The GOP Looks West

[bpwallace49]

Beck is a little dramatic and hyper but he's very effective - which is why everyone on the left hates him so, same with Limbaugh.

 

only if you like nazi comparisons. But it is obvious you are a "fan" . . . .

[SEC=UGA]

What about Dennis Miller? He is the only conservative on the planet earth that is actually funny.

 

You must read P.J. O'Rourke.

[bushwacked]

You must read P.J. O'Rourke.

 

.....forgot about him; I do like him but he always struck me as someone who was more of a free thinker than a lock in steep righty.

[SEC=UGA]

Some of his funny quotes:

Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.

 

Never fight an inanimate object.

 

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

 

The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.

 

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.

 

Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.

 

Drugs have taught an entire generation of Americans the metric system.

 

Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.

 

With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn't think possible in today's world. They have created a land of make-believe that's worse than regular life.

[driveby]

only if you like nazi comparisons. But it is obvious you are a "fan" . . . .

case made

[bpwallace49]

case made

 

I agree with you Beck is VERY effective . . . .

 

 

. . . as a comedian.

[Duchess Jack]

And you don't think Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer? Look at the outcry and tears of despair from the lefties when he simply said he wanted Obama to fail. Like you guys wanted Bush to succeed, ever?

 

I stand by the fact that if a president fails - than the country fails. I didn't like Bush's policies - but want the best for the country - and if those policies did in fact result in the 'best for the country' than hats off to him. It didn't turn out that way. So, I can see being against policies - but to say that I hope an entire presidency fails - that could only mean that the country fails as well.

 

With that said - I have a hard time with Hannity and Beck being entertainers and having a show on a 'News' station that is no different than what they do on the radio - because some people are too dumb, gullible or too ready to hate or fear to take a moment to view a show on a news network as 'entertainment'. Good for them (Beck and Hannity) - but bad for the country.

 

The same thing applies with Olberman too, I guess - but Jon Stewart is on comedy central and won't shy away from saying exactly what he is about.

Edited June 3, 2010 by Duchess Jack

[evil_gop_liars]

I bet we all love Mark Russel. :hug:

[Azazello1313]

to me, it just seems awfully silly to say that opinionated blowhards in the media are "bad for the country". I mean, this is something tocqueville was writing about almost 200 years ago. it's always been around, and always will be, and if it ever stops it will be because free speech is dead.

[Duchess Jack]

to me, it just seems awfully silly to say that opinionated blowhards in the media are "bad for the country". I mean, this is something tocqueville was writing about almost 200 years ago. it's always been around, and always will be, and if it ever stops it will be because free speech is dead.

I just cannot see how folk who make a living on getting people to focus on the 5% of the things we - as a country - disagree on while pissing the other 95% of things we do agree on away - is good for the country.

 

These people make their money by dividing the country. They would not have jobs if people started working together for the betterment of the country and they know it. The worse shape the country is in - the more money they make. I can see how it is in their best interests to keep politics going they way they currently are.

 

Is it free speech? Sure. Is it legal? Sure. Is it good for the country? Not a chance.

 

And things have changed in the last 200 hundred years. the internet, cable news and talk radio allow crap like this to grow like wild fire and create an echo chamber that validates any lie to give folk who want to believe it - reason to believe it.

Edited June 3, 2010 by Duchess Jack

[Perchoutofwater]

to me, it just seems awfully silly to say that opinionated blowhards in the media are "bad for the country". I mean, this is something tocqueville was writing about almost 200 years ago. it's always been around, and always will be, and if it ever stops it will be because free speech is dead.

 

Unfortunately very few people know who Alexix de Tocquevill was, much less have read Democracy in America.

Edited June 3, 2010 by Perchoutofwater

[bpwallace49]

to me, it just seems awfully silly to say that opinionated blowhards in the media are "bad for the country". I mean, this is something tocqueville was writing about almost 200 years ago. it's always been around, and always will be, and if it ever stops it will be because free speech is dead.

 

Az a lot of the time it isnt the message itself, but the manner and references that are designed to grab a quick snappy sound bite. It is the painting of the opposition as the devil instead of acting with civility. At the end of the day we are all Americans and want America to succeed. Just because people may have differing opinions doesnt make people closet nazis or NWO acolytes.

