Inside Opinion : Talk radio: Dittoheads vs liberals

Talk radio: Dittoheads vs liberals

Posted by editorial_views

Posted: May 7, 2008 - 11:01 am

A caller said he had trouble finding the on line version of today's controversial Alaska notebook, which lampoons both liberal and conservative talk radio. Here it is:

Liberal talk radio

I don't know the real reason liberal radio talk show host Aaron Selbig was sacked from KUDO-AM. Maybe it was the lousy ratings. Maybe it was that he dared go where the station's offstage masters at IBEW didn't want him to go.

I do know this: Liberal talk radio is a lousy business proposition.

And there are good reasons for that.

No. 1 -- Liberals have minds of their own. Unlike Rush Limbaugh's dittoheads, they don't respond like Pavlov's dogs when the master rings their emotional bells.

Liberals operate higher up the brain stem than most talk radio listeners. Liberals use their heads; conservatives go for the gut. (The term "liberal" in liberal arts education doesn't mean getting politically indoctrinated; it means thinking for yourself.)

Second, liberals have real jobs during the day. Jobs that require using their brains. They aren't sitting around in T-shirts and boxer shorts all afternoon, beer in hand, yelling from the Barcalounger, "You tell 'em, Rush!" Liberals aren't stickin' it to the man by goofing off at their dead-end jobs and listening to rants on the radio while munching fatty snacks jimmied out of the company vending machine.

Most commercial talk radio listeners are looking for entertainment, not enlightenment. They enjoy a rhetorical circus. They don't care if facts get in the way of a good argument.

Liberals have a reality-based view of the world. And let's face it -- reality is soooo B-O-R-I-N-G.

Liberal talk radio is a great sedative. If I'm having trouble getting to sleep at night, I can slap on the headphones, cue up a podcast of NPR's "Talk of the Nation," and I'm off to dreamland in no time.

The popularity of right-wing talk radio would be irrelevant, just a quirk of the American communications market, if it weren't for the political implications. Dittoheads can be stampeded into mass action that frightens politicians who might otherwise do the right thing.

For this sad fact of American life, I blame the educational system. Students these days just don't learn to think for themselves.

The biggest sign of trouble in American education is not low test scores. It's not abysmal graduation rates. It's the continuing commercial success of right-wing talk radio.

-- Matt Zencey

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