Telling other people what to do is the very essence of Leftism
Ken Fishkin
For years, I listened to Limbaugh on my way to work, and to "Air America" on my way from work, specifically so I could 'compare and contrast'. In my opinion, the popularity difference is because they relate to their audience differently.
Julia Sweeney has a great line that "listening to NPR is like listening to your mother telling you to clean your room".
We have a gas crisis? It would help if you used mass transit more
We have an education crisis? It would help if you read to your kids more
We have a health care crisis? If you exercised more and ate better, we wouldn't have such a demand on the system. Coming up next: 3 ways you can add kale to your daily diet.
Country
The typical framing of the typical problem is about what you can/should do to help things get better.
On the other hand, if you listen to Limbaugh, you (the listener) are never at fault. You are perfect. You are the heart of America. The problem is them - those liberals, foreigners, feminists, etc., fools at best and traitors at worst, who are screwing things up and preventing the great life you deserve.
We have a gas crisis? They refuse to let us drill and use nuclear.
We have an education crisis? They have a bias against private schools
We have a health care crisis? No we don't! They just say this as an excuse for Big Government. Coming up next: an ad for Ruth's Chris Steak house.
Country
The Limbaugh approach is much more popular. In my opinion it's not so much the details of the liberal vs. conservative policies, it's that the one nags you while the other exalts you.
SOURCE
Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).
1 comment:
While Rush was never quite my thing, as he played lip service to small government and the free-market, I always got the sense that he was big gov, crony capitalism, if of a more minor sort. He was more the secular right, which I could (in extremes) consider closer to NAZI styled business socialism.
NPR was out and out socialist/communist. From hard to middle left, and nothing else. They believe the government is the solution for any problem, if it involved redistribution, and believed in that. But if you were rich (white) then you had an obligation to go without so the poor could live on you. There programs were, at best, the soft propaganda one might expect to hear in a communist/socialist country. Which is exactly what it is.
Neither was really my gig. They represented what the left has defined of politics... socialism of one type or another, ignoring the politics that initially created America and what many of us believe, or used to believe. I wouldn't expect you to think differently. You were an academic in the time of the great falling of academia to a mere union that lived off the government and pushed for more. I doubt if you can see much past that on many things. It infused the systems and people in the systems.
Which is why I didn't say anything on your American hit-piece(s?). Not sure if there was one or two. Just chuckled. Your passive-aggressive Freudian slip was showing. I know bait when I see it, as well. Laughed, I did.
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