 

I have always been of the opinion that to have the President fail means the country is in dire straits. I would never wish for any President to fail, as the country is more important that partisan hackery.

 

God bless the USA . . .

[Azazello1313]

I just cannot see how folk who make a living on getting people to focus on the 5% of the things we - as a country - disagree on while pissing the other 95% of things we do agree on away - is good for the country. These people make their money by dividing the country. The would not have jobs if people started working together for the betterment of the country and they know it. The worse shape the country is in - the more money they make. I can see how it is in their best interests to keep politics going they way they currently are.

 

Is it free speech? Sure. Is it legal? Sure. Is it good for the country? Not a chance.

 

And things have changed in the last 200 hundred years. the internet, cable news and talk radio allow crap like this to grow like wild fire and create an echo chamber that validates any lie to give folk who want to believe it - reason to believe it.

 

here is what you said about michael moore 6 years ago:

 

Funny that as Americans we have a fundimental freedom to point out what is wrong, but to some, if you do this, you are seen as hating America.

 

I think it is people who want to shoot down dissent that really hate America and what it stands for.

 

so, you think michael moore is great, but glenn beck is bad because he is divisive. you're usually pretty fair-minded and willing to re-examine things, so I would ask you to consider whether this might be a bit of hypocrisy on your part. maybe you like moore and hate beck because of where your politics line up, not because only one of them is "divisive". and maybe I hate moore and shrug off beck for the same reason. let's not pretend it's anything more than that.

[Azazello1313]

And things have changed in the last 200 hundred years. the internet, cable news and talk radio allow crap like this to grow like wild fire and create an echo chamber that validates any lie to give folk who want to believe it - reason to believe it.

 

have you ever heard of father coughlin? the muckrakers? huey long? joe mccarthy? william jennings bryan?

[Duchess Jack]

here is what you said about michael moore 6 years ago:

 

I am 35. My political views have changed a lot since I was 29 - but not some much in this regard. Most of all - I don't consider myself a democrat any longer as I try to measure a person by their beliefs, not their label. Now - are my beliefs most in line with the left? Sure - but not so much to be lumped in with the left when there is no reason to do so.

 

Folk around here have a big problem with folk growing in their point of views. Too much 'but ## years ago, you did/said this'. Right or wrong - something somebody said 4, 5, 6 years ago is not always applicable to what all is going on now and it certainly should not be a defense of what is going on now. What is going on now should probably be measured on its own merits and short comings.

 

I still feel that people should be able to question the country - but what these blowhards are doing is not for the country. It is for them. As I said - if we all get a long - they don't have any money. I suppose that Michael Moore is in the same boat.

 

And for the record - I have NEVER seen a Michael Moore film - NEVER. I have seen a film called Michael Moore Hates America, but never a Michael Moore film.

[Duchess Jack]

have you ever heard of father coughlin? the muckrakers? huey long? joe mccarthy? william jennings bryan?

sure have

[driveby]

I agree with you Beck is VERY effective . . . .

 

 

. . . as a comedian.

June 4, 2010

The University Guild vs. Glenn Beck

By Amity Shlaes

 

Drive them crazy. That's what Glenn Beck seems to specialize in doing, whether the "them" at issue is fellow radio hosts, fellow tv hosts, or, now, professors at universities. This last group is opening its own front in the war against the television king. An associate professor, Joseph Palermo of California State/Sacramento, took to the Huffington Post to mock the broadcaster as "Glenn Beck, Ph.D." I personally noticed this since Professor Palermo mentioned me by name, in tandem with author Jonah Goldberg, as an effort to "misinform" the gullible.

 

The rage at first seems odd, coming from professors. Why should these serene Yodas care what a man on television bellows? Yet they are on the warpath. The academic fury is at first directed at interpretation. Mr. Beck's explanation of how the Framers viewed religion, Mr. Beck's depiction of how Franklin Roosevelt's policy affected the Great Depression; Mr. Beck's argument that regulation is currently curtailing liberty in general -- all fall short in academic eyes. Prof. Palermo, for example, calls Mr. Beck's views as "stupid and false." But the real issue, the reason professors are on the attack, is not specific content. It is rather the professional and, in the end, economic, threat that Mr. Beck represents. To academics, Mr. Beck is more dangerous than any other radio show host, and they know it.

