Trump and the Exploitation of White Male Rage

The husband and I are in Somerset, Pennsylvania for the weekend for family reunions on my husband's side.  As in the past, the area makes the Hampton Roads area of Virginia seem like the cosmopolitan, liberal center of the universe in comparison.  Indeed, in driving around town and the countryside, we have yet to see a single Hillary yard sign.  In contrast we have seen a number of Trump signs.  The Somerset area is in some ways a perfect setting for Trump and the white male rage that he is exploiting to fuel is frightening campaign if one listens to the regular media narrative: mostly white, many non-college educated, and a region where the demise of coal mining and other industries has hit the economy hard.  However, a new Gallup survey suggests that the narrative is at least partially incorrect.  The real root of the rage: the poison of Fox News and right-wing talk radio, plus a heavy dose of sense of lost white male privilege.  A piece in Salon looks at the issue.  Here are highlights:

We’ve all seen the videos replayed over and over again on social media and cable news. The past couple of weeks, however, featured two videos illustrating what I’d consider to be typical Trump supporters. Indeed, by now many of us can easily profile a Trump voter before they even have a chance to shout “Traitor!” into our not-surprised faces.

Generally speaking, Trump supporters are non-college-educated white men, ranging from younger “bros” to, more typically, white male baby-boomer retirees with plenty of spare time to be relentlessly irradiated by Fox News and AM talk radio.

While the lack of a college diploma binds most Trump supporters together, there are more obvious tells — ones that we can plainly see but that can’t be fully measured by pollsters. Specifically, it’s not easy to quantify the growing resentment of white males who believe they’re slowly losing their millennia-long grip on societal power. Likewise, it’s difficult to measure the brainwashing of Trump’s loyalists by the Fox News and talk radio echo-chamber. Yet we see it on display every day.

[A] similar incident occurred with an older white man who was filing out of a Trump rally in Kissimmee, Florida, but who stopped for a minute or two to completely humiliate himself by shouting incoherent bromides at the press. “You are traitors! I am an American patriot!” .... the man yelled, his eyes cartoonishly bulging out of his head. “I am a patriot! And your name is ‘Traitor!'” he continued to the delight of his fellow Trumpeteers.

The disconnect between how we expect older men like him to behave and how they’re comportingthemselves today is, in a word, disturbing.

Context is, of course, vitally important here. The Kissimmee fracas occurred seconds after Trump finished another of his rambling blurt sessions, and the man was obviously wound up and affected by what he heard. But we don’t expect older people to be this impressionable. . . . .  fully revealed his vulnerability to the suggestions of a charismatic would-be dictator, and didn’t mind his unspooled rantings being recorded and aired by the press. He didn’t seem to be at all concerned, nor did it even occur to him how, to the rest of the thinking world, he came off as a crazy person. A laughingstock. Except to so many others just like him.

When discussing Trump’s base, sympathetic words are often tossed into the mix due to the common wisdom indicating how they’re frustrated with the allegedly awful economy, struggling to make ends meet. . . . [however]  a new study by Gallup shows that economic issues aren’t necessarily driving Trump’s base.

According to this new analysis, those who view Trump favorably have not been disproportionately affected by foreign trade or immigration, compared with people with unfavorable views of the Republican presidential nominee. The results suggest that his supporters, on average, do not have lower incomes than other Americans, nor are they more likely to be unemployed. 

Gallup went on to suggest that other factors could be contributing to the discontent among white working-class Americans, but the economy and immigration don’t appear to be fully animating the mania that’s so prevalent among Trump’s people.

Trump isn’t necessarily responsible for the behavior of his most activated loyalists, but he’s certainly tapped into an existing cache of psychosis and he’s exploiting it for political gain. Trump’s base has been pre-tenderized by what David Frum calls the “conservative entertainment complex.” Since at least the Clinton administration, white men have been slowly indoctrinated and, in too many cases, brainwashed by conservative media and its rather loose grip on reality. 

A recently released documentary by Jen Senko, titled “The Brainwashing of My Dad,” covered this particular phenomenon: . . . . The film follows the life of Senko’s father, who was once a Kennedy Democrat and, through daily assaults by right-wing radio and television, transformed into a racist conservative zealot. Similarly, it’s not difficult to diagnose the Kissimmee man and his cohorts as having been similarly brainwashed by the extremist rhetoric of both conservative entertainment and the Republican Party itself . . . 

