Is Right-Wing Talk Dying?

[maiforpeace]

NPR isn't remotely leftist. I listen to it every morning - there's definitely some elitist, liberal-leaning talk, but that's the audience it caters too. I find the reporting and feature presentations to be very well researched, insightful and about as objective as news can be.

All that could be said for Beck and Hannity too, substituting "right" and "conservative" for "left" and "liberal". "Elitist, liberal-leaning talk" is the very definition of leftist. Sure, they have nonpolitical programming too, but Beck and Hannity aren't on 24 hours a day either.

I'm not saying NPR is left wing, the way Limbaugh is right wing, but the only reason people who listen to NPR don't want to admit it's leftist is because they themselves are leftist, so they misperceive it to be the center.

Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity (and O'Reilly, and Savage, and Coulter, etc...) spend a large portion of their time railing against the weak liberals and the reckless, spend-happy Democrats, stoking partisan anger and fear about the people they and their audiences disagree with. Nothing of the sort could be said about any NPR programs.

I've also never seen any NPR host doing a "let's make fun of folks with Parkinsons!" sight gag...

Or gave birth to and kept alive a movement of lies like the Birthers.

[Warren Dew]

Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity (and O'Reilly, and Savage, and Coulter, etc...) spend a large portion of their time railing against the weak liberals and the reckless, spend-happy Democrats, stoking partisan anger and fear about the people they and their audiences disagree with. Nothing of the sort could be said about any NPR programs.

To the contrary, NPR spent much of the 2010 campaign season misrepresenting and caricaturing the Tea Party movement and ridiculing its members, doing the exact same stoking of partisan anger and fear about the people they and their audiences disagreed with. Here's an example:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =120344047

Of course, NPR listeners are probably so brainwashed that they'll see that as not far from the truth - just like the listeners to conservative talk radio believe what they hear there.

[Feck]

Tea- Baggers ... how can they not be a joke ?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... teabagging

Of course the fact they are a bunch of knuckle-dragging flag waving Morans doesn't help

[Robert_S]

Nobody makes the Tea Party look worse than the Tea Party.

Therefor the Tea Party is a liberal plot to make the Tea Party look bad.

Edit: Why would anyone put a link to a cartoon in NPR opinion page that contains a link to a National Review article about the Tea Party and the history of the term "Teabagger" for as proof of NPR's obvious bias?

[sandinista]

Tea- Baggers ... how can they not be a joke ?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... teabagging

Of course the fact they are a bunch of knuckle-dragging flag waving Morans doesn't help

Thanks for the photo, very funny!

[JimC]

Warren Dew wrote:

..."Elitist, liberal-leaning talk" is the very definition of leftist...

Not from any rational political dictionary I know. Leftist is a fairly broad term. Perhaps "liberal views" could squeeze into it at one end, but a truly leftist viewpoint is one where socialism is front and centre. True liberalism has its political roots in English social philosophy, not the writings of Marx...

"Liberal" does not mean the same thing in the U.S. as it does in the UK. The closest U.S. equivalent to the original English "liberal" concept of the 19th century is "libertarian".

Of course, the British liberal party drifted away from those roots as well.

I suspect that the only place on Earth where "liberalism" has that connotation is the US of A...

Of course, in Seth-speak, most of the world oustside the select wise men in America are raving pinko lunatics...

[Santa_Claus]

Of course, in Seth-speak, most of the world oustside the select wise men in America are raving pinko lunatics...

and i bet even those are on a watch list.........

[Warren Dew]

Edit: Why would anyone put a link to a cartoon in NPR opinion page that contains a link to a National Review article about the Tea Party and the history of the term "Teabagger" for as proof of NPR's obvious bias?

Because it was a response to Ian's complaints about conservative references to liberals, of course.

Of course, if you don't watch the cartoon that's the main point of the NPR page ... well, if you don't listen to the conservative commentators, you have nothing to complain about ether.

[Warren Dew]

I suspect that the only place on Earth where "liberalism" has that connotation is the US of A...

That's only because all the other English speaking nations follow British usage.

[Robert_S]

Edit: Why would anyone put a link to a cartoon in NPR opinion page that contains a link to a National Review article about the Tea Party and the history of the term "Teabagger" for as proof of NPR's obvious bias?

Because it was a response to Ian's complaints about conservative references to liberals, of course.

Of course, if you don't watch the cartoon that's the main point of the NPR page ... well, if you don't listen to the conservative commentators, you have nothing to complain about ether.

There is much more to conservatism in the US than the Teabaggers. Remember when Tea Party and similar Fox inspired nutjobs kept interrupting the town hall meetings around the health care debate to scream their paranoid rantings about death panels? Remember the widespread yet baseless claims about Obama's alleged Muslimitude? Remember how it was Bush who initiated the Wall Street bailouts, yet nobody took to the streets until the black Democrat got into office?

All that shit and more justifies a good long piss-take on the teabaggers even without the link to an opposing opinion in the national review. I know a few conservatives on the internet and in real life and every last one of them that make a habit of critical thinking has nothing but contempt for the Teabaggers.

By the way, you might want to take a look at Fiore's latest: here

[Thumpalumpacus]

Comparing a show like Limbaugh or Hannity to a network like NPR is a category error. For an appropriate comparison, either compare NPR to Fox, or compare Limbaugh to All Things Considered, or Weekend Edition. I think you'll find the latter two much less partisan.

Also, check out Left, Right, and Center, which gives a fair stage to all political views.

Like all news outlets, NPR is biased, and the smart listener listens to varied outlets with different slants and then triangulates to arrive at the truth, but quite frankly, Hannity and Limbaugh are so full of shit their eyes are brown. Not to mention they're not news but opinion, and I really don't give two turds rubbed together what those blowhards think. Same reason I avoided watching Olbermann.

[Warren Dew]

There is much more to conservatism in the US than the Teabaggers. Remember when Tea Party and similar Fox inspired nutjobs kept interrupting the town hall meetings around the health care debate to scream their paranoid rantings about death panels? Remember the widespread yet baseless claims about Obama's alleged Muslimitude?

I certainly remember NPR and other leftist press organizations emphasizing these kinds of occurrences rather than doing balanced reporting on more typical conservative behavior, yes.

Remember how it was Bush who initiated the Wall Street bailouts, yet nobody took to the streets until the black Democrat got into office?

I remember how posters like the following started appearing when Bush was initiating the automaker bailouts - before Ford decided not to accept a bailout, in fact:

I saw plenty of objections to the Bush administration's bailout proposals elsewhere, too. Perhaps you didn't hear about the objections to the bailouts on Bush's watch because you were only paying attention to leftist press sources which approved of the bailouts, even from a Republican president.

[Robert_S]

Nobody was particularly joyous about it and I was glad there were people out there protesting the bailout, even though I think it was not the worst thing that could have been done. The reason being that it should never be easy for a president to give money to banks and corporations, even if it benefits us all in the long run.

But I was referring to masses of people taking to the streets to protest. That didn't happen until after Obama took office IIRC. That, to me speaks of a bias.

[Robert_S]

http://www.politicususa.com/en/glenn-beck-fired

[egbert]

http://www.politicususa.com/en/glenn-beck-fired

Now if only Canada would rid itself of Michael Coren...