One of the ironic things I love about listening to right-wing radio is that I can take my radio dial and spin it over a few of these stations, and at any given moment they're all screaming about...say it with me..the liberal media. Hmm.
And a favorite topic during this is the Earth-shattering fear that the world is about to end because the liberals in Congress are scrambling every day to enact The Fairness Doctrine. Which was abolished in 1987 and has not been brought up in Congress by Democrats since a half-hearted attempt in 2005. Of course that's just fancy Northeastern elitist talk for "doesn't actually exist." But if you listen to these right-wing stations, the left is obsessed with getting TOTAL control of the radio and using it to kill babies and turning us into French-speaking Marxists. Bewilderingly enough, according to these very stations the radio is ALREADY absurdly overrun by the left, even if it's apparently just out of the reach of things like radio antennae, or human ears. Which is really too bad for them.
For actual numbers re: the laughingly absurdness of these claims, go HERE, where you can see how the left has "taken over" the radio. Hmm.
Anyway, my point is as I wrote before HERE. I don't know if people like Rush, Hannity, Savage, Levin et al realize what a favor they're really doing for the Democratic Party. I find it hard to believe they really pull in new converts, people who aren't already rabid "Bush is the BEST!" people, any more than Air America would with people who don't "fuckin' love, man!" Jon Stewart and think South Park is a real place. As a matter of fact, I would bet any amount of money that the number of new converts is but a FRACTION of the number of people who are on the fence, and lean conservative, but hear these blowhards screaming asinine shit and think whoa whoa whoa...I'm not down with that shit. Fatty yammering every day that he hopes Obama fails comes immediately to mind. And maybe that doesn't mean they go sprinting to buy Obama/Xmastime '12 t-shirts, but it might mean they're more willing to give the other side a listen, thanks to their own side being way over the batshit level they're comfortable with.
In other words, we NEED these jackoffs on the air every day, spewing nonsense that repels the average person who doesn't lean extremely hard one way or the other. I would say these talk show hosts are akin to the people that brought violence upon activists during the Civil Rights movement. Some black people trying to sit at a lunch counter or walk across a bridge in 1965 isn't really gonna move the average white person who hasn't really thought about such things in anything more than a curious, just trying to get through the day, onlooker kind of way. But if jagoff lunatics start showing up and breaking eggs on heads or releasing dogs on black kids while swinging baseball bats, that white person might think "whoa whoa, that's too much...I'm can't be down with that." As awful as it was, the movement NEEDED this opposition of violence, and the bat-swinging racists et al played their part perfectly in prying loose the indifference of millions of onlookers. And that's what there is to gain from letting idiots like Rush and Seanzarelli et al spew their nonsense publicly every day. So keep it up douchebags!
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