Political commentating Radio Shows

First of all, liberal talk show hosts do at least as much attacking of their enemies as the conservatives do, and probably more. Have you ever watched Kieth Olbermann or Rachel Maddow? Imagine three hours of that. Attack city. Do not let anyone tell you that liberals do not listen to talk radio because they are just too sophisticated or they are beyond all that, or any of that sort of thing. Anyone who tries to tell you that is completely FOS.

The liberal talk radio shows do not work largely because of political correctness. You can only attack your enemies so long before someone calls in and asks what a better solution is. Then, they and other listeners want to drill down into it, flesh it out and talk about it. That is the beauty of the talk radio format over TV. You can get into a topic to a degree that is not possible on television.

On television, the hosts rapidly rush from story to story never giving a satisfactory coverage of anything. This is true for all the cable news channels, bar none. As a result, people who get the bulk of their news from television are dependably uninformed. These people tend to be 'sheeple' that are led around by sound bites and bullet points. They are gullible, easily manipulated, and frequently duped. And there are tens of millions of them in our country. It would be better if people got their news from other sources and watched television news and opinion shows as a compliment to that. Then they would have a much better understanding of what they are watching.

On the radio, most shows are three hours long, five days a week, with the agenda determined by the host. Obviously, these shows tend to concentrate on a specialized area of interest, such as politics, sports, personal finance, home repair, real estate investing or whatever. Part of the reason they do this is that the hosts need to become relative experts in a topic in order to hold and build an audience. It does not follow that any of the hosts of the more successful shows are always right, but they do tend to be well informed about the topic that they specialize in. Everyone is left to make up their own mind about what is right and what is wrong. You can take what you want for your own, and leave the rest. It is entirely up to you.

Liberal ideas do better on television where sound bites and brief quotes rule the day. Obama's mantra of "hope and change" came across masterfully on television, with lots of pictures and very short coverage segments. But on the radio, people call in and ask questions like "what will that hope and change consist of?", "What is this going to cost?" and "What are the steps that are required to bring this vision to pass?" and so on. Liberal ideas like this are usually accepted and promoted as desirable by liberals prior to considering the level of detail required to answer these questions. When the topic is drilled down into on the radio, certain inconvenient truths quickly start to become apparent, which if dwelt on tend to undermine the very idea being promoted.

To address this, liberal talk radio show hosts attempt to adopt a more TV-like format, moving more quickly to new topics to stay away from too much "dwellage". In addition, they give high regard to the leftish doctrine of political correctness, which also tends to render a number of inconvenient truths effectively off limits. Moreover, they tend to focus even more on attacking their enemies than even the conservative hosts do, hard as that may be to envision. The result of all this is talk radio shows that tend to be repetitive, doctrinaire and rather superficial. The hard-core left-wing base will tune in for a little Bush bashing or Palin smearing. However, this is like candy, and a little bit goes a long way. As enticing as the idea might be to some people as a concept, you just cannot build a whole talk radio show around that. As the ratings have demonstrated, people are just not very interested in listening to that sort of a presentation.

On the other hand, conservative ideas really start to come into their own once you start to drill down into how things work. However, while these ideas do tend to be designed to work, they also require responsibility, hard work, personal sacrifice, and self discipline. This tends to make conservatism unpopular with people who are inclined to believe political pledges that they can receive something for nothing from the government, and are not inclined to think much about these topics beyond the original pledge. So, conservatism also tends to require a bit of thinking, which many of the 'sheeple' in this country are not naturally inclined towards. In contrast to this idle mentality, conservative talk radio is challenging to individuals and to the status quo. As odd as it might sound to some, most people like that. This appears to be one of the main reasons so many people listen to conservative talk radio.

Also, where liberal radio talk show hosts regard conservative callers as "trolls", much like the predominately liberal posters do here in this forum, conservative radio talk show hosts actually prefer liberal callers over conservative callers. When liberal callers pose questions and challenges to the host's ideas, most listeners become more tuned in and think "yea, what is he going to say to that?" This kind of dialogue helps the host's ratings immensely. And it gives them an opportunity to contrast conservative answers with liberal answers, which is something these dedicated hosts always enjoy doing.

Further, it is from this kind of resistance from these liberal callers that the conservative movement is exercised and made stronger. It is from this kind of animosity that its weaknesses are exposed, enabling them to be openly analyzed, reinforced and made stronger. On conservative talk radio, this is regarded as a good thing. On liberal talk radio, it is regarded as an affront and offense.

One last thing. The conservative talk show hosts criticized Bush and the Republicans regularly during the previous eight years. Being a conservative is not at all the same thing as being a Republican. The conservative radio hosts routinely criticized the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress (as applicable), for their embrace of big government, their stance on immigration reform, the slowness to adjust the strategy in Iraq, the bailouts (especially of the car companies), the earmarks and out of control spending, and on a number of other issues. If you continue to listen to conservative talk radio, you will notice that they continue to do it to this day.

 

You are so Trader_Jorge that it's not even funny anymore.

 

Speaking of which, guess who was trolling the Texas A&M baseball forums earlier this year? Why it's our good friend Sr. Jorge_Magnanimo.....

http://www.texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=1429758&forum_id=8

 

So you're basically saying "conservatives are smart, hard workers and liberals are dumb and lazy" in a ridiculously long post that will only ring true with people who already think that way? You're awesome.

 

Nope. Just explaining why conservative talk radio works, and liberal talk radio doesn't.

 

Poll: Majority Of Republicans Think Obama Didn't Actually Win 2008 Election -- ACORN Stole It!

