bobnick

I drive for my job. A lot. So after a while, i got tired of listening to music and started scanning through the AM stations. Before listening to these stations, I had liberal views and I hated Bush and I watched Sicko and I thought nationalized healthcare would be a good thing for our country. So, out of curiosity, I listened to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage on and off. I would scoff at some of the things they were saying, and I was mostly listening for my amusement.

Now, I listen every day that I work and I consider my views to be conservative, I think Bush was not all that bad and I even respect him a little, and I think nationalized healthcare would ruin this country. Have I been brainwashed? I want to listen to a liberal station, but I haven't found any.

n0nsensical

Funny, I was a conservative until I started watching Fox News.

__________________
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." --Abraham Lincoln

Seaver

A professor once told me, "If your values and opinions can not stand up to the strength of opposing arguments or viewpoints you must re-educate yourself. Research the the road which brought you to your original viewpoint, ensure those opposing arguments are factual, and then start anew."

It's not brainwashing unless you don't research the facts. I'm very conservative myself, but much of what Rush/etc are factually incorrect. On the left, Air America, radio stations are pretty much equally incorrect.

We must have our political opinions forged in the crucible of open discussion and arguments, and refined in the truth.

__________________
"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

Jozrael

Holy shit.

filtherton

Seaver is no slouch.

hunnychile

Bobnick, sounds like "They" hooked you in....from now on try listening to National Public Radio (NPR) as often as you can to get some balance.

__________________
"I need compassion, understanding and chocolate." - NJB

Seaver

/blush

__________________
"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

Willravel

Brainwashing isn't a cut and dry kinda thing. To a certain extent, we're all brainwashed in one way or another. Is it possible you've been brainwashed? Maybe, but the fact that you're questioning it is a good sign that even if you are you won't be for long. I'd say that the ability to question and test your own ideals and principles is a sign of maturity and intellectual honesty. Keep it up.

All that said, if you're nodding your head while listening to Hannity, there might be something wrong. I don't begrudge him his political ideologies, but his consistent dishonesty, cronyism and cruelty are unforgivable.

fresnelly

Corporate Bailouts? Tax code changes? Strife in Darfur? The dynamics of any issue don't really matter to Rush and co, only the outrage that it's happening at all. It's all evidence that "THEY" are ruining things for "YOU" and you have a right to be angry.

Ask yourself if these shows have really given you a broader perspective on how the world works or if they've just tapped into a dormant part of your psyche.

For a less emotionally involved conservative take, I recommend the Economist magazine. They definitely have a market based lens on the world but without need to furiously bend every outrage back to the usual suspects or wail that the sky is falling.

As a test, take a one or two week break Talk Radio, play CDs while commuting and read newsmagazines over coffee instead. Turn Rush and Co. back on after the week is over and see if you're still as supportive.

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Building an artificial intelligence that appreciates Mozart is easy. Building an A.I. that appreciates a theme restaurant is the real challenge - Kit Roebuck - Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life

Baraka_Guru

My general feeling on American politics is this:

Each component of the two-party system is cut from the same cloth; however, over time, they've determined their own ways to uphold their values, and in some cases values have shifted, albeit slightly. They view one another as opposing forces, yet they aren't opposite in a binary sense.

The shift from American liberalism to American conservatism doesn't require many steps.

You don't disagree with all the core values; you disagree with the means by which they are upheld.

Then there are the ancillary values, which tend to get in the way of what really matters.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

samcol

Talk radio changed my views as well. Except I was listening to Alex Jones. Talk about eye opening...

Anyway I do listen to Hannity, Rush, Beck Savage, and some left wingers occasionally.. These guys are very good at what they do and very deceiving. I can almost feel myself nodding in agreement after awhile if I don't actively listen and engage my brain. They pound out the same thing over and over until it's cemented in your head. The other technique they use is concentrating on issue that don't really matter one bit so you can ignore the elephant in the room.

