is still #1 on my radio presets). I've gotten a little tired of the way things are presented on there. Why? (And this is where some of the content from this post may be found.) Because like a lot of liberals, I actually find that NPR strays curiously right in some of its coverage, particularly on market / economic matters, and in some of its political coverage. I realize that they're usually pretty centrist, which is fine - I would rather listen to a news station that's not biased. But the omissions and glossing over of some pretty major issues on NPR leave me feeling a bit as though I could do better by just reading a wide variety of web sources and skipping radio news altogether. The last thing I appreciate is a radio station (or any news source) that purports by reputation to be impartial in how it treats issues, but is (when you get right down to it) not. And the only thing I really listen to NPR for anymore is news. In contrast, the right wing station, awful as it is (or at least as it can be, depending on who's on) is at least entertaining. I don't have to guess where the political center is, because I know (for the most part) that the station is so far right (I'm in East Tennessee) that if I'm in my car, the center can be found somewhere over in the left lane. So I can listen, shake my head, yell at the idiots calling in on the radio, and be fairly certain that nothing remotely resembling a fact will appear on that station. I can also screen advertisements - any companies, local or otherwise, who advertise solely on the right wing station around here are on my "do not patronize" list. Either way, right wing radio is basically any Internet article comments section or Reddit political thread put to the airwaves, and that means train wrecks and moron callers with terrible opinions. At the very least, that's entertaining at 6am as I'm driving to the gym. I've learned the schedule here, so I know when I can listen and be entertained, and when I'll just vomit a little in my mouth or want to punch someone squarely in the face. Some local guy who usually is center/right, but that means relatively rational compared to the other folks on there, comes on in the morning. I've even called in a couple times for the hell of it. Then Geraldo (who is as close to center as anyone on that station), then Rush, then some local boob who I can't stomach because he's a bona fide moron who just happens to be sort of conservative, then Hannity (who I cannot stand and won't listen to, he crosses the line from entertaining to enraging), then Levin (let's get the crazy rolling!). In contrast, the weekday NPR is Morning Edition (twice), then classical music with really terrible local hosts, Fresh Air (sometimes interesting), more classical, All Things Considered, and then more classical or jazz. Weekends, it's reruns of Car Talk (good once, not on reruns), PHC (both Saturday and Sunday), WWDTM or Zorba, This American Life (occasionally entertaining) or "On Being" (bullshit feel good crap, used to be called "Speaking of Faith" and was even more obnoxious then), and then good ol' Splendid Table, "the show for people who love to eat." I can't stand it. Yesterday, "This American Life" (which I caught on the way to / from the grocery store) opened with an extended intro from a guy who apparently moved to New York, got a studio apartment. His neighbor ended up on "The Bachelor," and the girl dumped him because of his apartment. Apparently that was enough to get this guy depressed, because his apartment sucked or something. And then went on and on about how upset and depressed he was about it. I wanted to punch both him and Ira Glass. I know a lot of folks in this country listen to right wing radio because they actually agree with it, but I'm increasingly convinced that (like many of us in this thread) the listening audience is a little like the people who used to go to freak shows.
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Mar 17, 2013 11:26
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LP97S posted:Yeah, since we can't have a gun control thread in D&D most people can't discuss this but I can say that plenty of gunowners think that the NRA is loving stupid and this whole inch-mile over background checks just makes them seem worse. I have a gun (used to have two until one was stolen) and I am 100% in favor of all kinds of regulation on firearms. And I loving hate the NRA and would never in a million years imagine supporting them. Like pretty much everything, the vocal minority ruin things, or make the rest of the majority look bad.
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Apr 1, 2013 01:51
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Good Citizen posted:I'm not sure if I like the guy who's thinking of the wrong Chavez or 'spring spheres' lady better. The best part is, Chavez was vehemently anti-illegal immigrant, even going so far as to report undocumented workers. He considered them a threat to American jobs. So the idiots who are up in arms over his appearance on the Google search look even dumber. Of course, these boobs see "Chavez" and are too dumb to actually think beyond Hugo. Or actually, you know, read.