If you convince enough men that alleged outsiders (women, minorities, immigrants) are stripping them of their long-held power, as Fox News and others have done, there’s going to eventually be a fight, especially when one of those so-called outsiders is a black president with the middle name “Hussein.” Older white men don’t intend to hand over power quietly . . . . based on recent video footage, I wonder if they’re even aware of how ridiculously deranged they appear, alone or most often in large groups.

Why Do Conservatives Care More About Benghazi Than About The Iraq War?

Outside of perhaps Fox News, a/k/a, Faux News, and some of the lunatic fringe elements of the far right, it is now widely accepted that the Iraq War was launched by George W. Bush/Dick Chaney based on lies and manufactured intelligence.  The financial cost to America ranges between $1.7 to $3.0 trillion dollars.  In terms of casualties, a total of 4,491 U.S. service members were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2014, and more than one in four U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment.  The Benghazi incident in Libya, in comparison, saw four (4) deaths.  Yet American conservatives remain obsessed over Benghazi even though eight committees have failed to show  fault on the part of Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton.   Why the obsession on the one and near total silence on the other?  The Foreign Policy offers some thoughts:

I don’t understand the disproportionate focus on a half day in Benghazi vs. more than a decade in Iraq.

When people say they just want the facts, I think: We still don’t know when the decision was made to invade Iraq, or who was involved. We still don’t know why the intelligence was so warped. We don’t even know how many Americans died in Iraq, because there has been very shoddy record-keeping on contractors’ deaths.

Yet some people, many of them in Congress, keep on calling for more info about Benghazi. What am I missing?

I asked some smart friends recently. One, retired Army Col. Charles Krohn, wrote back that:

Tom, it’s easier to understand the simple (Benghazi) than the complicated (Iraq). On the scale of misleading the Republic into acting against its best interests, however, Iraq is a million times more shocking, exactly as you suggest.

There’s another issue, somewhat sensitive. A lot of us (me included) supported the war in Iraq because we believed the WMD argument, especially after Colin Powell embraced it. So it’s a trifle embarrassing for the masses to acknowledge we were manipulated. For those who lost life or limb, embarrassing is hardly an appropriate expression.

That’s disturbing.

The other possible answer?  The reptilian brains of the far right who STILL have not gotten over a black man occupying the White House and the agitators of talk radio.. 

Is Rush Limbaugh in Trouble?

One of the most partisan and hypocrisy filled mouth pieces of today's hate and bigotry filled Republican Party is Rush Limbaugh.  Together with Christofascist professional Christians, Limbaugh has exerted undue influence over the GOP and has  provided legitimacy to some of the ugliest elements and most insane conspiracy therapists of the lunatic far right.  Now, thankfully, it appears that Limbaugh may be in trouble in terms of radio stations broadcasting his nut job propaganda  and that his oce successful business model if you will is crumbling.  A piece in Politico looks at Limbaugh's potential fall.  Here are highlights:

Earlier this year, as that unmistakable bass line of the Pretenders’ My City Was Gone faded into the background, Rush Limbaugh opened his daily three-hour broadcast with characteristic bombast. “[According to the] latest research data,” he intoned, “the audience is expanding at near geometric proportions, as people seek guidance, answers, explanations, information, and an answer to the basic question, ‘What the hell is happening out there?’"

Whether “what the hell is happening out there”—in particular, the remarkable political rise of Donald Trump—has been good or bad for the Republican Party, or the country at large, there’s no denying one thing: It’s been great for talk radio. Ratings are finally ticking up, after a moribund four years. And conservative radio gabbers are driving the political conversation in a way that they didn’t when allegedly mushy moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney were the standard-bearers of the country’s conservative party.

This has been particularly true for Limbaugh . . . . And yet, there are signs that all is not well in the Limbaugh radio empire. Because even as his influence is sky high and his dominance at the top of talk radio remains unchallenged, as a business proposition, Limbaugh’s show is on shaky ground. In recent years, Limbaugh has been dropped by several of his long-time affiliates, including some very powerful ones: He’s gone from WABC in New York, WRKO in Boston and KFI in Los Angeles, for example, and has in many cases been moved onto smaller stations with much weaker signals that cover smaller areas.

