Are Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck and their ilk the reason behind our poisoned politics?
You can hear their voices every day of the week at any hour of the day, simply turn on the television or radio and dozens of talkers are there to promote their point of view. It's their right to express their opinion of course but are they being responsible citizens or are they poisoning our national discourse? Each of them would deny they are doing any such thing and the Skeptic doesn't have any special powers to read their minds but the proliferation of these shows and the polarization of politics seems to be strangely tied together.
Politics has been a rough and tumble business from the very beginning, there's no doubt about that, but today it seems particularly nasty, and especially personal. In the past, even as far back as Thomas Jefferson, there were dirty tricks being played by political operatives but the media was supposed to be different. Until fifteen or so years ago newscasters played it down the middle as best they could, political commentators talked about issues and the people did the best they could to decide who would get their vote but today things seem much different. We know where most newscasters stand, they rarely try and hide their bias whether they are on the left or the right. Commentators like Chris Matthews are now unafraid to act as attack dogs for their side, knowing that there is essentially no risk for their behavior. Mr. Matthews asks Michelle Bachmann, a potential presidential candidate at the time, on the air if she's been hypnotized, he says to her that she looks strange to him and he won't let it go, he asks her the same question several times. That's his gimmick, he thinks if he keeps firing off the same question time after time it makes him seem intelligent when he doesn't get what he considers a satisfactory answer. What is a satisfactory answer to a stupid question like that? Then there's Glenn Beck, he says he thinks Obama hates white people. Ed Schultz calls Laura Ingraham a slut, a few weeks later he edits a tape to make it seem that Rick Perry is a racist. Keith Olbermann names his worst person in the world, it goes on and on, it never stops, turn on the radio right now and the Skeptic is sure you'll hear another example within minutes. Personal attacks, distortion of comments, editing videos to make someone seem something they are not, it's all part of the world of political commentators today. The Skeptic knows the world has changed, the culture is much coarser than it used to be but these people are talking about the direction of our country, so why do they sound as if they're promoting a phony wrestling match? It's not a game no matter how much today's media would have us believe it is. There are more stories about who is leading in the polls than there are about a candidate's position on anything, unless his position is on top of an intern, then they're more than happy to talk about it.
Maybe it's just the general nature of all things, the way things always progress and there's nothing that can be done about it. Maybe great nations are destined to fall for reasons we don't understand. If you pay even a little attention to history you know every nation that ever dominated the world of their time fell, all of them. Greece, Rome, Great Britain, none of them survived to this day as great powers, they're all an afterthought today but if you were a citizen who lived under one of those countries at their zenith you probably thought life would go on forever unchanged. The idea that Rome would one day be nothing but a chapter in a history book wouldn't have crossed your mind unless you were living there in the end days of the empire with the barbarians banging at the gate. Why does this always happen? Is there something that all of them have in common? The Skeptic doesn't know if there was any one thing but he knows this, at the height of each of them they all thought it would go on forever. America used to be like that, we thought this great country would dominate the world for all time, we were different than all past empires, we were special because we were good, we didn't plunder, our motives were pure. But it's a little different these days, ten or fifteen years ago a measure of doubt started creeping into the minds of people who were paying attention and they worried, but not too much. But now that funny, uneasy feeling that all isn't well isn't confined to the minds of a few people...it's everywhere. It's everywhere and the professional talkers are reveling in it and getting rich and having great fun by exploiting our differences while the country burns.
The Skeptic has nothing against getting rich or having fun but getting rich by instilling hatred into the political process seems particularly wrong at a time when the country is in such a damned mess. One would think that people with enough intelligence to get to a position where they are entrusted by their employers to speak to millions of people would have a enough common sense to understand the harm they could cause. The Skeptic thinks they know it but don't care much what happens to the country so long as their ratings and paychecks stay high and they aren't personally added to the roles of the unemployed.