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It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

ShaniFaye

I'd rather listen to Neal Boortz than the others...I've lost count of how many years I've been listening to him.....I hear Hannity and I just want somebody to give him ritalin lol

__________________
I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

Derwood

Hannity/Savage/Limbaugh are entertainers using politics (I use that word loosely) as their vehicle for making $$$$

roachboy

talk radio seems to me a form of entertainment that traffics mostly in snippiness and uses political questions as a pretext to do it.

there's a pretty good academic analysis of how some of this works here:

Effects of “In-Your-Face” Television Discourse on Perceptions of a Legitimate Opposition
DIANA C. MUTZ
American Political Science Review Vol. 101, No. 4 November 2007

i just happened to be looking at it this morning while i was doing something else. you can get it via cambridge up's database if you have access to it, or at a library.

this is the epigraph:

and then it tries to explain how this comes about.
personally, i really think it's a form of entertainment for folk, who like identifying in one way or another and hating everyone who is of the opposite camp, a crude little bloodsport that can be seductive if you shut your critical thinking off and just go for the ride.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Seaver

You don't drive a Volvo? /snicker

__________________
"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

roachboy

uh....i don't have a nose piercing.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Rekna

I want to second NPR. I listen to this daily and as far as I can tell its programs are very unbiased and neutral.

Martian

For my opinions regarding US politics, I refer you to post #10 by Mr. Baraka_Guru; I feel that sums up my opinion nicely. I add only this:

One absolutely crucial skill today, and one that seems to be sorely lacking through much of the general populace, is the ability to approach and deconstruct an argument critically. O'Reilly and his ilk depend on the absence of this facility, that they may sprinkle logical fallacies and outright fabrications throughout their diatribes, and have them remain largely unquestioned by the audience.

I suggest sharpening your critical thinking skills. Learn what makes an argument fallacious, and how to spot it. You may find yourself nodding in agreement much less often.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Seaver

/points at MSNBC

Dude it's on both sides.

__________________
"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

grumpyolddude

The majority of the talk radio addicts of my acquaintance are head bobbers who can't be bothered to read up on the issues for themselves. They are waiting to be told what their opinions should be. The folks that read, think and make informed decisions can't stand the talking heads from either camp.

There's no entertainment value in a centrist point of view. It won't draw listeners or sell advertising.

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"Regret can be a harder pill to swallow than failure .With failure you at least know you gave it a chance..." David Howard

Martian

That's beside the point.

You'll find similar blowhards ranting for or against just about any issue you care to mention. All of them should be approached with the same skepticism.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

bobnick

Thanks for your views. I tried listening to Npr today, but it seems like the hosts have soothing voices comparable to a hypnotists. Maybe thats just in contrast to the conservative stations I've been listening to. Also, there were no call-ins from listeners to get their perspectives, which I like. Maybe I was just listening at a bad time. But, I will take a week or two break from listening to any political shows.

thespian86

Everyone knows that centralized banking runs our countries anyways.

---------- Post added at 12:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:28 AM ----------

CBC radio one has some amazing podcasts. No offense to American media outlets but if you are looking for solid international and domestic news involving the US, you'd be better off looking to Canadian and British news. Check out the CBC and BBC.

__________________
EX: Whats new?
ME: I officially love coffee more then you now.
EX: uh...
ME: So, not much.

Plan9

I listen to NPR, myself. I can tell they're educated... they have European accents!

...

I used to be "Republican" until I decided I don't identify with either group due to my conflicting beliefs / hobbies / goals.

...

Volvos don't come with pintle mounts for .50 machine guns.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Baraka_Guru

You didn't live in communist Romania.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

matthew330

my exact story bobnick - all that you said. I drove a breadtruck for 3 years after college and got so sick of FM, decided to listen to the AM people that I'd been taught to hate. As you said, purely for entertainment. Rush Limbaugh one way going up, and one the way back (i forget her name) one of those once popular on-air psychologists that liberals successfully shut-up by finding nude pictures of her and convincing people she was out to get gay people or black people, or someone...who knows. She's gone now.

I think more than realizing I was philosophically conservative, I resented liberals. And still do. Not that I'm hung up on my 4 years of college 15 years ago or so, that I still hear the democrat president complaining about Fox news, blaming the previous administration, playing the same record that was spun for me in my "higher education" years. The last 8 years solidified all of it for me. I honestly feel sorry for those that swallow their shit, and despise those that spout it.