Why? Because four years after Limbaugh called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” on air, spurring a major boycott movement, reams of advertisers still won’t touch him. He suffers from what talk radio consultant Holland Cooke calls a “scarlet letter among national brand advertisers.” And for someone who has said that “confiscatory ad rates” are a key pillar of his business, that spells trouble. (Limbaugh ignored multiple interview requests.)

Limbaugh’s extremely lucrative eight-year contract—estimated to be worth roughly $38 million a year—is up this summer. What will happen to “America’s Anchorman,” as Limbaugh quasi-ironically refers to himself, once the contract is up, is anybody’s guess. Because as he is learning, political power does not necessarily a stellar business make.

But for all his business acumen, Limbaugh’s show has been a harder sell since 2012—even if he does still impishly refer to commercial time-outs as “obscene profit timeouts.” If you had to pinpoint a moment when Limbaugh’s business model began to turn, you’d have to look to the Sandra Fluke incident, when he referred to the Georgetown law student who spoke in front of Congress in favor of the Obamacare contraception mandate as a “slut” and a “prostitute.” It was a self-inflicted error that Limbaugh has never recovered from.
[B]y attacking Fluke in such grotesque terms, Limbaugh broke a cardinal rule of radio—not to mention polite society, says Darryl Parks, a radio industry veteran and former Clear Channel news-talk format chief based in Cincinnati: “Don’t beat up on a woman, and don’t beat up on a [young person].” In one fell swoop, he had done both. The backlash was swift and unforgiving—including from Fluke herself, who rejected Limbaugh’s multiple on-air apologies. (It didn’t help matters that Limbaugh said he was sorry for “acting like … leftists” by attacking her in such personal terms.) Politicians, including not a few Republicans, scorched Limbaugh.

The anti-Limbaugh faction came up with the social media-friendly slogan “Flush Rush.” The group’s efforts met considerable success in the months that followed. Dozens of companies, including Netflix, JCPenney and Sears, announced they would boycott Limbaugh’s show. Most have yet to return. And the increasing popularity of platforms like Twitter, which can be used to stoke outrage and promote boycotts, makes it highly unlikely they ever will.
 The Sandra Fluke incident “did a lot of harm to talk radio,” Darryl Parks says. “Thirty-eight percent of revenue disappeared overnight.” . . . . after the Fluke incident, entire stations—or indeed, the entire format of talk radio—were deemed no-go zones by blue chip brands.

JCPenney PR executive Kate Coultas explains this via email. “We [now] have a general ‘no run’ policy in place to not advertise on any kind of political program,”

In the end, the collateral damage was significant. The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, for example, which broadcast news updates on stations across the country, could not withstand the loss of ad revenue from brands like Penney. It shuttered completely in 2014—a decision directly attributable to the Fluke fallout, says one talk radio consultant. . . . . Even when they could sell ads, radio stations found that they had to move them at fire-sale prices. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2015 that talk radio ad revenue was falling and that “advertising on talk stations now costs about half what it does on music stations, given comparable audience metrics.”

[T]he biggest brands still stay away from Limbaugh. In 2015, the top five national radio advertisers were T-Mobile, Comcast, Home Depot, GEICO and Sprint. But you won’t hear ads from those giants on the Rush Limbaugh Show. Instead, most of Limbaugh’s spots are so-called “direct-response ads” (“enter the promo code Rush”) from the likes of home security companies, gold and silver purveyors and flower delivery outfits.

The move to smaller stations in big markets has apparently hammered Limbaugh’s syndicator. In the old days, Premiere Networks “could make a lot of money through fees—a million [dollars] a year or more from single stations,” says John Mainelli, a long-time radio executive who was WABC’s program director when Limbaugh made the move from Sacramento to New York. 

