Right Wing Radio

This morning in the car I turned on the local (Worcester) radio station for the weather. At 9:00 a.m. the "Glenn Beck" show came on. Right wing radio at its worst. He has a good voice for radio; if you like Lewis Black on the Daily Show he sounds a lot like him. Lots of shouting. He didn't get into heavy hating today, because he was talking about the Dubai port takeover story, and even right wing gasbags can't defend it.

But I felt dirty listening to his anger. He denigrated liberals and Democrats while talking about an issue where he seemed to agree with liberals and Democrats!

There's no liberal radio where I live. There's middle of the road, for about two hours in the afternoon, local radio personalities Marjorie Egan and Jim Braude on 96.9 for about two hours. Braude is a liberal, and Egan is -- well, how to describe her -- a Massachusetts Republican. The old Jacob Javits liberal. Don't find them in the rest of the country anymore. But everything else on the radio is hate. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Graham. Bellowing about people like me, like believing in social justice makes me one step away from Osama bin Laden.

I got to thinking about the movie "Working Girl". Melanie Griffith's character's big idea to pitch to a company is that instead of trying to get into television, they start smaller, with radio. Buy a radio network, and eventually that might lead them to television.

The right wing has done that with talk radio. Except for Air America and its few outlets, national talk radio is right wing. There are no other voices on the air. And with over 1200 radio stations owned by Clearchannel, they dominate the little news segments that are played at the hour and half hour across the country. Listen hard to those little segments. They have a point of view, and it's not liberal.

And slowly, slowly, gathering speed, the right wing perspective on the news now dominates television and print media, as well. And into the minds of our fellow citizens, brainwashed by the haters.

Here's an article on the phenomenon, from the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times, via commondreams:

Flatulent Right Wing Fills Radio with Hate