FoolThemAll

Dr. Laura. She's still around.

It was gay people she 'hated'. Yeah, that got beyond silly. Not that conservatives don't have their own problems concerning this issue - they certainly have more problems in general - but it's depressingly less than widespread for my own anecdotal liberals to realize how silly it is to equate "it's a sin" with bigotry. That's the sort of simple-minded propaganda that I expect from someone like... oh... Limbaugh.

And schadenfreude sucks, no matter the target.

__________________
I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

roachboy

what's curious about the talk show inoculation process is less the progress into the system unfolded by the soma than the sense of vindication on the one hand and legitimation on the other that seem, somehow, to accompany it. what the talkingheads do basically is structure resentment. they get to that, it is said (muntz makes this point in a remarkably dry way, but still) is through the aggressiveness of presentation, be it aurally or visually. it's not that different from the explanation given by a jewish guy who thought he was eichmann and who stood trail as eichmann in the play "the man in the glass booth" for why fascism appealed so: "he told us what it was that we were afraid of."

there is something quite disconcerting about the existing top-down media apparatus, the various commercially sanctioned modes of generating brand allegiance that "conservative" and "liberal" are brands that one identifies with because one likes the flavor of resentment they help structure, likes the trajectories these structures enable, the way they help organize the world into an endless tunnel of Persecuting Agents that one "resists" by being pissy in the same way as one's imaginary comrades in an imaginary Conflict that you get to participate in by sitting in a chair and having someone narrate it for you.

we live in a space defined around a wholesale collapse of politics and consumption that relies on the circulation of officially sanctioned Products in a wide enough range that certain illusions of Choice are presented, one can be oneself by assembling this little collages of signifiers that you breath into and that help you locate the Persecuting Agents of your choice while at the same time the system that generates these signifiers is placed out of debate and is necessarily legitimate and coherent because it enables this Articulations of Selves because that system *is* all the tedious fantasylands that, taken together, constitute the realm of pseudo-politics.

i keep having these conversations with folk--do you think we're living through the collapse of capitalism--and i say no, what i think we're living through is the collapse of the american empire and that one of the defining characteristics of the collapse of empire (historically speaking) is that those who scuttle about within it do not and cannot see the collapse. rather than think about rome, it is perhaps better to think about the end of the hapsburgs.

structures of resentment pull the world close to you and enable you to imagine that you have some plausible control.
this basically therapeutic situation comes at a price.
but you're hardly likely to know that if the therapeutic situation becomes the center of repetitions so that it's narratives become your narrative.
not seeing can be fun and exciting, i guess. a full-time job.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Aladdin Sane

These two tables from Pew Research Center for the People and the Press are interesting.
Rush's audience tends to be more educated than that of CNN and MSNBC. His audience also follows more hard news than any other media surveyed.
News Audiences Increasingly Politicized: IV. Attitudes Toward the News - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

Attached Images

Pew Report on Talk Radio.JPG (95.7 KB, 206 views)

__________________
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Rekna

(off topic)

My wife did are you Romanian?

matthew330

did anyone follow this bullshit? i'm not sure if I should respond to this, because I'm not entirely sure you were necessarily talking to me (matter of fact, I think you only ever really talk to yourself) so I'll keep it short and sweet, but there was nothing anyone ever said that "structured" my resentment. It was exactly as I said, just a reflection of my college years, and a first hand experience of the reaction of the left when a differing viewpoint is offered. Tolerance it was not.

My political leanings are not therapy, or a full-time job. Which brings me to my next question. What do you do again roachboy? And in your sparetime? I think it's too late for you to consider a political viewpoint opposite your own, so protecting it in language that noone can really follow (or care to try), is exactly the type of therapy your accusing me of.

pan6467

Limbaugh's popularity and being around so long is due to the fact he will take a point of view that sounds reasonable. He then slowly takes it to the extreme all the while convincing you that his point A to point B makes logical sense. He uses emotion well to get his views across. He's good at what he does, quite possibly the best. He provides great entertainment.