Glenn Beck has become the poster boy for outrageous talk. Mr. Beck is building an empire for himself and he's doing it in the long tradition of a snake oil salesman. The only thing that the Skeptic can say in defense of him is that he probably so deluded that he actually believes in the nonsense he spouts for hours everyday. His show has become a nonstop commercial for his new television network and his rhetoric has become increasingly harsh and it's likely to get worse as he moves his operations to the internet. He is sounding more and more like someone who believes themselves to be a messiah or a prophet, he sees conspiracies everywhere and only he has the ability to sniff them out. Beck takes unrelated events and quotes and ties them together as if there was this worldwide conspiracy between Muslims, unions, left wing pols, communists, socialists and anyone else who might say something inflammatory. Are the events and quotes real? Of course, that's what makes it seem possible and Beck is parlaying it into a fortune just like every other fortune teller tries to do but it's all bunk. Are there people out there who'd like to see the United States fall apart? Yes, the Skeptic is sure there are but the Skeptic is very skeptical that they have monthly meetings to plan anything. The Skeptic thinks the way to save the country is relatively simple and it has nothing to do with routing out these nuts that Glenn sees everywhere. We need to drop some job killing regulations, not all regulations but most of them, we need to stop being so dependent on the government, we need to become more personally responsible for our situations, and we need to stop looking for scapegoats but we don't need to sign up for GBTV for $9.95 a month. Of course Glenn's prophesy is as foolish as the Bible code business and paying him five or ten dollars a month for access to his television show is just silly, he's a scam artist not a prophet. He implores us to sign up for his new television show to help him save he world but his refrain sounds vaguely familiar to the Skeptic, it sounds like dozens of other charlatans who have predicted dire events in the past, the difference being Mr. Beck is plying his trade at a time when America can least afford to listen to his nonsense and signing up to see GBTV is a waste of five dollars.
This isn't an easy article for the Skeptic to write, in general he's very conservative and he generally agrees with the positions taken by Limbaugh and others on the right, he even frequently agreed with Glenn Beck before Beck went insane, but their unending quest for ratings has gone too far, especially when America is on the verge of financial collapse.
The Skeptic isn't blaming them for all our problems, far from it, liberal politicians have long used the politics of personal destruction to their advantage and they've done it very well. The Skeptic thinks the right began to fight back with similar tactics after the Clinton impeachment. Clinton's defenders screamed that the right was using personal attacks to go after Clinton while all the while they attacked people on the right with countless personal attacks. It was clever and it didn't go unnoticed when it worked so well for the left. The attacks from the right started getting nasty and the left just stepped up their already scathing attacks on the right, it became a increasingly vicious cycle and it got worse when talk radio exploded and people other than Limbaugh realized there was a damn good living to be made talking on the radio, but only if you were controversial enough. It's all quite entertaining but the Skeptic thinks we are entertaining ourselves to death.
So what have we got here? The country has divided up into opposing camps and the radicals are winning, the very thing Beck claims he is worried about is happening and the funny thing is he's one of the reasons for it. The Skeptic agrees with a lot of his positions on personal responsibility and many other areas but his crazy rants put people off, it drives people in the middle away, it makes the Skeptic wince when he goes off on one of his rants. Imagine what it does to those not inclined to think conservatively, it drives them away in droves.
There is a middle ground, it might not make everyone happy but it might put an end to the poisonous politics and let us get back to the America most of us want, a place without too many regulations, a place with taxes that are reasonable, a place where business isn't vilified, a place where anyone can start a business without jumping through dozens of hoops before they can even put up a sign saying they are open for business. Look, America will never be the conservative utopia these right wing talkers claim to want, it can't happen, at least not all at once and definitely not right now, there are too many people who don't have a clue what the Constitution really says and worse, they don't care. That kind of change will take time, a generation or more, the country is addicted to government interference, too many people still think it's a viable way to run a country. The Skeptic thinks that a lot of people who call these talkers claiming to be a conservative or a liberal aren't as strong in their beliefs as one might think. A conservative who suddenly finds himself too sick to work and without health insurance isn't going to willingly give up his life, he will ask for help, even from the government he previously claimed to hate. A liberal who thinks he or she wants 'free' healthcare for all might not be so inclined if their taxes were raised enough to truly pay for such an extravagant program but both might agree with a relatively inexpensive program that would only pay for catastrophic healthcare so no one would go broke. It wouldn't be nearly so expensive as full healthcare for all but it could assure all of us that when we find ourselves in dire circumstances we wouldn't lose everything. It's real compromise and reasonable people could agree if they weren't constantly assaulted by the heated rhetoric of Glenn Beck, Ed Schultz and the rest of that crowd that profits from the hate. If we stop the craziness the Skeptic thinks there are enough people who'd be willing to make some serious compromise on healthcare, regulations and taxes and get back to what America should be, a place where we live and let live without an overreaching federal government acting as a demented puppeteer controlling every aspect of our lives. Liberals used to hate government, conservatives always hated big government, it seems to the Skeptic that there is some room for some cooperation here.
In closing, the Skeptic would like to see a talented talker take a reasonable middle tone and see if he of she couldn't make a show entertaining without being completely polarizing. A case could be made that we ended up with Barack Obama in the White House because of all the heated talk, the Skeptic thinks a lot of people who voted for him did so because they were put off by all the talk of him being a communist, socialist or a Kenyan, they felt he was being smeared and voted for him because of that, he might be all those things but constantly berating him instead of pointing out his positions angered people who thought it wasn't fair. So the people who fought the hardest to keep him out of office might have put him in and now we're stuck with a guy who, if he went any further to the left he'd be on the right, terrific job guys.
