As with all bullies, the talk-show fellow has no go-to other than self-debasing fulmination when genuinely and consistently challenged, when people come to the moment when they say they will not be bullied any longer and show that they mean it. The man may, as he promises, replace his scores of fleeing sponsors, but he'll never be the same. The new ones will, he knows, scrutinize his words at a depth he has never before been forced to endure. He has been deeply wounded no matter how much money he has shored up because people such as he is do not live for money and the toys it buys. They live for that next-to-delirious sense in their chests and in their stomachs that they they direct, that they're untouchable.
Even the Second War's S.S., arguably the last century's most feared and routinely destructive bully boys, had no idea what to do when, in numbers of southern French towns, Jewish leaders told them to go to hell when they demanded lists. Where Jewish leaders told Germans to drop dead, upwards of 80% had time to take to the hills and survive; so reports Hannah Arendt in her seminal Eichmann in Jerusalem. The fact that many --not nearly all -- of those Jewish leaders sacrificed themselves is besides the point; they stood up, Nazis stood down.
While the on-air misogynist is no Nazi, bullies such as he is, bullies such as those who ran in wild, madding packs to join the S.S., those who now in cowardice flee contemporary culture to join the kinds of hate groups I discussed here Friday...they are all fundamentally weak people.
What success they have relies on your timidity.
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Poor Woman
Chicken Mãâàn
Dianne Schuch - Lindsey
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Deborah Méndez Wilson
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Comments
made me angrier, if that is possible....
Lezlie
Good post/Rated.
Most of the time, Big Fat attacked public figures, people who were compromised, people who had a good life because of their fame or wealth or public power. He felt like the voice of the people who envy and hate people for their power. He seemed to give vent to that dirty little part of all of us, the part that reads supermarket tabloids and sneers, "Good, the bitch/bastard deserves it." And Big Fat led all those people down the primrose path to cruel, right-wing thinking.
Every once in a while, someone like Big Fat comes along and touches that dark part of our souls, and controls a lot of us. If we're lucky, someone has the courage, the intelligence, and the lucky timing to point out that Big Fat not only has no clothes, but doesn't look good naked at all.
The other side fights to the death before compromising. They are running the show right now. We all know that bullies will find a new leader. Why don't we give them one of ours?
HUGGGGGGGGGGGG
A quote in the story (http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/12/10651878-what-hath-rush-wrought) says: "Rush Limbugh made the right-wing talk-show industry; he might just break it."
I, for one, am not that concerned that some highly opinionated left-wing talking heads (though I cannot think of as many, or any as offensive as Limbaugh/Beck) might suffer some advertising losses, too, if the overall effect is to make America's civil discourse less belligerent.
"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."
The Life of the Mind (1978), "Thinking"...
Herd mentality, to put it in Nietzschian terms.
Now HE would have made an interesting talk show host.
The man whom you allude to in this piece
is mortally wounded, you are right.
For just the reasons you say.
Gonna be scrutinized now on...
Gone will be that
"next-to-delirious sense in their chests and in their stomachs that they they direct, that they're untouchable."
Persistently applying standards of logic to Ad Hominem attacks and other specious forms of argument, before giving them substance by responding in kind, takes discipline and will admittedly be lost on those who have no basis for sound critical thought, but what's the alternative? My “Rush” is more of an asshole than your Rush?
Bullies and demigods who depend on those tactics rarely have facts at hand when confronted in that manner and if they do (or just make them up) then the debate has to be elevated to someplace where at least there can be an assessment of who's facts hold up. The alternative is what we've tried so far. To steal a catch-phrase, “Hows that working for us?”...
Rated. (A good quick resource to skin the specious cat: http://nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ )
Rated
The Fat One (and I don't mean Joey Fat One of the Backstreet Boys) has had predecessors in the media. Some people might think of Father Coughlin, but his logical descendant was Pat Robertson. I'm thinking of Walter Winchell, who used his voice and celebrity to hurt a lot of innocent people (like Josephine Baker) and boost the reputations of gangsters and criminals.
He didn't suffer a quick, dramatic turn of fortune and loss of fame. He didn't have anyone accuse him of misogyny or sexual impropriety or other crimes, and rapidly turn the nation against him. He just faded away. The Fat One is largely disliked in most American communities in which people wear shoes and sometimes socks, but he kept gathering wealth, fame power until this unlikely incident somehow changed everything.
For this charge to have suddenly undermined the Limbaugh empire is either a once-in-a-lifetime turn of fate, or it's a proof of God's intervention in human affairs that (given the circumstances) the Catholic Church will never accept or sanction.
And the major reason they did was because liberals and moderates were too divided and belligerent with each other, such that they couldn't unify against the Nazis, who took advantage of legitimate grievances among the German people (anarchy, the Treaty of Versailles, near famine conditions, unemployment), situations that the moderates and liberals refused to adequately address.
I'm not saying the right wing has legitimate issues. But oftentime the rightwing rises when legitimate issues that face many Americans are ignored by liberals and the left. And the result is that the right wing seizes these issues, demogogues them, and uses them as instruments for seizing political power in an election.
Liberals often blame conservative success on the so-called "stupidity of the American people."
Perhaps this explanation shows the problem?
I agree with Rw but I've made this case on OS before. It is a mistake to write off large swaths of the population without a serious effort to make our case in language that relates to their concerns rather than ours.
I'm not at all sure that Bill O'Reilly is next because O'Reilly isn't quite as nuts as Rush. Rush has been in the hard-core vilification business for years; he attempted for no good reason to turn Hillary Clinton's name into an expletive. Think about it: Unlike her husband, she didn't cheat; unlike her husband, she didn't draft-dodge; she stood by her man; she gave up her career for a time to raise a daughter. What exactly in this recipe should have been so repulsive to conservatives? That's more of a Limbaugh thing than an O'Reilly thing - for Limbaugh, it's just visceral hatred.
I'm so glad advertisers are deserting him. It's more than about time. If I were in that business, I'd be embarrassed to have "Dittoheads" because I wouldn't want my listeners characterized as unthinking sheep. And yet, he's happy with that. That tells us enough.
Roller-Derby died for lack of TV viewers.
They could no longer afford the antacids the games advertized as balms to their stomachs, shredded apart by the avalanches of junk food they also advertised and which fans dutifully consumed.
(coffee expelled through nose)