He's a blowhard, he's self righteous with a huge ego. But here's the key, he gets people to listen to him on a regular basis and they think.

In the end I go back to what my father says about him, "He makes good points, provides good entertainment but if he truly believes all that he says, the guy is nuts and belongs in a psyche unit."

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

roachboy

matthew---so you know, i am not concerned enough about your particular views or anything else to waste the time on trying to figure out why you hold them. and it is simply not the case that all political viewpoints are equivalent. they aren't.
it is also self-evident that logic and descriptive power with respect to the world aren't really criteria that alot of nice little consumers apply real hard when they're out chopping for ready-to-wear political viewpoints.

and if your narcissism did not prevent you from actually reading the post, you'd perhaps have noticed that i wasn't in particular talking about conservatives.

and whether you follow what i write really isn't big on my list of concerns either.

and it is really none of your business what i do in 3-d. nor am i under any obligation, rhetorical or otherwise, to take seriously your political viewpoint. i don't. trust me on that one.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

filtherton

I followed it and I think it was spot on. It wasn't that hard to follow. He's not speaking spanish.

If you do take the time to read it you'll see that he was referring to people who subscribe to liberal or conservative branding, liberal/conservative fanboys- people who are embrace superficial notions of liberalism/conservatism because of how it makes them feel. These are the type of people that Limbaugh/Olbermann speak to.

The fact that you both misunderstood it and took offense seems to be a classic dittohead move.

loquitur

The problem with relying on words and logic to persuade is that pretty much anything can be gussied up in the right hands to sound reasonable and logical. What's more, people who for whatever reason are inclined to agree with a speaker will usually not see the holes in the argument. I argue for a living -- I'm a litigation attorney -- so I see this all the time. I can argue pretty much any side of a dispute, do it convincingly, and then turn around and do the other side with equal passion and conviction, and be just as persuasive.

So what do I find persuasive if not logic? Data. Facts. Experience. Testing. Science. But that's a lot of work (which is why I don't pretend to be an authority on very much, even though I do read a lot and try to formulate reasoned views). The guys on talk radio are doing argument, and argument is much easier. Limbaugh, for example, is a very talented showman and has found a very successful "schtick" but I wouldn't rely on him for sound policy prescription or political advice.

tisonlyi

Yes, and it is remarkably erudite, clear and concise.

The man took time to explain a point of view outside of your conservative vs liberal sphere, and rather than try to follow it and respond, you chose to deride. You've clearly learned more than talking points from Talk Radio.

There's remarkably little terminology or narrative in there that might require thought to understand, let alone specialist knowledge.

__________________
"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

ASU2003

Just download the Real Time with Bill Maher podcast.

It's good to listen to various sources for the news. But you need to figure out what is the truth and what they are saying to make people angry. There is a lot of nitpicking and stupid things that they talk about.

Figure out what you care about, where you stand on the issues, and what you want your life to look like in a strong country.

matthew330

I'm at a distinct disadvantage because I obviously don't have drones of folks willing to defend me when someone challenges me, but oh well.....

Yes, roache's post (especially his last paragraph) was as clear and concise as one of Jerry Springer's final thoughts (tell me that's not what you thought when you read that).

....and the man takes alot of time explaining to this board what he thinks "conservativeland" is all about. He was reacting to me, and entertaining you with his psychoanalysis of my position. I appreciated it, and felt obligated to return the favor.

And this here is a conservative vs liberal sphere, and we all know where roach stands. Please don't try to paint it what it's not because he casually threw in "liberal" as if it was unbiased analysis of political thought in general.


My apologies for reviving this, I was travelling in San Francisco the last two days and couldn't connect to the internet, because I've gotten viruses on my computer the last time I connected in the hotel. 10 dollars for that heartache. I'm pretty sure the city knows who I am and waits for me.

filtherton

You're probably so oppressed because you're a conservative white male. Oh when oh when will the white man be allowed to get ahead?

matthew330

I'd would say that'd be the stupidest response I've ever read on here, if it weren't for the fact that I'm pretty sure I've read that exact same statement from you a half dozen times over the last couple years on multiple threads.



what was that you were saying about liberal/conservative superficial notions, something or other.....