Politics has been a rough and tumble business from the very beginning, there's no doubt about that, but today it seems particularly nasty, and especially personal. In the past, even as far back as Thomas Jefferson, there were dirty tricks being played by political operatives but the media was supposed to be different. Until fifteen or so years ago newscasters played it down the middle as best they could, political commentators talked about issues and the people did the best they could to decide who would get their vote but today things seem much different. We know where most newscasters stand, they rarely try and hide their bias whether they are on the left or the right. Commentators like Chris Matthews are now unafraid to act as attack dogs for their side, knowing that there is essentially no risk for their behavior. Mr. Matthews asks Michelle Bachmann, a potential presidential candidate at the time, on the air if she's been hypnotized, he says to her that she looks strange to him and he won't let it go, he asks her the same question several times. That's his gimmick, he thinks if he keeps firing off the same question time after time it makes him seem intelligent when he doesn't get what he considers a satisfactory answer. What is a satisfactory answer to a stupid question like that? Then there's Glenn Beck, he says he thinks Obama hates white people. Ed Schultz calls Laura Ingraham a slut, a few weeks later he edits a tape to make it seem that Rick Perry is a racist. Keith Olbermann names his worst person in the world, it goes on and on, it never stops, turn on the radio right now and the Skeptic is sure you'll hear another example within minutes. Personal attacks, distortion of comments, editing videos to make someone seem something they are not, it's all part of the world of political commentators today. The Skeptic knows the world has changed, the culture is much coarser than it used to be but these people are talking about the direction of our country, so why do they sound as if they're promoting a phony wrestling match? It's not a game no matter how much today's media would have us believe it is. There are more stories about who is leading in the polls than there are about a candidate's position on anything, unless his position is on top of an intern, then they're more than happy to talk about it.
Maybe it's just the general nature of all things, the way things always progress and there's nothing that can be done about it. Maybe great nations are destined to fall for reasons we don't understand. If you pay even a little attention to history you know every nation that ever dominated the world of their time fell, all of them. Greece, Rome, Great Britain, none of them survived to this day as great powers, they're all an afterthought today but if you were a citizen who lived under one of those countries at their zenith you probably thought life would go on forever unchanged. The idea that Rome would one day be nothing but a chapter in a history book wouldn't have crossed your mind unless you were living there in the end days of the empire with the barbarians banging at the gate. Why does this always happen? Is there something that all of them have in common? The Skeptic doesn't know if there was any one thing but he knows this, at the height of each of them they all thought it would go on forever. America used to be like that, we thought this great country would dominate the world for all time, we were different than all past empires, we were special because we were good, we didn't plunder, our motives were pure. But it's a little different these days, ten or fifteen years ago a measure of doubt started creeping into the minds of people who were paying attention and they worried, but not too much. But now that funny, uneasy feeling that all isn't well isn't confined to the minds of a few people...it's everywhere. It's everywhere and the professional talkers are reveling in it and getting rich and having great fun by exploiting our differences while the country burns.
The Skeptic has nothing against getting rich or having fun but getting rich by instilling hatred into the political process seems particularly wrong at a time when the country is in such a damned mess. One would think that people with enough intelligence to get to a position where they are entrusted by their employers to speak to millions of people would have a enough common sense to understand the harm they could cause. The Skeptic thinks they know it but don't care much what happens to the country so long as their ratings and paychecks stay high and they aren't personally added to the roles of the unemployed.
Glenn Beck has become the poster boy for outrageous talk. Mr. Beck is building an empire for himself and he's doing it in the long tradition of a snake oil salesman. The only thing that the Skeptic can say in defense of him is that he probably so deluded that he actually believes in the nonsense he spouts for hours everyday. His show has become a nonstop commercial for his new television network and his rhetoric has become increasingly harsh and it's likely to get worse as he moves his operations to the internet. He is sounding more and more like someone who believes themselves to be a messiah or a prophet, he sees conspiracies everywhere and only he has the ability to sniff them out. Beck takes unrelated events and quotes and ties them together as if there was this worldwide conspiracy between Muslims, unions, left wing pols, communists, socialists and anyone else who might say something inflammatory. Are the events and quotes real? Of course, that's what makes it seem possible and Beck is parlaying it into a fortune just like every other fortune teller tries to do but it's all bunk. Are there people out there who'd like to see the United States fall apart? Yes, the Skeptic is sure there are but the Skeptic is very skeptical that they have monthly meetings to plan anything. The Skeptic thinks the way to save the country is relatively simple and it has nothing to do with routing out these nuts that Glenn sees everywhere. We need to drop some job killing regulations, not all regulations but most of them, we need to stop being so dependent on the government, we need to become more personally responsible for our situations, and we need to stop looking for scapegoats but we don't need to sign up for GBTV for $9.95 a month. Of course Glenn's prophesy is as foolish as the Bible code business and paying him five or ten dollars a month for access to his television show is just silly, he's a scam artist not a prophet. He implores us to sign up for his new television show to help him save he world but his refrain sounds vaguely familiar to the Skeptic, it sounds like dozens of other charlatans who have predicted dire events in the past, the difference being Mr. Beck is plying his trade at a time when America can least afford to listen to his nonsense and signing up to see GBTV is a waste of five dollars.
