considering Mark Levin
I believe the radio host Mark Levin is on vacation and is airing best of programs for the holiday season, as the tedium that I heard seemed to come from just after the election. I know why Americans hate politics, and I know it from listening to a selection of talk radio.
It’s this bullet point list of what conservatives believe and what liberals believe. Apparently Conservatives believe in the Constitution, and Liberals believe we ought to burn the thing. I was unaware of that. Conservatives will win the day at the end and triumph because Americans are Conservative — God fearing and all that, and it is Liberalism that is dead, I suppose because they don’t have God on their side.
Mind you, I’m catching this in blips, as is typical of any radio listening. So, I don’t know what comes between that and when a caller comes in, introduced with “Now, we have a liberal on hand!” Politely, the caller says, “I just think you’ve skimmed over some of the great programs liberals have brought to this nation.”
Mark Levin’s response, and I quote, “Oh yeah? Name ten!”
It is a curious response, I think, one designed to end any sensible interaction. I think even the most bleeding heart unreconstructed liberal, without the benefit of preparation (take home test, if you will, as opposed to pop quiz), would stammer somewhere around number 5, in the meantime we’re stuck in the muckety muck of looking at number 2 and 3 of the list. As it were, I neglected to mention, because I wasn’t thinking much about this, that the caller was clearly black. So, when I jumped out of this show and rejoined a moment later, here’s what I heard as the end of the caller segment.
“It was DEMOCRAT governors you saw fighting against integration.”
I have heard this before, and it makes my head spin and my teeth hurt. It is as though we cement the donkey and the elephant into a perma-frost, and take claim of the favoured one for all eternity, never mind that Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson all had to battle the Dixiecrats — the Dixiecrats assigning the word “Conservative” in front of them. I find it hard to believe that Mark Levin even believes his words.
But change the station and I hear the worst national talk show host on the radio — that being Randi Rhodes of Air America, there, a vaccuous depth-less entity. Even the better sorts on Air America — Thom Hartmann — are flawed entities. Thom Hartmann brings on arguments against conservatives activists of various sorts, and tends to rely on a bag of argumentative tricks that become old and would likely be indecipherable if you haven’t heard him explain a facet of his historical views on America.
Turn the radio off, don’t think of putting in a blog entry, and adjust.