Talk radio and the left

...they love him...

...Jerry Brown has a two-hour weekday talk show on thirty stations...

...There's no reason why the only people who succeed in this medium should be on the right," says Goldberg...

...I'm sitting here in eager, uncontrolled anticipation, ready to take your calls...

...On the show, which began broadcasting last May, Hightower makes the most of his East Texas twang and a steady pulse of country music...

...That isn't where Limbaugh came from...

...Much of his material is incredibly ponderous, but because he learned entertainment values, he makes it listenable...

...Jeff Cohen, executive director of FAIR, makes a different argument: "There are a lot of phony excuses for why the right wing dominates," he told the New York Times, "but the most obvious, true explanation is that the management at these stations is conservative...

...He attacked the "establishment media" for ignoring the most important story of the week, the Republicans' killing a proposed ban on gifts from lobbyists...

...In AM radio, with its torrents of ads, pacing is everything...

...Didn't they see all those new Republican congressmen at the orientation genuflect as Rush walked into the room...

...The left has been occupied with the intellectual framing of their positions," he says, "and has had a bit of SPRING • 1995 • 161 Right Turn snobbery toward ordinary language...

...He manages to make this unlikely argument sound convincing by mobilizing the magic of the medium, a task the left has somehow failed to master...

...And keep your eye on the Newt—he's a slimy little lizard...

...The right talks a good game about distrusting the media, but they use it like crazy—they're on satellite, and they're online...

...Hightower draws on the elements that work so well for Limbaugh: a distinctive voice, a mixture of anger, sarcasm, and humor—but the simple themes that he hammers home are populist: "Always follow the money: there's no reform until there is lobbying reform and campaign reform...

...He needs to attend class at the Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies [Limbaugh's term for his show...

...His raucous, loudmouthed, bullying style expresses their anger and gives form to their inchoate resentments: the source of their problems is not insecurity about their future in a precarious job market—it is Hillary Clinton and the dopesmoking, counterculture-infested liberal press...

...The pope who doesn't believe in condoms, who won't modify the religion to please the sinners...

...Limbaugh's fans don't care...

...The next day he argued that he himself should have been Time's Man of the Year, instead of the pope: "The dope-smoking, welfare-coddling countercultureinfested liberal media don't get it: Rush and Newt blew the trumpets that tumbled the walls of America's moral darkness...

...To celebrate the firing of Joycelyn Elders, he played songs that seem to be about masturbation: Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling...

...Limbaugh's fans—who call themselves "Dittoheads" — don't just listen to him...

...We need to grant Sam a scholarship," Rush said...

...Those skills start with a trained radio voice...

...At this point, Hightower's just-acountryboy persona is the best the left has going on the radio...

...It's not just expressing ideas into a microphone—it requires skills that are specific to the medium...

...Despite these problems, could the left do better in talk radio...

...The right has an idea—not a good or humane idea, but an idea nonetheless, simple and clear: government is the problem, the "free market" provides the solution...

...He spent a decade as a Top 40 deejay, bouncing from station to station in the Midwest...

...And he ridiculed Time magazine for naming the pope its "Man of the Year...

...That shouldn't be so hard to convey...

...SPRING • 1995 • 163 Right Turn Thus he has great fun redoing classic rock hits with antiliberal lyrics: he turned the Beach Boys' "Little Old Lady from Pasadena" into an anti-Hillary tirade, "The Little First Lady with Megalomania...

...It's outright bribery," he said...

...He does a lot of demagogic namecalling, ridiculing his opponents as "environmental wackos," "feminazis," "long-haired maggot-infested dope-smoking peace pansies," and "the spaced-out Hollywood left...

...The anti-abortion pope...

...Then, after years of practice, he got hold of a couple of elemental right-wing ideas, and mobilized the skills he had mastered to put them across in this medium...

...Harold Meyerson, executive editor of the L.A...

...Rush came from the ranks of unknown toilers on local AM stations—that's where to look for the left's Limbaugh...

...There's one other element in the success of Limbaugh: the ability of a radio show to form a community, made up of people who take pride in belonging to the program...

...One Monday morning Rush began the show, "Hey, how about those Pittsburgh Steelers...

...His summer television show on NBC, TV Nation, was terrific, undoubtedly the most left-wing thing ever seen on network television...

...160 • DISSENT Right Turn The sexist pope...

...I've been in this business for twenty years, and this is the first time I've seen someone get this many stations this fast," ABC Radio vice president for programming Frank Raphael told the Boston Globe...

...Perhaps the biggest problem, Goldberg says, is that "we are primarily selling hope, while talk radio thrives on anger and negativity...

...He thought this was hilarious (although he doesn't seem to be doing it any more...

...He made Dion's "The Wanderer" into "The Philanderer," sung by a woozy Ted Kennedy sound-alike...

...He takes exceptional pains to cultivate the Dittohead phenomenon, and here his relentless self-promotion pays off...

...he claims that more than four million are listening at any given moment...

...Humor is one of Rush's most effective weapons...

