The
Harm Caused by Rush Limbaugh & Conservative Talk Radio
I'm
reading the online version of Alabama's state papers, and I run across another article about voters and the election on Tuesday.
But what catches my eye is a quote by a young lady in Autauga County ( a
north neighbor of Montgomery) who is the mother of four, 32-years-old and will be voting on what is also her birthday
for the very first time in her life. I go on to read the article and see the state Republican Party chairman calling Obama
a Socialist and a Marxist and read a wonderful quote of an Obama supporter who is a coal miner in Tuscaloosa County
(an area I am VERY familiar with).
And then the next line hits me in the stomach and makes me so very angry. Mona Crocker of the
small Coffee County hamlet of Arcus isn't so sure Obama isn't a socialist. She said she heard that on Rush Limbaugh's radio
show, and she believes it.
"He wants to raise taxes on people
like me who have worked for what we got and then give it to people who haven't ever been willing to work hard. He also wants
to give everybody free (health) insurance and who do you think will pay for that? People like me," Crocker said.
When did we as Americans turn our
brains over to a bunch of loudmouths on the radio? I know the date, but the very fact of it still galls me. And
the American public holds the mainstream media in such disdain as a result of the constant repetition of media bashing by
these very people! Limbaugh and his ilk have twisted facts and been shown to be out-right wrong on so many topics, and
I am not just talking politics. When they are called out for the error they just continue with the "facts" they want
to tell anyway.
And so this is who Ms. Crocker is
allowing to "educate" her on the candidates this year????? It isn't that I feel superior to her, because I don't. If I could talk to her in person, I would do my best to try and talk to her about
the issues that she has been fed a pile of horse rubbish by people like Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly and all the blowhards
on conservative talk radio.
Think of the millions of dollars
Limbaugh has made sitting on his butt abusing the use of the American public's airwaves with his twisting of the facts, disregard
for the facts and intolerance towards race, the disabled and women. When you think of what Bill O'Reilly has done it
should make a reasoned person want to hurl!
Earlier this week, I applauded Shephard
Smith for questioning Joe the Plumber the way ANY journalist should have. Because Shep works for the "Fair and Balanced"
network of Fox TV made it truly newsworthy. However, I don't want to give them too much credit. I know that the
network's owner, Rupert Murdoch, is reading the political tea leaves and sees that the winds are changing in America.
He has charged certain people at the network to start turning down the right-wing rhetoric because, come Tuesday, the odds
are good that the right won't be in charge anymore.
But when one looks at the state
of affairs in political discourse in this country, where people have electrified their McCain signs to keep them from being
swiped and spray-painted Obama's logo on their front yard after repeated signs were stolen it should make us all take pause.
Conservative talk made big bucks for a lot of people involved with AM Radio, but it also helped fuel the intense animosity
that has existed within this nation for almost 8 years.
They have taken people who may be
less educated than myself or poorer than you that are afraid of certain things and certain issues within society and exploited
that fear for their own access to power. "He wants
to raise taxes on people like me who have worked for what we got and then give it to people who haven't ever been willing
to work hard. He also wants to give everybody free (health) insurance and who do you think will pay for that? People like
me," Crocker said.
Who exactly do you think Ms. Crocker
is talking about when she says that Obama wants to give what she and others have worked hard for to people who haven’t
ever been willing to work hard? While Coffee County is home to Enterprise and
is close to Ft. Rucker, it is still 75% white, with a median income of $36,370 (a little below the state’s average),
it’s industries include educational,
health and social services (20.4%), Manufacturing (16.9%), Retail trade (13.3%).
And in 2004, the lion’s share
of it’s population voted for Bush/Cheney (Republican): 73.9% and the remaining folks Kerry/Edwards
(Democratic): 25.4%. So in short order a perfect Republican hamlet.
But why do people think that the stereotypical black person on welfare that they also think is lazy is who will benefit under
an Obama presidency? Why does that stereotype even still exist?
It
has always baffled me how the people that are not receiving anything from the tax-cuts given by the Bush administration are some
of the most staunch defenders of it. And the ones railing so against the taxcuts proposed by Sen. Obama.
Most of us in this country make nowhere close to $250,000, so how exactly is it that Obama is going to raise our taxes?
You know, in the Civil War the interests that took the South to war were
approximately 1% of the total population at the time. So it was
the people that worked and sweated and toiled to survive
and were largely ignored by this wealthy class that ended up fighting and dying for their cause. Sadly, that manipulation hasn't ended since the war did and it has manifested
itself into today's Republican Party.
What a civic duty Rush Limbaugh and the rest of conservative talk radio's talking
heads are performing for this wonderful country and the people who choose to allow them to do their thinking for them!