Now, because Limbaugh has been moved to so many smaller stations that pay much smaller fees, Premiere is “not collecting anywhere near what they used to collect in fees,” says Mainelli. And Mainelli points out that with the decline in ad revenue since 2012, the fees have become even more important: Their reduction has only added insult to Premere’s injury. . . . On top of that, it stands to reason that if Limbaugh is moved to enough lower-watt stations, his ratings will eventually suffer. None of his show’s woes have hurt Limbaugh personally, of course. He has a guaranteed contract dating back to 2008 that runs into July. But with his deal coming to an end in a few months, it’s an open question what the future will hold for the “Doctor of Democracy.”
 Most of the people I spoke with for this story speculate that Limbaugh will probably stay with Premiere. . . . . the big question is what that “right price” will be. It almost certainly won’t be as nice as his current arrangement, a contract so lucrative it allowed Limbaugh to buy a Gulfstream G550 he dubbed “EIB 1.” . . . A big question is whether Limbaugh would be willing to countenance a significant pay cut, particularly were it to become public. Like Donald Trump, a big part of Limbaugh’s brand is “winning,” after all. 

Limbaugh has been a toxic influence on America's politics and political discourse.  Candidly, the collapse of his "empire" and the demise of his toxic influence would be an extremely welcome development. 

Fox News, "Conservative" Talk Radio and the Rise of Donald Trump

After the hijacking of the Republican Party base by the Christofascists - who were stupidly initially welcomed by the so-called GOP establishment - perhaps the second most important factor in the descent of the GOP into a world detached from objective reality has been the impact of Fox News (a/k/a Faux News) and conservative talk radio programing.   In this sector of the airwaves, truth and facts don't matter and extremists and hate mongers set the tone of political discussion, assuming one even graces the demagoguery and spewing of hate with that that much courtesy.    It is these outlets that have turned those who would have been shunned by the Republican Party of old into "media stars" and given platforms to countless crackpots and false "experts."  A piece in the New York Times looks at how these "news outlets" have set the stage for Donald Trump's rise in the polls.  Here are excerpts:

The Republican Party’s internal war over the rise of Donald J. Trump is playing out among candidates and campaign operatives, but nowhere is it being heard more loudly than on commuters’ car radios.

Conservative talk radio has been abuzz with chatter about Mr. Trump since he started his presidential campaign last month with a salvo against illegal immigrants from Mexico . . . Despite the blowback — some would say because of it — Mr. Trump’s poll numbers have surged. The stirring of the restive Republican base on the radio airwaves provides both evidence and an explanation for his appeal.

Laura Ingraham made the case for Mr. Trump during her radio show on Tuesday, calling on Republicans to do some soul searching about why he was resonating with voters and outpacing established politicians in the polls despite his McCain comments.

Callers like Dave from Indiana were unfazed by the dust-up with Mr. McCain, seeing it as more proof that Mr. Trump is ready to battle for his beliefs and ideas. “The simple fact of the matter is that he fights,” he said. “That’s why he’s worth supporting.”

As Mr. Trump campaigns on, the power of conservative talk radio should not be underestimated.

“A lot of the Republican establishment will say talk radio is the problem, that it gins up the base, that it drives the party too far to the right,” said Tim Graham, who analyzes conservative media for the Media Research Center. The group was founded by conservatives to bring balance to the news media.

This summer the medium has amplified Mr. Trump as both a movement and an outlet for conservative outrage toward a party that has turned to moderate candidates in the last two presidential elections.

Mr. Gallagher observed that Mr. Trump is channeling the frustration harbored by conservatives who feel rejected by the Republican establishment and are generally disgusted with politicians.

The disgust can cut both ways, though, and on talk radio it is starting to do just that. Peter Wehner, a guest on Mr. Gallagher’s morning show, said that Republicans should no longer be silent in their opposition to Mr. Trump. Open criticism is the only way to stem his rise and the damage he does to the party.

Some popular hosts who were previously supportive of Mr. Trump are turning on him. . . .

“You’ve got to think broader than the base of your party if you want to win elections,” Mr. Hannity said, urging Mr. Trump to apologize.

According to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, much of Mr. Trump’s draw lies in his bluntness, a characteristic that also draws conservative listeners to talk radio hosts. The candidate is breaking what scholars call the “spiral of silence” and is validating voters who hold views that are widely considered politically incorrect. And the fact that party elites seem to loathe him only adds to the appeal.

Praising the billionaire businessman for not apologizing, Mr. Limbaugh urged Mr. Trump to carry on and keep standing up for himself. The left, he warned, was trying to demonize a Republican candidate for daring to speak his mind.

