As I was driving down to Philadelphia last night I listened to the Mark Levin show on WABC out of New York. It was the first time I’ve listened to right-wing radio in a very long time. And it was a revelation. What I learned is that most of this country is being told that the Occupy protestors are engaged in rape, public defecation and urination, unprotected sex, and rampant drug use. And this image is being backed up by newspapers like the New York Post that are depicting the protestors as bi-polar paranoid lunatics who haven’t taken their meds. They are also depicting the protestors as anti-Semites, communists, anti-American, and throwbacks to the 1960’s anti-war protestors.
What’s also interesting is that the right-wing radio jocks are depicting the conservatives as wholly innocent and not responsible in any way for the condition of the economy. They have cast Bush and McCain out of the conservative movement, and they blame them for supporting TARP, the bailout of the auto industry, and everything else that might be considered the legacy of Bush’s two terms in office.
In much of the country, people don’t hear any countervailing views on the radio. This is the reality they are presented with.
Holy Shit! And you are just now realizing this? Martin, you need to get out more. š
This is the world that many of us have to live in every day, my friend. So looking forward to the holiday season and the wingnut family outings. Tamps down my spirit immeasurably.
well, I’ve seen the stuff on the internet and in the NY Post and NY Daily News, but I haven’t been listening to it all condensed in a radio format.
Really. Just now you tune in to that crap? And its on Fox News every night, but they tend to be less, well, blunt.
They draw strong, consistent ratings — compared to other programming stations can broadcast, but don’t fully represent “most” of Americans. These are the loud, firm 20-30% the entire nation who occupy the right half-plus of the GOP.
But it does bleed over and it does have an effect on the entire electorate. I was in Center City Philly last week with a reasonably normal but not politically-oriented/informed guy who, as we walked by the Occupy at City Hall, said “they should just go get jobs”.
He’s not stupid, professionally successful in business, from MA, but doesn’t really get what this is all about. And that these are a bunch of entitlement happy spoiled kids who took stupid student loans is the message he is predisposed to hear and repeat — even if he isn’t living in a trailer in Florida’s panhandle.
It’s not just Fox that is spreading the “They should just get jobs.” framing. And anyone who has maintained their employment through the past 15 years is not likely to understand what is going on. Keeping your head down working long hours also isolates you from what is going on with other people.
Kudos to you for the strength to listen to more than a few seconds of that stream of garbage.
What I learned is that most of this country is being told that the Occupy protestors are engaged in rape, public defecation and urination, unprotected sex, and rampant drug use.
I spent a few hours at OWS yesterday pm. Not a sign of drug use, everyone I spoke with (also the ‘freaks’) were entirely lucid. There were certainly some fringe groups latching on to the movement (Free Tibet, Stop China’s Communist Party, etc.), but they were relegated to the perimeter, outside Zucotti proper.
There was not even a whiff of feces or stale urine in the park, though I noticed such odors several places elsewhere in the city on my way there. The area is certainly not conducive to sexual activity, but if anyone should be stupid enough to engage in unprotected sex, well, that is not against the law.
There have been two cases related to molestation/rape, both by the same person – a suspect is in custody. Groups have organized to advocate against abusive behavior and to provide safe space for women.
Sanitation is impressive, a crew with brooms and dust pans is continuously at work – any garbage on the ground is quickly removed.
Maybe I’ll put up a brief photo diary once my pictures have uploaded.
I’d really like to see your photo diary, ask, if you have the time to do it.
Almost done. Just a few minutes.
It’s up. BTW, if you see an FB request from a stranger, that might be from me.
Between right-wing radio, Fox News, and frankly the rest of cable and the mainstream media, there’s little discussion of what’s important and what’s actually going on. To combat this, the Obama operation has steadily shifted since the beginning of September to a strategy of going over the heads of the MSM and flooding regional and local news during his many forays outside of Washington. He and his spokesmen have become very sharp in their public statements, radio addresses, TV appearances and the like, which helps his message get through the static. Obama’s frontal smackdown about yesterday’s installment of Senate jobs bill voting, which only garnered a majority of votes (not 60) and thus “failed”, is a recent example.
Ironically, it is the likes of Mark Levin, Limbaugh, the New York Post and Jim Demint that will help re-elect Obama. The more influence they have on the right-wing discourse, the more unelectable they’ll make the eventual nominee, who may not yet even be in the race.
I would look at audience ratings before jumping to conclusions.
The Occupy movement locally in many of these places is presenting these countervailing views through interviews on local TV. And the cognitive dissonance between what the Occupy movement is doing in their local community and what the right-wing shock jocks are saying will begin to undermine their credibility with the head-nodders (as opposed to the true believers) in their audience.
The Occupy movement has spread into all parts of the country. And because there are a lot of libertarians who in the past have supported Ron Paul involved (10% of the total in some places) and folks who up until the debt ceiling crisis had been apolitical, it is not the usual local suspects. And the behavior of occupiers in place even where they have been arrested has broken through the propaganda wall of these shock jocks.
Expect these guys to get even more vitriolic as the Occupy movement grows. It is their jobs more than Jamie Dimon’s that the Occupy Wall Street movement directly threatens by taking away their audience. A change in the political culture means that means that occupationally, these guys are toast.
There should be a rule for these guys on how many Nazi friendly adjectives you can use in one radio rant before you have to make a point.
Observation: the current flock of loons running for Pres are truly, indeed the very embodiment of their Party’s identity these days, they are not a mistake, but instead exactly what the the right wing talkers designed.
Just listening to Bachmann, who seems to get all her current event information off chain emails underscores that we’ll never get this gang to turn off right wing radio/media.
Oh vey. I think we knew this, but it bears repeating.
They should be happy that OWS isn’t engaged in prostitution also. Less competition.
Well, guess who listens to that shit; it’s not young people. They don’t listen to the radio anymore. It’s not even my generation, really, and I’m in my early fifties. I don’t listen to the radio anymore, either.
It’s mostly the older generations who grew up with radio and television as their only sources for live information. They still get the daily paper, too. And they’ve grown old listening hour after hour to the insane rantings of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck, not to mention the loontoons at FOX.
That’s why when you speak to those who listen to that crap they speak in sound bites and quotes. They can’t even paraphrase or challenge themselves to actually listen to what they’re repeating. I caught my dad, who’s eighty and a pretty sharp guy, sending out a totally crap email sent out by the republicans and I called him on it. He said maybe he didn’t check to see if it was true, but it made him mad. I told him not to send me any more emails that he can’t back up.
That’s what we have to do. Keep challenging these radio and TV asshats and get the facts out there. Show people that the Republicans are willfully destroying job-building legislature just to wreck our economy. The numbers prove it. We have to keep putting that out there.