The new national poll from Public Policy Polling (D) has an astonishing number about paranoia among the GOP base: Republicans do not think President Obama actually won the 2008 election -- instead, ACORN stole it.

This number goes a long way towards explaining the anger of the Tea Party crowd. They not only think Obama's agenda is against America, but they don't think he was actually the choice of the American people at all! Interestingly, NY-23 Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman is now accusing ACORN of stealing his race, and Fox News personalities have often speculated about ACORN stealing the 2008 Minnesota Senate race for Al Franken.

The poll asked this question: "Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?" The overall top-line is legitimately won 62%, ACORN stole it 26%.

Among Republicans, however, only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% -- an outright majority -- saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided. Among McCain voters, the breakdown is 31%-49%-20%. By comparison, independents weigh in at 72%-18%-10%, and Democrats are 86%-9%-4%.

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In order to believe that Obama wasn't the true winner of the 2008 election, one would have to think that ACORN (and perhaps other groups) stuffed ballots to the tune of over 9.5 million votes, Obama's national margin.

 

Almost 1 in 10 Democrats think ACORN stole the election???

I'm done with polls.

 

I would say that liberals are smart and lazy and conservatives are dumb and hard working.

Actually liberals expect the best of people (cerebral) and Conservatives expect the worst (visceral). You tell me which is "smarter".


And thanks for quoting that ridiculously long post.

 

You obviously put a lot of thought into this post. I commend you for that but disagree with a great deal of it.

Liberals like Olbermann and Maddow do attack. But there is a difference in the types of attacks. Olbermann and Maddow usually make their attacks based on ideas. Sometimes they will exaggerate or sensationalize the importance of an idea, but they don't talk about made up crap like Obama having hatred towards whites, not being an American citizen, etc. The longer format just gives the conservative hosts longer to sell their made up garbage.

Not every minute of conservative talk shows is done in this way, but it does exist.

I believe that conservative radio shows work well, because of how divisive they are. A lot of the attacks are based on calling people unAmerican, or elitist, etc. It plays on differences and builds them up. When times are changing some people will feel uncomfortable with it. Conservative radio reassures them that they aren't wrong for holding on to old ways, and in fact says that there is something wrong with those who want to change it. It doesn't argue about the ideas it pits one group against another. It simply gives an uninformed or misleading representation of facts in order to divide. People like feeling part of a team, and feeling like they are being treated badly because of it. Conservative talk radio feeds that need.

 

Again

 

The reason Conservative Talk works better on radio is because it evokes more emotion. Outrage pushes a lot more hormones into the body than any liberal consideration of the gray areas and greater good.

It viscerally stimulating, much the same as Howard Stern.

 

Funny. I'm liberal by current standards and I'm about as skeptical of people and their intentions as anyone I know.

I'd tell you that you can go do you-know-what to yourself but I'll just say you're welcome.

 

The dichotomy I live with every day.

We are capable of producing, Earth The Starship Enterprise. But our reality is, a lot of Earthlings will rob, kill and maim you with little provocation.

 

First, kudos for writing a long post with some substance, even if I largely disagree with it. If I saw a basso post that he wrote himself, instead of quoting something of this length from a blog somewhere, with a tiny link some people don't even notice, I'd probably pass out in a dead faint. So yes, props for the effort.

But your effort is absurd. I've listened to conservative radio talk shows on the radio in my car for many years, going back to the first Gulf War, and their meat is the "over the top" assault on all things Democratic, liberal, and moderate. Much of the shows' content consisted of endless praise and excuses for the Republican President and the Republican Congress. To say otherwise is, to be kind, an incredible misinterpretation of the truth (notice I didn't say lie). And the idea that they "actually prefer liberal callers over conservative callers" makes me think you are deliberately not posting what you know, or simply don't listen to the shows you are talking about. It simply isn't true. It is rare that Rush, for example, has a liberal caller, and the liberal callers he has are screened by his people, in the vast majority of cases being folks who can't put two sentences together in a coherent way, if they can say anything without interruption, which is damn near impossible.

Sir, a great effort, but the content is rediculous.

 

Yes, they usually attacked the Bush admnistrations' handling of the Iraq War, Afghanistan, and the Financial Bailout. Towards the end of the Bush Admin, O'Reilly was calling for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. But they also criticized the opponents for their ideas and for things like Blocking bills (like Frank's opposition to the restructering of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, etc)

It is my understanding that O'Reilly actually likes OBama (as a person) more than he liked Bush.

As a moderate, I quit listening to most talk shows a couple of years ago..but I still listen to Dave Ramsey every chance I get..although he is purposely almost never political.

 

I was jumping around FM morning shows the other day and 93.7 had all sorts of anti-Obama talk. It was so fascinating and disturbing that I couldn't help but listen. First, the hosts were talking about the bloodless socialist coup that Obama wouldusher in over the weekend (it was a Friday) and then they fielded a caller talking about how there are millions of people with guns and when are they going to stand up for the constitution and fight this governemnt and take Obama out. The hosts tried to talk down the violence aspect but did bring up how defending the constitution and stopping this Marxist takeover was important.

I was enthralled and confused...why should I care what the morning Zoo guys think about politics? How are they allowed to talk about it at all, much less field calls about taking out the president and socialist takeover conspiracies? I thought they were supposed to be all about fart jokes and the like?

 

93.7? Was it Walter and Johnson? Were they doing a bunch of unfunny voices?

The "morning zoo" guys are almost as unbearable as the talk radio guys. Here's Phil doing Tom Leykis, or "comb-over boy" as he calls him:

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Sean Hannity actually believed that it was treasonous to even criticize the President during a time of war until a Democrat was elected President.

 

Pacifica radio?