...An effective left voice to combat Rush Limbaugh's on talk radio is unlikely to be found among our leading progressive writers or political thinkers...

...In antiwar circles, suggesting anything more modern than 'let's get a bunch of people into the streets' was regarded as cooptation by the media...

...His principal targets, along with the Clintons, are "the elite liberal media" —including television news and Time magazine On one show he denounced Sam Donaldson for saying that the "new media" were just shouting opinions and didn't get their facts straight...

...Callers typically begin "Mega-dittos to you, Rush...

...q 164 • DISSENT...

...Among the other qualities contributing to Limbaugh's success, meanness is at the top of the list: "Everyone knows the Clintons have a cat," he said on his television show in 1993...

...Many of them who would never put up with Pat Robertson or Pat Buchanan get a kick out of Limbaugh because of his immersion in Baby Boomer pop culture—which he blends with right-wing ideology in a way that can only be called brilliant...

...Richards said of George Bush, Jr., "His father's got four names, but he's only got three—he's missing his Herbert...

...This masochistic exercise required listening to Rush for weeks and fact-checking his pronouncements...

...I haven't been this up in ten years, other than my wedding day...

...They love his act...

...He is what Americans think other Americans are like...

...Newt, but we can't honor him, we just had him on the cover as Mr...

...The left does have one substantial challenger to Rush Limbaugh: Jim Hightower, the populist former agriculture commissioner of Texas, whose three-hour program Hightower Radio is broadcast on 140 ABC network stations Saturday and Sunday, starting at 1 P.M...

...Since the November election, liberals and the left have responded to this challenge by looking for someone to put on the air against Limbaugh...

...Talk radio in this view fosters not just the simplistic but also the demagogic...

...Weekly, who had his own weekly radio program on public radio in Santa Monica for more than three years, says that "the right has its catechism in order, but the broad left is much less secure and more uncertain, other than its 'core values.' " The left has been unsuccessful also for a different reason: "a lack of respect for popular culture and popular communication," says Danny Goldberg, president of the ACLU of Southern California, and chairman and CEO of Warner Brothers Records...

...Why this has eluded the left is a mystery...

...Over chugging train sound effects, he asked, "This is change...

...Scrooge...

...The New York Sun wrote in the mid-thirties that Will Rogers "gives the impression that the country is filled with such sages, wise with years, young in humor and love of life, shrewd yet gentle...

...In the words of Victor Navasky, publisher and editorial director of the Nation, "Radio is a sound bite medium, and the left does not have a sound bite program...

...Nobody had put these disparate forces together until Limbaugh came along...

...Listening to Rush in December, I found that male bonding occupies a significant place on his program...

...That's how he learned the medium of radio...

...The contrast to our Age of Limbaugh couldn't be clearer...

...nobody had ever heard of him...

...Mario Cuomo was offered a daily radio talk show by Edward McLaughlin, the driving force behind Limbaugh...

...there's Alfonse D'Amato slow-dancing cheek to cheek with the bankers...

...they take a vicarious pride in his accomplishments...

...But "the popular media provide the means of communication...

...Hightower is trying to don the folksy mantle of Will Rogers...

...They listen for entertainment, not for accurate information...

...Take the TV Nation challenge...

...Hightower has one additional crucial accomplishment: he has shown that a voice from the left can win commercial sponsors...

...They couldn't have been more impressed if he had walked in on water...

...I heard a bit with a Clinton sound-alike, advertising "The White House Basement Shopping Network: get the original edition of my core beliefs—plus a rare photo of me and Ho Chi Minh These priceless treasures are available for a limited time only when you subscribe to the weekly White House Core Beliefs Newsletter—if you want to know what the core beliefs are on a minute-to-minute basis...

...Some argue that "the right has simple solutions, we are too honest for that, our message is more complex...

...It has to do with how he talks and the way he uses time...

...He had the most widely read newspaper column in the country and a radio program—which together reached forty million people...

...The homophobic pope...

...traditional values are the answer to every social problem...

...Rush Limbaugh is nothing compared to Will Rogers...

...the Wall Street Journal had to run an op-end column by William Bennett dutifully defending Limbaugh against the charges of inaccuracies...

...During those years he spoke with a clear and generous populist voice...

...it may not work as well in this media-saturated age...

...The white European male pope...

...Why has the left been so unsuccessful at this task...

...There was a time when a left-wing populist talker dominated the media: Will Rogers in the early thirties...

...Most of Limbaugh's listeners are white males—aggressive and resentful...

...and he was the numberone box office draw in the movies at the same time...

...and he's also a white man from Queens...

...How should progressives fight Limbaugh's testosterone-fueled meanness, name-calling, and humor...

...While Limbaugh has mastered this electronic medium, "the left is technophobic as a matter of religion," says Shearer...

...Maybe their votes aren't being bought, but they're being leased, don't you think...

...It's entertainment—Limbaugh would be the first to concede that—and there are great entertainers on the left...

...He played Ray Benson's song "You've Got To Dance with Them that Brung You," and then listed the biggest corporate contributors to leading Republicans: "There's Bob Dole doing 162 • DISSENT Right Turn the do-si-do with the insurance industry...

