One last thought ?
FOX ‘News’ gets such *huge* ratings ? __

_ because liberals have a life.

Sorry.

Do not underestimate Glenn Beck. As Sun Tzu pointed out you must know yourself and your enemy to be successful in any conflict. The man has a real talent, it is not a particularly beneficial talent if you are concerned about the general welfare of the Republic, but it is a talent none the less. The man has an innate ability to display and capture others emotions. He is a direct appeal to the lizard brain, an appeal to anger, loss, frustration, bitterness, and bigotry. It is an appeal to inchoate rage over loss of unearned privilege. It is a not so subtle argument that “those people” “know their place.” The coding about “real Americans” is not all that indirect after all. Most importantly it is an appeal to the authoritarian mindset.

Deconstruct the idea of 9/12 and it is an appeal to raw fear, an appeal to the suppression of individual to some supposed greater good. It is a fundamentally anti-democratic notion. It works because there is a subset of the nation that wants to hear this. They want their fears confirmed, they want facile explanations that make them the feel good, that validate their exclusionary ideology. They want a return to an America where they are top dogs again, where the others “know their place.”

TM as a radio gal, or at least a woman who dreams of getting back on the broadcast ether, you know where this man comes from. He is still the same old morning Zoo radio performer he has always been; he just moved his shtick to TV and to politics. This kind of raw, emotional programming is very successful. It is a rather perverse form of performance art, but it does take real talent to pull it off. Just because Beck is a shallow, egomaniacal, fraud does not make him any less dangerous. His “talent” may be utterly evil but it is very real; we underestimate it at our peril.

Frankly, I find them all to be cartoons. Look, any of them will give the true believer what they want to hear, none of them are particularly fair or balanced, or add anything of particular value to body politic.

Fox indeed has a lot of bells and whistles and shiny objects, and the distinction between hard news and commentary grows wider and wider each year. It frightens me to think that Independents prefer eye-glazing spectacle over hard news, but that would certainly explain why many of these self-proclaimed Independents are so easily duped by tea-baggers, Sarah palin, and Glenn Beck.

It appears that the lessons of the past 8 years have not been learned.

Matthews is his own brand of crazy,Olbermann must have been a huge dork in HS as he appears to be still trying to work it out but maddow is the biggest disappointment. She had such potential but she would rather make fun of those she deems “not in her class” then offer reasonable analysis.You see glimmers of it once in a while and then she starts clowning again I think they have all hurt the cause much more than they have helped it. Greed and self interest appear to be in full gear.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War….

Think about it.

Back on topic…I like Bill O’Reilly he seems to be a fair minded guy. Though he can at times lean extremely right with his views I still prefer him over Glen Beck.

Iv’e been reading than MSNBC’s answer to him KO is sliding into the dumpster, ratingswize. I guess there is not that large of an audience who love misogny on a regular basis. I wish they would bring back Phil Donahue.

That said, a lot of independents watch it because there is not much on the other networks to ENTERTAIN them. That’s what people miss in this equation. To keep viewers glued to your channel you’ve got to have a gimmick, a hook, then keep ‘em comin’ back with fireworks. That’s Fox’s success. They’ve made their “news” entertaining, which was never the point of news when this all began, which is why Entertainment Tonight and opinion shows started popping up. You can’t make money on news these days. Ask CBS.