From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Mar 30 2003 - 21:05:06 MST
Michael writes
> > And then there's Sean Hannity of FOX. He takes the prize
> > for the most offensive....snip...Such rot.
Well, not in my opinion. (Interesting how we all differ, even
within one proximate area of the political spectrum.) The only
TV conservative I cannot stand is Bill O'Reilly, and for exactly
the type of incident gts related. He's seldom as interested in
an honest exchange as simple name-calling.
> I will run the risk of stating the obvious from a memetic context:
>
> The younger & hungrier Right Wing Talk Zealots do get cranked
> up a lot-- their producers and agents want them to stay in the
> "shock"/controversy/polarization zone. It gains them market from
> controvery's first-order (curiosity/first time listeners)...
I think that you've got your causality backwards. Those so-called
zealots truly believe what they are saying, and are *not* pressured
to take even more extreme views. They obtain their large audiences
because what they have to say resonates with those audiences. The
market place selected them because of their views---not producers
and agents taking simple and naive flashy personalities and making
them spout popular views.
> Pandering, actually. Like the historical Joe Pyne or the fictional
> [Bug] Jack Barron. It really is more than a bit like the WWF.
No, completely wrong. I used to listen to Joe Pyne. He was
no Michael Savage. His commentary was to the point, and was
the only (!) thing expressing conservatism that I had ever
heard in mass media. He spoke on one (!) radio station from
L.A., and he didn't last long.
Since then the liberals or liberal media has elevated him to
mythological status. He never laid it on the line as clearly
and uncompromisingly as his modern day equivalents (I'm not
so sure that he was even as talented as they).
You CANNOT call any of the right-wing (or left-wing) extremists
so popular on radio or television panderers. Not, at least,
when they are honestly expressing their own views.
> fingernails-on-chalkboard scale. I can usually stand about
> ten minutes of Hannity, thirty seconds of Michael Savage
I can stand Mr. Savage for nearly two minutes. Of all of those
from above, even including Mr. O'Reilly, he's the only one
whose sincerity I seriously question. Sometimes he's so far
from conservative reality---or so it seems to me---so over the
top in mindless denunciation of the motives of his political
adversaries, that I think he's *deliberately* exaggerating.
And the people who call in to agree with him---carefully
screened in a way that Rush's listeners are not---appear to
be those whose rage is so out of control, that they cannot
hear the difference between sense and nonsense.
gts adds
> Yes, shock jocks.
Really think so? You mean, like Howard Stern? I don't really
have any clue as to the psychology of people who it is claimed
listen or watch in order to be... thrilled? ...shocked?
I think that even in the worst case above, like Michael Savage,
people tune in to hear their own emotions expressed to a
national audience. Now if they were simply after logical
explication of their conservative views, they'd just listen
to Rush.
Lee
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