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Rush Limbaugh on TechnologyConservative Talk-show Host |
Rush moved on to JUDL-AM in Kansas City but the AM station shifted to all syndicated news, and the radio host moved to FM. At KFIX, personality conflicts ultimately costs Rush his job.
Despite his cries about liberal bias, Rush was never fired from any radio show for his conservative views. To the contrary, his right-wing attitudes probably saved him. Limbaugh most often lost his shows due to technological changes (the rise of syndicated news and automated music stations) or personality conflicts; in the only case where Limbaugh's views cost him a job, it was because he did something he rarely ever did: criticize a corporation.
By merging entertainment and opinionated politics, he has also set the stage for a wide range of new voices, from Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Before this, openly liberal or conservative hosts with strongly expressed views were largely unknown in American mass media culture, and political commentary was largely limited to humorless newspaper columns.
The radio host is transforming conservatism and destroying the moderate wing of the Republican Party by imposing rigid adherence to his particular brand of conservatism. Rush Limbaugh is dumbing down America and coarsening our culture.
Little mention was made about Obama's "teleprompter" during the 2008 campaign, when John McCain was notably bad at reading from them, and President George W. Bush used them in every speech. But when Obama became president, Limbaugh instantly seized upon this common piece of technology as if it were a new device Obama had invented on inauguration day.
"He's lost without the teleprompter," Rush said, and later, "It's clear he doesn't know what he's doing when he's off that teleprompter." In reality, Obama has spoken without a script to a national audience far more than George W. Bush did.
Nope. Net neutrality means that Internet service providers must treat all websites equally, and can't ban or slow down certain sites for their customers.
Limbaugh painted a picture of secret government control exerted over the World Wide Web: "So in Net neutrality--and this is where the Google-White House partnership comes into play--the results of any search, let's say you want to search abortion, or you want to search the health care bill, they want to control what you see."
With the election of Barack Obama, Limbaugh shifted his rhetoric about the press. Instead of calling them drive-by media, he decided to name them the state-controlled media. Rush said, "I think the whole concept of reporting has gone out the window. I call them the state-controlled media because it's what they are. They're just repeaters. They take dictation from Rahm Emanuel for the most part, and they simply run with it."
By mandating that any political views disseminated over the radio be counterbalanced by the opposing view, the "Fairness Doctrine" not only requires radio stations to give boring crackpots airtime, it also creates a conceptual and administrative nightmare.
The problem isn't just the paperwork stations would have to fill out. It's also that radio stations would have to start balancing three hours of Rush Limbaugh (20 million listeners) with three hours of Randi Rhodes ( 6 listeners) every day. Reimplementation of the "Fairness Doctrine" spells the end of talk radio.
To beg any government’s permission to speak is to ask for trouble. That kind of government shackling of freedom of speech-in defiance of the First Amendment-is precisely what we will have in store if the Fairness Doctrine is re-enacted. As we go to press, “fairness” legislation is popping up [in several bills].
Would somebody please find “fairness” for me in the Constitution? You can’t. Yet somehow we have gotten this notion that fairness is a guiding principle.
Studies in 1992 examined the “threat to an informed public” posed by Talk Radio and its “irresponsible” hosts. The Media skewers the Talk Radio branch of The Media, saying that its audience is composed of ignorant, easily misguided suckers who are constantly worked up into a lather by reactionary, uninformed hosts.
In all other cases, they would champion the involvement of other branches of The Media. Why? Because they control those branches, and the people themselves have far less interactive involvement.