Conservative talk-show blatherers like Beck lack influence

Excellent news. And not wholly unexpected.

I've always wondered if the right-wing crazies like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage have anywhere near the political influence that their over-heated egos claim.

New York Times columnist David Brooks says, "No, they don't" in The Wizard of Beck.

So the myth returns. Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.

They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy.

The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.

Comments

[tucson]

The only reason this issue is being raised at all is because "they" do have power, i.e. influence. Otherwise those that disagree with them wouldn't bother to write columns saying they don't.

Of course they have power and influence. Millions of people listen to them everyday.

But "they" do not all fall into the same basket. Michael Savage is far different than Bill O'Reilly for example.

Savage is radical and inflamatory but also perceptive and smart. O'Reilly is traditional conservative but not nearly as right as he is hyped up to be by the far left. I call him a moderate. He calls himself an independent.

Savage is confrontational, rude, arrogant and doesn't back down which is why liberals don't like him.

Bill Mahr is confrontational, rude, arrogant and doesn't back down. That's why conservatives don't like him.

What a game. The balanced view snakes and weaves its way from side to side as conditions dictate like a river through the landscape, sometimes left and sometimes right. A time to push, a time to yield. A time to be hard, a time to be soft. You know, the watercourse way.