...Danny Goldberg put it succinctly: "If you want to know how to do radio, you find radio people...

...This program can save Sam Donaldson...

...There is not an unemployed man in the country that hasn't contributed to the wealth of every millionaire in America...

...her source was a 1980 article in Science magazine, but it turns out the eruption of Mount Augustine described there occurred not in 1976 but 700,000 years ago...

...On his first show after the Republican congressional session opened, Hightower declared, "rootytoottoot, here comes the Newt: the same old money-grubbing special interest butt-kisser...

...It used to be that conservatives were old people who listened to Paul Harvey...

...For a while last year he promoted the anti-abortion cause through what he termed "caller abortions" —unwanted callers would be drowned out by the sound of a vacuum cleaner, accompanied by a tiny scream...

...In the search for a left Limbaugh, progressives are making a basic error: trying to find a writer or thinker or public figure whose achievements are well known...

...Many others have been mentioned...

...The left has to do more than expose his errors: it has to challenge his ideas in a language ordinary people can understand and—equally important— a language they can enjoy...

...According to FAIR, the source that Limbaugh relied on— a book by Dixie Lee Ray, former governor of Washington and chair of the Atomic Energy Commission—actually said it was an eruption of Mount Augustine in Alaska in 1976 that put out 570 times as much chlorine as one year's worth of CFCs...

...He begins the show by announcing that he is "broadcasting from KBET, above the Chat and Chew cafe in Austin, Texas, where there are more musicians than lawyers, more VWs than BMWs—my kind of town...

...The second radio skill Limbaugh mastered was how to pace a broadcast, how to make conversations move...

...Rush Limbaugh is on the radio three hours a day (noon to three in the Eastern Time zone), five days a week, on 648 stations with an estimated audience of twenty million people who hear him at least once a week...

...Limbaugh's training paid off in another way...

...And although some leftist ideas do depend on unfamiliar or complex arguments, others are simple truths: conservative programs benefit a small number of very rich people...

...The New Republic and FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) each launched a campaign last summer to expose his errors and lies...

...One approach is find someone to compete for Rush's audience—white, male and populist— somebody funny and brash, who could focus their anger with an antibusiness ideology instead of a pro-market one—somebody like Michael Moore, the big working-class guy from Flint who made the hit documentary Roger and Me...

...Talk radio is not just talking," says Harry Shearer, whose weekly hour-long satirical radio program "Le Show" plays on more than seventy-five public stations and has just begun its twelfth year...

...Moore hates big business with sincere passion, and knows how to make that passion into entertainment: standing outside IBM corporate headquarters in Manhattan with a bullhorn and a laptop computer, he shouted up toward the top floor, "Louis Gerstner, president of IBM, do you know how to format a floppy disk...

...WABC in New York City started carrying it in January...

...You know," he wrote in a 1931 appeal for the unemployed—who made up 25 percent of the population— "not a one of us has anything that these people—that are without now — haven't contributed to what we've got...

...It should be Mr...

...Pointing out that it would have been Elvis's 60th birthday that day, he played Elvis's "Money Honey" — "the song for both political parties...

...It's a gravy train with biscuit wheels, but we're the ones getting railroaded...

...That's the challenge...

...Since Reagan, you may have noticed, the demographics have changed: the conservative ranks today include millions of young people...

...This anti-Limbaugh campaign got considerable press coverage and provided useful ammunition to liberal columnists...

...Meanwhile the left is still sending out flyers with 'labor donated' on the bottom...

...He wasn't a conservative pundit or politico when he started his program...

...His include Anacin, Goodyear tires, Ovaltine, and AT&T telephones...

...its format is inherently inimical to serious analysis—especially analysis that challenges conventional modes of thought...

...That's a professional skill," says Shearer...

...The pope on the cover, as Man of the Year...

...The conversations range widely...

...he said, "Problem is, we have one party in Washington—the money party...

...Limbaugh has developed an instantly-recognizable voice and vocal style—he belongs to the booming, bombastic school, tempered by an effective dose of ironic self-deprecation...

...Corporate welfare is five times bigger than people's welfare...

...Others mentioned include Molly Ivins and Ann Richards, tough feminists with biting wit...

...Cuomo is certainly the most eloquent of the liberal Democrats...

...But did you know there is a White House dog...

...But somehow Rush survived this scrutiny, and his greatest triumphs came after the efforts of FAIR and TNR...

...Example: when Limbaugh debated environmental issues with then-Senator Al Gore on ABC's Nightline, he said "Mount Pinatubo has put 570 times the amount of chlorine into the atmosphere in one eruption than all of the man-made chloroflurocarbons in one year...

...Then he put up a picture of thirteen-year-old Chelsea Clinton...

...Socks is the White House cat...

...Eastern Time...

...But we need to direct that anger where it should be directed...

...Rush's humor includes a self-deprecating version of his own megalomania: "Hardhitting, intense, penetrating," he says: "I'll tell you folks, we're hot...