What is unspoken in the article is that most of the "outrage" of the  is actually the result of furor over lost white privilege and the party's growing overt racism.  Plus a total lack of concern for the less fortunate notwithstanding the pretense of supporting "Christian values."

Cumulus Media To Drop Rush Limbaugh (and Sean Hannity)

One of the loudest voices for bigotry and racism on the airwaves is Rush Limbaugh.  Another force for hate and division is Sean Hannity.  Now, both have been dropped by Cumulus, the second-largest operator of radio stations in the country.  It will be interesting to see how Limbaugh, a loud mouthed jerk in my view who talks about protecting the "sanctity of marriage" while on his own fourth marriage, tries to spin this obvious set back.  Here are details from Politico:

In a major shakeup for the radio industry, Cumulus Media, the second-biggest broadcaster in the country, is planning to drop both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity from its stations at the end of the year, an industry source told POLITICO on Sunday.

Cumulus has decided that it will not renew its contracts with either host, the source said, a move that would remove the two most highly rated conservative talk personalities from more than 40 Cumulus channels in major markets.

The decision comes after negotiations between Cumulus and Premiere Networks, the division of Clear Channel that distributes Limbaugh and Hannity's shows, broke down due to disagreements over the cost of the distribution rights, the source said. Cumulus is known to drive a hard bargain on costs, and Clear Channel is known to seek top dollar for big names.

Premiere, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday night, is expected to carry Limbaugh and Hannity on stations in many of the markets where they are currently signed with Cumulus, should the negotiations not go through. A spokesperson for Limbaugh was not immediately available for comment; Hannity did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Back in May, a source close to Limbaugh told POLITICO that the host was considering ending his affiliation agreement with Cumulus because CEO Lew Dickey was blaming the company's advertising losses on Limbaugh's controversial remarks about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student. On an earnings call two days later, Dickey reported a $2.4 million first-quarter decline in revenue related to talk programming, which he attributed, indirectly, to Limbaugh's remarks about Fluke. 

Is Cumulus Looking to Dump Rush Limbaugh?

Rush Limbaugh has become increasingly crude and down right hateful in many of his rants.  And advertisers seem to be catching on that attaching their brand to Limbaugh may not be in the best interests of product sales to the larger consumer base even if the spittle flecked, racist conspiracy crowd that makes up Limbaugh's core listeners still are enthralled by his crudeness and bigotry.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at what may be an effort by Limbaugh's syndication to dump him.  Obviously, such a put down for Limbaugh would be all too delicious.  Here are some article highlights:

“We've had a tough go of it this last year,” Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey said Tuesday morning. “The facts are indisputable regarding the impact certain things have had on ad dollars."

Dickey told analysts on the earnings call that his radio empire’s revenue was down $5.6 million in the first quarter of 2013 on top of a boatload of debt. Why? Parse the weasel words (“the impact of certain things”) and you’ll see that Dickey is blaming one man for the precipitous decline of right-wing talk radio’s profitability: Rush Limbaugh. 

El Rushbo is still a giant in the industry, but the impact of slamming Sandra Fluke on his radio show one year ago persists—with some $2.4 million in losses attributed by Dickey to declines in the “syndicated-talk segment.”

Insiders confirm that these declines are primarily due to the ongoing reluctance of national advertisers to attach their name to the toxic talk-radio format that first made Limbaugh famous a generation ago. 

“We’re watching the end of right-wing conservative talk radio,” says Jerry Del Colliano, publisher of the radio-industry tip sheet Inside Music Media. “The genre is dying among ratings and dying among advertisers ... Rush is at the end of his career. His constituency is all wearing Depends. And he’s getting himself into trouble he doesn’t need. So can you put Humpty Dumpty back together again? They have been able to improve their advertising picture, but they have not been able to come back.”

“Sandra Fluke was simply the lightning that struck and hit an old building that collapsed,” Colliano says. “She didn’t do it. She helped to bring it down at the end, but it was falling apart on its own.”

He [Limbaugh]  then doubled down on the attack in unusually creepy terms:

“If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is: we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."

