Talk Show Hosts

Sadly, most Americans get their information of current events and political happenings from radio and television talk show hosts - entertainers, not journalists by any stretch of the imagination. The stations from which they broadcast are owned by multi-national corporations, which is a factor in the content of their broadcasts, but it’s not the only one.

The overwhelming majority of talk show hosts are conservatives - from slightly right wing to “frothing at the mouth” fanatics. There is practically no progressive representation on the airwaves. The hosts tend to broad brush everything - all Democrats are unpatriotic wimps who hate George Bush and the United States in that order, anyone who wants to bring our troops home from Iraq is bordering on treason. They bash anyone who's thinking is the least bit progressive, and ignore the sorry history of the past six years of the Bush administration. We will find no talk show host mentioning the disgusting trail of lies and fabrications from Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. They never discuss the manufactured case for going to war with Iraq presented by Colin Powell before the U.N., or discuss the fact that the administration has shut down any scientific inquiry of 9/11.

None of these administration mouthpieces discuss the fact that we had Osama Bin Laden in our grasp at Bora Bora and turned him over to his own supporters to guard. They never comment on our association with Karzai of Afghanistan and Mushsarraf of Pakistan who are giving aid and comfort to the Taliban while posing as our allies, or that the Taliban were once our allies. They whine that the mainstream media (but they ARE the mainstream media!) never gives credit to the good work our troops are doing in rebuilding the infrastructure, electric grids, schools and hospitals. They never mention that, as fast as we rebuild, the militants loot or destroy the sites. No mention is made of the devil’s contract with the multinational oil companies who get seventy percent of the oil produced - and Iraq gets only thirty percent of it’s own oil. Nor the fact that oil production is still below the level it maintained when Sadaam was in power.

Unless we tune in to BBC, it is impossible to get straight, unbiased news from television or radio. The news rendered by the smug, self promoting CNN is at times as biased as some of the right wing talk show nuts. The recent tête-à-tête between CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Michael Moore is a case in point. Gupta made the statement that Moore had “fudged” some facts. After an hour of obfuscating argument, Gupta could not cite one fact that Moore had fudged. But the claim was successfully emitted through the airwaves, to the pleasure of the pharmaceutical sponsors.

That old faker, Paul Harvey, with his patent medicine news is almost as bad. He never misses a chance to praise the wisdom and courage of the President and deride the Democrats as “weaklings” if they don’t want more and more young men killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The daily crimes of the Bush administration are never mentioned.

H. L. Mencken said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." The popularity of Michael Savage's xenophobic, homophobic hate speech, Sean Hannity's schoolyard bullying, or Rush Limbaugh's incendiary yarns, half-truths, and personal attacks, supports Menken's view.

These fakers spout their lies and distortions. But worse than that, far worse is fact that millions of Americans listen to and believe the detritus. And consumers of these programs never hear a contrary view, and are too inert, too lazy, to check the accuracy of this spurious “news” then, God help us, this is the “information” they carry into the voting booth. And we wonder why we have such a sorry group of elected officials.