This isn't an easy article for the Skeptic to write, in general he's very conservative and he generally agrees with the positions taken by Limbaugh and others on the right, he even frequently agreed with Glenn Beck before Beck went insane, but their unending quest for ratings has gone too far, especially when America is on the verge of financial collapse.
The Skeptic isn't blaming them for all our problems, far from it, liberal politicians have long used the politics of personal destruction to their advantage and they've done it very well. The Skeptic thinks the right began to fight back with similar tactics after the Clinton impeachment. Clinton's defenders screamed that the right was using personal attacks to go after Clinton while all the while they attacked people on the right with countless personal attacks. It was clever and it didn't go unnoticed when it worked so well for the left. The attacks from the right started getting nasty and the left just stepped up their already scathing attacks on the right, it became a increasingly vicious cycle and it got worse when talk radio exploded and people other than Limbaugh realized there was a damn good living to be made talking on the radio, but only if you were controversial enough. It's all quite entertaining but the Skeptic thinks we are entertaining ourselves to death.
So what have we got here? The country has divided up into opposing camps and the radicals are winning, the very thing Beck claims he is worried about is happening and the funny thing is he's one of the reasons for it. The Skeptic agrees with a lot of his positions on personal responsibility and many other areas but his crazy rants put people off, it drives people in the middle away, it makes the Skeptic wince when he goes off on one of his rants. Imagine what it does to those not inclined to think conservatively, it drives them away in droves.
There is a middle ground, it might not make everyone happy but it might put an end to the poisonous politics and let us get back to the America most of us want, a place without too many regulations, a place with taxes that are reasonable, a place where business isn't vilified, a place where anyone can start a business without jumping through dozens of hoops before they can even put up a sign saying they are open for business. Look, America will never be the conservative utopia these right wing talkers claim to want, it can't happen, at least not all at once and definitely not right now, there are too many people who don't have a clue what the Constitution really says and worse, they don't care. That kind of change will take time, a generation or more, the country is addicted to government interference, too many people still think it's a viable way to run a country. The Skeptic thinks that a lot of people who call these talkers claiming to be a conservative or a liberal aren't as strong in their beliefs as one might think. A conservative who suddenly finds himself too sick to work and without health insurance isn't going to willingly give up his life, he will ask for help, even from the government he previously claimed to hate. A liberal who thinks he or she wants 'free' healthcare for all might not be so inclined if their taxes were raised enough to truly pay for such an extravagant program but both might agree with a relatively inexpensive program that would only pay for catastrophic healthcare so no one would go broke. It wouldn't be nearly so expensive as full healthcare for all but it could assure all of us that when we find ourselves in dire circumstances we wouldn't lose everything. It's real compromise and reasonable people could agree if they weren't constantly assaulted by the heated rhetoric of Glenn Beck, Ed Schultz and the rest of that crowd that profits from the hate. If we stop the craziness the Skeptic thinks there are enough people who'd be willing to make some serious compromise on healthcare, regulations and taxes and get back to what America should be, a place where we live and let live without an overreaching federal government acting as a demented puppeteer controlling every aspect of our lives. Liberals used to hate government, conservatives always hated big government, it seems to the Skeptic that there is some room for some cooperation here.
In closing, the Skeptic would like to see a talented talker take a reasonable middle tone and see if he of she couldn't make a show entertaining without being completely polarizing. A case could be made that we ended up with Barack Obama in the White House because of all the heated talk, the Skeptic thinks a lot of people who voted for him did so because they were put off by all the talk of him being a communist, socialist or a Kenyan, they felt he was being smeared and voted for him because of that, he might be all those things but constantly berating him instead of pointing out his positions angered people who thought it wasn't fair. So the people who fought the hardest to keep him out of office might have put him in and now we're stuck with a guy who, if he went any further to the left he'd be on the right, terrific job guys.