The blowback was immediate. Elected Republicans, usually loathe to offend the influential talker, distanced themselves from his comments. But more powerful was the boycott that ensued, with 98 advertisers pulling their support for the show. 

The numbers announced on Tuesday made clear the impact of the boycott. Rush's comments on Fluke came on Feb 29, leap day of last year, so the Cumulus numbers offer an apples-to-apples comparison: pre-Fluke and post-Fluke. While some advertisters have come back, the show has been unable to regain its footing, and the impact has spread across right-wing talk radio as advertisers have became increasingly gun-shy about association with the genre.

But the larger issue is the declining demographics of the right-wing talk-radio racket.  “Look at the millennial generation,” says Colliano. “There’s 80 million of them coming of age. They don’t see color. They don’t see gender. And they’re civic minded: they don’t like bloviating. They don’t like yelling and screaming. So you tell me: how’s right-wing talk radio working for them?”

Now we need to see the same phenomenon hit Fox News, a/k/a Faux News.

A Right Winger Bemoans the Dumbing Down of the GOP

John Derbyshire is a contributing editor of National Review and the majority of the time I disagree with everything he writes. He's generally reactionary, bigoted and not what one would call LGBT friendly. On rare occasions, however, he shocks and comes out with something most observant. In a column in The American Conservative he has a great column that looks at the dumbing down of the GOP and conservatism by those like Rush Limbaugh the of which he describes as "carny barkers." The article is worth a read and it describes one of the reasons I left the GOP - not to mention its inability to recognize the separation of church and state. Increasingly, one either must become a Democrat or get a lobotomy to remain a Republican. Here are some highlights:
*

Now the loudest Republican voice belongs to Rush Limbaugh.” Upon discovering that Limbaugh had anointed himself the successor to William F. Buckley Jr., WFB’s son Christopher retorted, “Rush, I knew William F. Buckley, Jr. William F. Buckley, Jr. was a father of mine. Rush, you’re no William F. Buckley, Jr.” The more po-faced conservative intellectuals have long winced at Limbaugh’s quips, parodies, slogans, and impatience with the starched-collar respectability of the official Right.

*

Now the airwaves are full of conservative chat. Talkers magazine’s list of the top ten radio talk shows by number of weekly listeners also features Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, and Mark Levin.

*

Did the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and Ingrahams lead us to this sorry state of affairs? They surely did. At the very least, by yoking themselves to the clueless George W. Bush and his free-spending administration, they helped create the great debt bubble that has now burst so spectacularly. The big names, too, were all uncritical of the decade-long (at least) efforts to “build democracy” in no-account nations with politically primitive populations. Sean Hannity called the Iraq War a “massive success,” and in January 2008 deemed the U.S. economy “phenomenal.”

*

Much as their blind loyalty discredited the Right, perhaps the worst effect of Limbaugh et al. has been their draining away of political energy from what might have been a much more worthwhile project: the fostering of a middlebrow conservatism. There is nothing wrong with lowbrow conservatism. It’s energizing and fun. What’s wrong is the impression fixed in the minds of too many Americans that conservatism is always lowbrow, an impression our enemies gleefully reinforce when the opportunity arises.

*

Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans.” Talk radio has contributed mightily to this development. It does so by routinely descending into the ad hominem—Feminazis instead of feminism—and catering to reflex rather than thought. Where once conservatism had been about individualism, talk radio now rallies the mob. . . . In place of the permanent things, we get Happy Meal conservatism: cheap, childish, familiar. Gone are the internal tensions, the thought-provoking paradoxes, the ideological uneasiness that marked the early Right.

*

[I]n fact liberals are very successful at talk radio. They are just no good at the lowbrow sort. The “Rush Limbaugh Show” may be first in those current Talkers magazine rankings, but second and third are National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” with 13 million weekly listeners each. It is easy to mock the studied gentility, affectless voices, and reflexive liberalism of NPR, but these are very successful radio programs.

*

I repeat: There is nothing wrong with lowbrow conservatism. Ideas must be marketed, and right-wing talk radio captures a big and useful market segment. However, if there is no thoughtful, rigorous presentation of conservative ideas, then conservatism by default becomes the raucous parochialism of Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, and company. . . . Conservatives have never had, and never should have, a problem with elitism. Why have we allowed carny barkers to run away with the Right?