Joshua's Place

Democrats Don’t Get Talk Radio.
12/8/2004

Loretta Sanchez, a Democrat Representative from CA recently admitted on Late Edition that Democrats own the mainstream media.

BLITZER: What do you think? Loretta Sanchez, what do you think?

SANCHEZ: I agree with Jesse. I agree with my colleague. I believe that we made mistakes. The media certainly is not in our hands any longer, and, in particular, radio talk shows where that is completely in the opposition’s hands, and they use it effectively against us.

BLITZER: But, Loretta, when you say the media — when you say the media is not in your hands, are you saying that ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN are hostile to Democrats?

SANCHEZ: No, that’s not what I said. I’m saying that — if you would let me finish — that the majority of people are now receiving a lot of their information out of radio. And the radio isn’t in the hands of the Democrats anymore.

Conservatives have known about this - that the mainstream media leans left - for years. But it’s a rare occurrence for a politician from the democrat party to formally admit it. These days, liberals don’t control as much of the media as they once did, but the mainstream networks are still in their hands. But the dems try to pretend that the networks aren’t in their camp. In fact, some democrats even go so far as to accuse the mainstream media as being too conservative. If you read the interview just before she made her comments, Al Franklin was saying just that. But we all know how much of an idiot he is. Conservatives are making strides, however. Fox News is on our side - albiet only a little more than half the time. We have several newspapers and online journals clearly on our side. But our big accomplishment is talk radio. And Loretta admitted that talk radio is playing a big part in our political landscape - that it has played a big part in our elections - that it helps republicans win elections across the board. She goes on to say that liberals have no way to counter talk radio.

But she’s missing the point. Talk radio is very successful, and it is very much populated by conservatives, but she has it all wrong. It’s not so successful because a bunch of conservative thinkers got together and decided to launch conservative talk show networks. It just didn’t happen that way at all. In fact it all started with just one man. That man is Rush Limbaugh. At first he was not very successful. He started off as a disc jockey, and his duties included reading the news at the top of the hour. He started off by interjecting some political commentary when he made his reports. But the station owner would not tolerate his commentary, and he was fired. And this happened more than once. But he finally convinced a station owner to let him have his own show. Once he was free to say what he wanted, he became very popular, because conservatives finally had a voice in the media, which they didn’t have before. The listeners liked his ideas, and they agreed with his viewpoints. He articulated his ideas well, and he was also funny. He really didn’t change the minds of the listeners, like some in the mainstream media would have you believe. Conservatives have always believed what they believe in. He was just the first person to represent those ideas in the media, and that’s what really made him so popular. So it took a while, but he did become successful.

After Rush Limbaugh became successful, other conservative media personalities decided to host their own talk shows. Then conservative talk radio really caught on. It’s been very successful because when the truth is heard, it’s very obvious that it’s the truth. It just sounds like the truth. You can usually tell when someone’s lying, and when they are telling the truth, right? It’s the same thing with talk radio. The mainstream media, which includes outlets such as cBS, ABC, NBC, and the New York Times don’t always present the truth. They usually just tell viewers what they want them to think, regardless of whether it’s the truth. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. And we really found that out this year when Dan Rather reported the story about the George Bush National Guard Documents that were obviously faked. He reported the story because he wanted it to be true so bad that he ignored the facts. He ignored the truth, because he wanted a good story. And that’s what the networks do. He wanted it to be true so that people would vote against President Bush. But the networks are losing viewers. They are losing them because the audience wants the truth, and the viewers go looking elsewhere when they don’t find it on the networks. And they find talk radio.

I found talk radio myself almost two years ago. Over time I have learned to enjoy it very much. I started out just listening for an hour a day. Now I listen for several hours every day. There are quite a few hosts that I like, but I don’t always agree with them. And sometimes the radio hosts will disagree with each other. We are not a bunch of mind-numbing robots. We form our own opinions. I have been a conservative for a long time. I just didn’t know there were so many others out there that share my feelings until I discovered talk radio.

If you haven’t yet discovered the joy of talk radio, I encourage you to give it a listen. And I say it is a joy, because unlike network news, they do not just report the bad news. They also talk about the good news. And there is a lot of good news out there. Good news on a variety of subjects, including the economy, Iraq, and the War on Terror. But the networks rely on bad news for ratings, so they report a lot of that, and tin the process they leave out the good news. And that’s another reason why talk radio is successful. If you would like to give talk radio a try, you can start with some of my favorite hosts. You might not like any of them. You might only like one or two of them. Or you might like them all. They each have a very different style. And each of them have different beliefs and values. Sean Hannity is very different from Michael Savage, for instance. My favorites include Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Reagan, and finally Michael Savage.

Yours truly, Joshua Clinard @ 11:03 pm