 

To understand the nature of the Beck challenge, you have to recall that our system of higher education is a throwback to medieval economics: a guild. As in the classic guild, members require a lengthy period of training, with formal stages. To be in any way authoritative, a writer must have a Ph.D., a guild seal. Members of this guild have enormous discretion when it comes to the conferring of the seal - also typical. In the humanities and social sciences, Ph.D.s. and, it goes without saying, tenure-track posts -- are usually awarded to those not hostile to the master professors' views. For many decades top universities have been especially rigorous in this practice, with the result that it is difficult to find non-progressives with top credentials in the humanities. The guild demands much from its apprentices, graduate students, including dull work in obscure texts. Indeed it is proud of that obscurity, for it distinguishes academic work from, say, the easy popular histories on bookstore shelves or tv.

 

In the field of history, the guild also maintains a monopoly on education by generating curricula, syllabi, and, of course, a canon, a set list of texts for each period of the past. Of course the academic guild, generally on the progressive side, has made many concessions to conservatives or classical liberals. Professors have assigned the odd conservative book; they mentioned the opponents' arguments. But such offerings have generally been presented as an afterthought, secondary, less authoritative. Looking back at their education many adults saw through this pretense of fairness. They resented the guild monolith. Something was missing.

 

Enter Mr. Beck. At first, the radio show host appeared no different from the rest of conservative radio. In other words, another product of the 1987 repeal of the old Fairness Doctrine, which said that a radio license "may not be utilized to achieve a partisan or one-sided presentation." Pre-repeal that requirement was so strictly adhered to that radio tended the dull. After the repeal hosts were free to deliver soliloquys of rage and individual insights, legal, historical, political. This change which turned out to be welcome to millions of viewers. The first to take advantage of this market opening was Rush Limbaugh, who remains the undisputed king of conservative talk radio.

 

The second explanation for Beck rage however involves the guild. For unlike other hosts, who tend to pick up and drop topics, Mr. Beck has begun to develop a new canon for adults. And unlike other hosts, but indeed like a professor, Mr. Beck tends to demand a lot of his viewers. For example, he recently devoted the better part of an hour to a biography of Samuel Adams by a historian without a Ph.D., Ira Stoll, whose book highlights the revolutionary firebrand's piety. Mr. Beck breaks other tv rules. He insists viewers read books by dead men - W. Cleon Skousen's work on the Constitution, the ``5000 Year Leap." It is all a long way from "Oprah," "The Newshour" or even much of public television. Mr. Beck's broadcast was barely over when Mr. Stoll's book shot up to the highest heights of the Amazon list, where it has resided ever since. Beck-recommended books sometimes sell as well as, heaven forfend, textbooks. I had the good fortune to experience some of this after Mr. Beck talked about my Great Depression history.

 

Every author is glad to sell books. But the victory is far more Mr. Beck's than any individual writer's or publisher's. His genius has been in his recognition that viewers do not want merely the odd, one-off book, duly pegged to news. They want a coherent vision, a competing canon that the regulated airwaves and academy have denied them. So he, Glenn Beck, is building that canon, book by book from the forgotten shelf. Since the man is a riveting entertainer, the professors are correct to be concerned. He's not just reacting or shaping individual thoughts. He is bringing competition into the Ed Biz.

 

What to do? The Glenn Beck reading list may not satisfy everyone. Some of his views are indeed worth questioning. Some of us don't agree with important components of his politics. Beck's personal attacks put a lot of us off. Maybe there should be yet a third new reading list. As for the guild, a better response than its own ad hominem smearing is to widen their own reading lists and lectures. Professors can blame only themselves if Mr. Beck has taken an opportunity to teach. It is they who gave it to him.

 

Pretty much what I was getting at.

[Dr. Sacrebleu]

yet jon stewart just owns Beck over and over and over againhere for example