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Apr 1, 2013 23:01
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Orange Devil posted:It's really none of our business and gently caress all the media people who have anything to do with this poo poo. It's become our business, because Vilerat's mother - who is absolutely justified in her grief for her son's death - has gone off the reservation and is helping to feed this ridiculous right-wing Benghazi conspiracy thing. The woman has agency, she's not a total dupe. As I understand it, she's being paid to come on these shows, and in her own way, she's taking advantage of that. I suspect Vilerat would be aghast at his mother's showing up on Hannity. Grief doesn't obviate the need for responsible behavior, and she's got a part now in fanning the flames of this conspiracy foolishness.
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May 9, 2013 00:48
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Warchicken posted:We need to invent some kind of new word to describe this because understatement ain't cuttin it. Yeah, really. To me, that's the saddest thing about the whole issue. I'm a Star Trek TNG fan from way back, and I recall an episode where a mother and scientist goes out of her way to exact revenge on an alien life form that killed her son. Data is in a position to have that son's journal entries in his memories, and when the mother asks Data to tell her that her son is at peace and glad for what she did, Data is forced to tell her that what she did was expressly against what her son would have wanted, and that her actions would have made him sad, rather than what she hoped: that he'd thank her for killing the alien lifeform that killed him. I remember thinking how much this situation with Vilerat's mother is like that fictional scenario. If she realized how completely counter her actions are to what her son believed, I think it would destroy her. EDIT: I know this is probably silly to make Star Trek analogies here, but it was what popped into my head after watching that episode not long ago. I apologize if it made too light of the situation, it wasn't my intention. Walter fucked around with this message at 16:14 on May 9, 2013 |
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May 9, 2013 03:08
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Mo0 posted:I'm all for this analogy as long as Joe Biden gets to be Q. I can't imagine who else Uncle Joe could be.
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May 9, 2013 16:11
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keiran_helcyan posted:You just don't see enough graphs with time on the vertical axis and an unlabeled/unmarked horizontal axis. I laughed way harder at this than I should have.
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May 10, 2013 16:33
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Seoinin posted:I remember waaay back in the day when Pam Gellar found out about Taqiyya and had an absurd yearlong meltdown about how ISLAM SEZ IT'S AN ACT OF FAITH TO LIE TO INFIDELLLLLS! Interestingly, Fox News basically operates on the same principles. They even have an appeals court ruling to confirm it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre
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May 10, 2013 16:48
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No one forced her onto those shows. I sympathize with her, she lost a son. That doesn't make it okay to willingly become a touchstone for the lunatic fringe of the Republican party. If I died as Vilerat / Sean Smith died, I would hope my mother and father wouldn't go batshit crazy. And for a study in a parent losing a child and becoming political active in a way that's not insane, look at Cindy Sheehan. Granted, some thought she was a little nuts, but I don't recall her doing things quite the same way as Smith has. I could be wrong, though. Either way, we're in a position to know how Sean Smith would have felt about what his mother is doing. She's dishonoring her son's memory and it's shameful. Walter fucked around with this message at 23:03 on May 12, 2013 |
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May 12, 2013 22:39
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The janitor in my department is a nice guy, and we get along, but he's a rabid Rush fan. He just stopped me to tell me how Rush had taken apart some woman on the radio (someone testifying before a Congressional hearing, although I didn't bother to look into which) who had asserted her 5th Amendment rights, and how "Rush said, 'They love that 5th Amendment, but they don't care about any of the others.'" I used to share an office wall with him, and could hear the full schedule during the day. Fortunately I was usually gone before Hannity came on. Randall's a a nice fellow, but he's a solid example of Rush's audience; folks who only know what Rush tells them and who will vote reliably for whoever the GOP runs because Rush told 'em to. He doesn't think he's racist, but he'll tell you (if you ask) exactly what he thinks of "those people." Take this stupid poo poo to Reddit. You may not like Bono, you may not like his music, but the man has actually tried to do good, and is not even remotely comparable to any of the right-wing pieces of poo poo in this thread. And certainly not to Hannity, who might be one of the worst of them if only because he has (comparably to guys like Savage and some of the other fringe guys) gained mainstream acceptance. Walter fucked around with this message at 21:44 on May 22, 2013 |
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May 22, 2013 21:34
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