Misanthropic Californian

Bill O’Reilly pretty much always refers to Media Matters as a “left-wing smear site.” Granted, I don’t take his accusations seriously — and I highly doubt he’d be having similar complaints if there’s a right-wing site that posted up things said by Keith Olberman and Michael Moore — but I do take it with a grain of salt nonethless. That what you have to do with any source of information these days.

Nonetheless, I took notice of this article about Rush Limbaugh. MM’s headline is “Service Men Who Support Withdrawal Are ‘Phony Soldiers.’” Depending on who you believe that comment could have been taken out of context. The part that bugs me, which I don’t think could have been taken out of context, came well before it in the transcript. You can read it for yourself if you’re so inclined, but a caller said:

CALLER 1: Good. Why is it that you always just accuse the Democrats of being against the war and suggest that there are absolutely no Republicans that could possibly be against the war?

The caller goes on to explain how he’s a Republican yet he’s against the war, and Rush just can’t handle the idea. (I overcame the temptation to type that last bit in all caps, barely).

 

LIMBAUGH: Mike, you can’t possibly be a Republican.

CALLER 1: I am.

LIMBAUGH: You are — you are –

CALLER 1: I am definitely a Republican.

LIMBAUGH: You can’t be a Republican. You are –

CALLER 1: Oh, I am definitely a Republican.

LIMBAUGH: You are tarnishing the reputation, ’cause you sound just like a Democrat.

So, this is what I’m always going on about in terms of divisive politics and tainted discourse. In Rush’s world everyone who wants to call themselves a Republican has to support the war in Iraq, and by extension everyone who wants to withdraw even remotely soon must therefore be a Democrat. The whole spectrum of possible opinions on the matter, reduced to red vs blue. I’m not saying that liberals never do this kind of thing, just that, god dammit, here’s an egregious example right in front of my face. Not only are people allowed to believe what they want on the issue, but there are a zillion other issues to talk about that matter at least as much to everyone. Is it really that hard to believe that an intelligent human being, after examining the available information, might come to the conclusion that we should leave (or stay in) Iraq, regardless of that person’s stated political affiliation?

I hate pundits. I fucking despise them. I’m not usually all that much into hating things (“hate” is a very strong word when you have a flattened affect like me), but this is one of the very few things where I make an exception. I’m not sure what the proper dictionary definition is, but they seem to be irrational blowhards, who pick a side first and then vigorously defend it and trash the opposition, facts and logic be damned. Talk radio is infested with them, as is Fox News (I don’t have cable anymore, so I can’t speak for CNN, MSNBC, etc., but I suspect they have some too). They are a class of people who get undeserved media attention by being loud jerks and demonizing both any actual opponents and whatever imagined or exaggerated opposition they can come up with.

Conservatives seem to have a larger, more prominent selection of pundits, but the liberals aren’t lacking per se. While Limbaugh incorrectly thinks he’s clever for calling Al Franken’s network “Dead Air America Radio,” I’d like to think that their financial troubles are an encouraging indication that whatever other virtues or faults or derangements they might have, liberals by and large aren’t interested in listening to pundits spoon-feed them one-sided garbage. I’d like to think that, but it may just be that more liberals have iPods. I know I gave up on radio years ago, and not just because of talk radio.

So, if you really want to listen to pundits on the radio or watch them on TV, I can’t and won’t stop you. But the more you listen, the less I respect you. Seriously. I can’t help it.

When I go to the bookstore and make the mistake of looking at the current affairs section (and these days it is a mistake to do so) and I see a book like Sean Hannity’s Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, I really worry about the state of the nation. Hannity is apparently describing other Americans who he disagrees with politically as “evil.” The word “evil” worked well in Lord of the Rings when talking about the red eye of Sauron and his orcish armies intent on destroying the world of Men, but it’s really, really hard to use it in real life without sounding insane. That’s before we mention Anne Coulter. Even other conservatives tend to try to distance themselves from her, although in spite of her apparently being either completely insane or very good at acting as such, her vitriolic books sell distressingly well. That a book about liberals called “Treason” can become a bestseller does not speak well of the health of American democracy and discourse. I’m not about to defend liberals’ own pundits and their own insanity; the best I can say about Al Franken and his ilk seem to lack some of the vitriol and vicious edge of their conservative counterparts. The truth is much more complicated than they would have us believe.

Pundits are not funny people either. They ones who used to be funny (if you liked Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo back in their SNL days) aren’t, and the ones who never were funny are painfully unfunny. Mostly they’re angry and the entertainment value they offer is the heady, uncomfortable rush of watching someone else getting really angry. No wonder so many people listen to that format alone in their cars.

I hope I’m not acting like a pundit on this blog. For one thing, I have to get very, very worked up (which doesn’t happen all that often) to start insulting people, and I really don’t think I have all the answers. At best I know what helps me stay sane and lets me make sense of the world, which admittedly isn’t a great metric for determining truth. I’m writing this stuff mainly for myself — both to practice writing stuff in general and to get my thoughts out and in a written form — and not particularly to try to influence others.

Incidentally, it’s St. Patrick’s day. My rant on why I don’t drink alcohol (or coffee, or smoke cigarettes or do any other drugs) isn’t ready yet. Irish people living in American supposedly call March 17th “Amateur’s Night,” for all the people who don’t know their own limitations when it comes to alcohol. Stop it. Our slightly schizophrenic internet oracle, Wikipedia, tells me that St. Patrick is remembered for taking the lead in converting the people of his native Ireland to Christianity in the fourth century. I have mixed feelings about Christianity, but I’m not sure that the guy would’ve wanted to be remembered through binge drinking.