You have to hand it to them. They just keep trying. The liberals hate conservative talk radio because it is a real force in American politics. Every chance they get, they try to shut it down.
Rush Limbaugh has been the lead dog of conservative talk radio for more than a decade. The Lefties fear the conservatives–Rush, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the gang–to such a degree that whenever they are most effective in exposing liberal failures, the libs scramble every force to counterattack on land, sea, and in the air. Especially the hot air of the Senate chamber. Remember last November when the preternaturally cool Tom Daschle took to the Senate floor to condemn Rush? Rush had said that the Dems–and Daschle in particular–were being obstructionist about the Homeland Security bill.
Which happened to be true, and Daschle was outraged to be caught red-handed. In his Senate floor exercise in hyperventilation, Daschle said, “Rush Limbaugh and all of the Rush Limbaugh wannabes have a very shrill edge…But what happens when Rush Limbaugh attacks those of us in public life is that people aren’t satisfied to just listen. They want to act…and so, you know, the threats to those of us in public life go up dramatically…” If Daschle could have gotten away with it, he might have ordered Rush’s arrest. But Daschle had one problem: Rush was right.
For the past few days, we have been bombarded by press reports of two new Rush controversies. The first is about Rush’s remarks that may have revealed another variety of liberal media bias. The second, which broke this morning, is much more serious, regarding drug abuse. Whatever the truth may be on the second issue, the first is an attack on all of conservative talk radio (not just Rush, as a pioneer). Many on the Left want to pull the teeth out of one of the conservative movement’s most potent weapons. The first issue results from remarks Limbaugh made on the ESPN NFL pre-game show.
All Limbaugh said was that Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback Donovan McNabb isn’t as good as people say he is. To that Rush added that McNabb is rated more highly than he might otherwise be because sportswriters suffer the same liberal bias as the rest of the media, and thus want a black man to succeed. Now Gen. Weasley Clark and the rest are shouting for Rush to be fired, labeling him a racist. Rush quit the ESPN show, sticking to his guns.
First, Rush isn’t a racist. He doesn’t hate anybody, and doesn’t voice anything like racist speech. No one who has listened to Rush for any time at all (as I have for more than a decade) could think he’s a racist. It just doesn’t wash.
Second, McNabb ain’t all that good. Though he gets star treatment, his performance isn’t star quality. According to the stats on NFL.com, McNabb is rated 28th out of 30 pro quarterbacks at this point of the 2003 season both in stats and overall rating (51 points). In 2002, he was 26th of 30, with an overall rating of 86 (which puts him at 8th overall). McNabb ain’t no Joe Willie, Bart Starr, or Johnny U.
Rush also said that one proof that McNabb is overrated is in the fact that the defense carried the team. Once again, the stats bear him out. In 2002, the Eagles had 311 first downs. Their opponents had 272. The Eagles had 46 touchdowns, their opponents had 27. And so it goes. Part of the fun of sports is that they generate strong subjective opinions. Even the box score carries so many asterisks these days, you never know who really is the best, except when a single athlete dominates his sport as Ali did in boxing, Gretzky did in hockey and Tiger does in golf. McNabb is no Tiger. So, agree with him or not, there was something to what he said.
The real reason for the enormous reaction to Limbaugh’s remarks is that they highlighted another species of liberal bias: that of the sports press. He indicted the sports media as liberal just like the rest, and he’s probably right. Can anyone–after the shamelessly liberal NYT coverage of the Augusta golf gender stampede–deny that liberal bias in the mainstream press can also infect sports coverage? The issue is not racism, it’s media bias of a type not widely discussed before. Sports media may well be just as biased as the mainstream press. It’s another fair point to raise, and one conservatives should. That’s not racist.
The fourth, and most important piece of this debate, is that the libs see a way to stifle the conservative conversation. Conservative talk radio is a big force in American politics because Americans turned to it when they lost faith in the Gunga Dans of the world. I have done quite a bit of talk radio–both as host and guest–and it’s terribly easy to see why the libs are so anxious to do anything they can to limit what radio does for us.
Conservative talk radio is tremendously popular for three reasons. First is humor. Pols take themselves terribly seriously. But if you can poke fun at them, and make a well-justified joke stick, many pols simply crash and burn. That’s also why liberal talk radio doesn’t work. Many of the libs who take to politics tend to lack humor. They’re so damned serious about whales, trees, diversity, and multilateralism, that they can’t understand when people laugh at them for taking Barbra seriously.
Second is that people can be involved in the news, not just listening to media mentionables. Taking calls from all over the country during the Iraq war, I was struck by the sincerity and deep feeling of the callers. They were eager for knowledge of what was going on (I had the advantage of sitting at Ollie North’s mike, and his calls directly from the battlefield touched our audience like nothing else I’ve experienced as a host). Our listeners’ urgent prayers for the safe return of our soldiers gave me one more reason to be proud of my country.
The third reason is that conservatism isn’t a fringe in America, and talk radio helps fuel the fire of politics. Talk radio bridges the gap between commentary and entertainment, making involvement in politics easy and painless. The libs have nothing comparable, and aren’t likely to get it because in the marketplace Rush and Hannity sell–both literally and figuratively–and tendentious lectures by Algore and Barbra don’t. In talk radio, Americans receive daily proof that conservatives are fun, and libs are boring. For now, General Clark and Senator Daschle will have to find something else to complain about. They will, because they’re libs, they can’t go through a day without whining about something.