-Caveat Lector-
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/perspective/chi-
0303010270mar02,1,4219566.story
Identifying pathology on political left
Right-wing radio hosts appeal to disappointed men. Liberal hosts will need
their own niche market to succeed.
By Jon Margolis. A former Tribune political writer and author, Jon Margolis
lives in Vermont
March 2, 2003
Before they spend any more money convincing Al Franken to headline a
liberal talk-radio network, Chicago venture capitalists Sheldon and Anita
Drobny would do well to consult history and psychology, where they might
discover an irony: The right-wing talk radio they oppose is a product of
liberalism.
The history they could start with is Ralph Henry Gabriel's 1940 classic, "The
Course of American Democratic Thought," which reflects on the 19th
Century version of conflicting communicators: cerebral lecturers such as
Ralph Waldo Emerson versus the "camp-meeting evangelist."
"Emerson's lectures were full of subtleties," Gabriel writes. "Their
intellectual level was high. . . . By contrast, the preachers . . . dispensed a
simple theology; they did not normally tax the minds of their hearers."
Al Franken is no Emerson, and liberals are no more intellectual than
conservatives. But like the camp-meeting orator, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk
owe their success less to rational content than to visceral appeal. The
19th Century evangelists did not describe a coherent theology as much as
they attacked their enemies: Catholics ("Papists," at the time), Unitarians,
science, the closest big city.
They were catering to their audience's social resentments.
So are the right-wing talk-show hosts. To listen to Limbaugh or to the
latest talk-radio rage, the aptly named Michael Savage (formerly Michael A.
Weiner), is to be struck by how little time they spend on political
discourse. Instead, they assail their liberal enemies.
The assaults are often colorful, sometimes funny and occasionally deserved
but rarely analytical or logical. Like the hellfire and damnation preachers
of yore, radio talkers cater to the audience's social resentments. It's niche
marketing.
Disgruntled people
The niche is disappointed people, mostly men. Andrew Kohut, the highly
regarded pollster for Times-Mirror, has described "the typical Limbaugh
listener" as a "white male, suburbanite, conservative [with a] better-than-
average job but not really a great job. Frustrated with the system, with
the way the world of Washington works. Frustrated by cultural change.
Maybe threatened by women."
Somebody, in short, who is not as rich, powerful or famous as he thinks he
should be, and who wants to blame outside forces. The talk-show hosts
help. They blame cultural (but rarely economic) elites and the government
for the world's ills and regularly reinforce the listener's sense of being
scorned and ridiculed.
On Feb. 18, for instance, Limbaugh criticized New York's two senators,
who, he said, complained that New Yorkers paid more in federal taxes than
they "got back." So do you, Limbaugh told his listeners, adding: "But more
importantly than that, have you ever stopped to wonder what would
happen to you if you dared to express it? Boy, would you be tarred and
feathered."
Among the privileged classes who have kept the talk-show listeners from
their rightful status are immigrants ("You open the door to them, and the
next thing you know, they are defecating on your country and breeding
out of control," Savage once said), homosexuals, women and racial
minorities, which explains the racial and sexual innuendo rarely far from
the surface of talk radio.
Where we belong
Most people are not rich, powerful or famous, but this does not make
most people potential right-wing talk-radio fans. Most of us have figured
out that we probably ended up pretty much where we belong. Our
modest talents, limited ambitions and flawed characters explain why we
are not president of the company or head of the division--not affirmative
action or meddling bureaucrats.
But some find it hard to accept this reality, for which there is a reason:
liberalism.
It was liberals who first glorified self-esteem and self-assertion, who first
asserted the primacy of the oh-so-sensitive individual vis-a-vis the
community, minimally less objectionable than the talk-show host assertion
of the primacy of the determinedly insensitive individual vis-a-vis the
community.
It was the education establishment, represented by the faithfully liberal
National Education Association, that decided years ago that it was no more
important for students to memorize the periodic table of the elements or
the date of the Battle of Hastings than it was to feel good about
themselves.
It was liberalism, in short, that established the mind-set, permeating from
the schools and through the generations, which deluded many into
thinking that their failures could not be their fault. As society became
more materialistic, failure was redefined as not getting rich.
Self-assertion, a psychological measure for liberals, was transformed into
an economic measure for conservatives. As such, it followed the course of
the scraggly beard, which once proclaimed that no government could
compel its wearer to go to war, and now proclaims that no force can
prevent him from chopping down every tree in Idaho. Somewhere along
the way, self-esteem morphed into self-pity and created a market.
The question the Drobnys might ponder before writing another check is
whether there is a similar social pathology, and therefore a similar market,
on the political left. It is the pathology to whom the performer must
appeal.
The politics is incidental.
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