Paglia on Rush
Joshua Foust on Jun 11 2008 at 7:31 pm | Filed under: Media
Meanwhile, conservative talk radio, which I have been following with interest for almost 20 years, has become a tornado alley of hallucinatory holograms of Obama. He’s a Marxist! A radical leftist! A hater of America! He’s “not that bright”; he can’t talk without a teleprompter. He knows nothing and has done less. His wife is a raging mass of anti-white racism. It’s gotten to the point that I can hardly listen to my favorite shows, which were once both informative and entertaining. The hackneyed repetition is numbing and tedious, and the overt character assassination is ethically indefensible. Talk radio will lose its broad audience if it continues on this nakedly partisan path.
—The inimitable Camille Paglia, apparently discovering for the first time that right-wing radio is shrill, tedious, and hateful.
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And they also have evil commercials… if only commercial radio was like NPR.
Sure there are certain shows that fit your description Joshua, but there are many that are informative, thoughtful, and entertaining. Further, the ones that I listen to provide links to source material so that I can verify whether they are being truthful or blowing smoke - something traditional media has been very reluctant to provide.
On a related note, I dont talk politics with my immediate family any more. One would think that within a family with four masters and one doctorate conversations would be civil and logical, but no. A visceral, and all consuming hatred of Bush precludes rational discourse. And I am the only one that listens to what you deem ‘hate’ radio.
I don’t think I’d dispute the characterization of conservative talk radio… particularly.
I do think that the charge that it’s *become* nakedly partisan is sort of funny though.
A sure sign on not really paying attention synova. Conservative talk radio has always stated up front its bias. The hosts of the two shows I listen in on most, Mike Rosen’s mostly local Denver am program and Hugh Hewitt’s nationally syndicated afternoon program, both make no bones about where they stand, and never have. Nor are they hateful - they just have opinions that Ms. Paglia, and possibly Joshua, would rather not have expressed. Such is the folly of a dominate liberal media fawning over leftist ideology for forty plus years.
>shrill, tedious, and hateful.
Nope, nope and nope. When did we start recapitulating vapid, ridiculously generalized and flat out incorrect Democratic talking points on this blog? We’re doing a bang-up job of it with bologna like this. A ludicrous ideologically-driven assessment of a large and highly diverse industry and audience, totally lacking in any informative value whatsoever.
Synova has it right — Paglia’s “discovery” is really nothing of the sort, especially considering her long and public respect of Rush Limbaugh’s skill of the medium. Lee, on the other hand, doesn’t seem on board with the idea of this site airing a variety of ideas and viewpoints. Camille Paglia can hardly be called a mouthpiece of Democrat talking points; disagree with her politics, but she’s no party hack. Her analysis of political entertainment is from a pop art history perspective; two of her books, Sexual Personae and Break, Burn, Blow help illustrate this, along with her years of writing at Salon.com.
>>>Lee, on the other hand, doesn’t seem on board with the idea of this site airing a variety of ideas
I’m never on board with the propagation of incorrect, excessively generalized and uninformed rubbish in the name of equal opportunity. Indeed I point a wagging finger at that very idea itself, to identify much of what is rotten in contemporary political debate and what is presently rotten in this post.
And yes, your assessment is worthy of such a description for its scope. “Shrill, tedious, and hateful” is a fair characterization of someone like Michael Savage, but a ridiculous one if you wish it to apply in general to such people as Hugh Hewitt. It is wholly without merit as a characterization of a very wide industry.
>>Camille Paglia can hardly be called a mouthpiece of Democrat talking points
Always looking for a proxy to fight your battles Josh. Those are your specific words that I took exception to. You have to defend them. You. Not other people not present who you agree with, or who might agree with you. A second is not an argument, if you can’t defend it, don’t make it.
>>Her analysis of political entertainment is from a pop art history perspective; two of her books, Sexual Personae and Break, Burn, Blow help illustrate this, along with her years of writing at Salon.com
In point of fact Sexual Personae as nonpolitical media and literary criticism, demonstrates nothing either for or against a charge of hackery (not that I even leveled one). It was assigned reading for me at UNL in 1997. If you read it without needing the course credit, you have my sympathy for the masochism in your reading habits. Alas, at least you don’t appear to have understood what it was concerned with, so it all turned out well in the end I guess.
Lee,
You’re funny, and really sensitive for someone so abrasive.
Sexual Personae’s theme (I’m curious to read criticism, so I actually read it for funsies) struck me more as an underhanded (and yes, overwrought) attack on both traditional feminism AND conservatism. She wasn’t entirely successful, but the idea of breaking down both opposing orthodoxies was fascinating — and, yes, informs her current views of politics, which are left-of-center, but certainly not dogmatic.
The little I’ve heard of Hewitt is less than even — he can be called shrill accurately, but probably not hateful. But Paglia is talking about the genre as a whole, which includes Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity — all giants in the field, all shrill, hateful, and more than anything else tedious. One possible exception does not break a rule, especially as she was speaking generally.
And now I’m carrying the Democrat talking points? I daresay you’ve not read, oh, I’ll go with a single thing I’ve ever written. Please — stop. You’re not helping yourself. The other writers here can disagree with me on many issues and remain civil; why so much vitriol?
>>You’re funny, and really sensitive for someone so abrasive.
Looks can be deceiving. In reality I’m humorless, insensitive and…friendly.
But in seriousness, some might say that suggesting an entire industry listened to by tens of millions of people is characterized by a tedium of shrill hatred, is a tad more abrasive a sentiment than my observing that a single individual is seriously uninformed and profoundly biased.
>>>an underhanded (and yes, overwrought) attack on both traditional feminism AND conservatism.
Only in the sense that any cultural or social commentary in a democratic society is inevitably political. That is to say, in the broadest and least particular possible sense. As a disproof of the charge of being a hack/non-hack, it would only be contextually relevant if she had been regurgitating or challenging the partisan pap of a political party in the early 1990s. She never got anywhere near that in the book, as it was concerned with very different matters. Thus your use of it to support a defense of yourself from behind Camille’s skirt –”She said it first!”– is ill-considered on multiple counts.
>>But Paglia is talking about the genre as a whole, which includes Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity
With the exception of Savage –who is more a cryptofascist than a conservative if anything– and short of the odd context-divorced quote (the Democrats do assiduous work in compiling these) none of those men could be accurately described as hateful. Unless you think their political views themselves embody hatred (as Democrats do). Discussing their philosophy as applied to current events is after all the bulk of what gets done on these programs. But to indulge in such a view would only confirm my allegation that your sentiment is ideologically driven.
>>I daresay you’ve not read, oh, I’ll go with a single thing I’ve ever written.
Really, is this the first time we’ve spoken about your views? If your defense is that you’re that immensely forgetful, how can we have any confidence that you even recall these ugly events you’ve supposedly heard on talk radio.
>>The other writers here can disagree with me on many issues and remain civil
Ha. Am I perhaps shrill, tedious and hateful? One detects a pattern.
The reason you think that is probably because you have a narrow definition of civility. You’ll find no profanity or personal attacks in my criticism that could qualify as uncivil. It’s merely forcefully argued and tends to cut to the marrow of things. I make no apologies for that, nor should anyone.
I’m not sure that rightwing talk radio is any more or less “shrill, tedious, and hateful” than any other political media program with an agenda. I can understand why Paglia, a devout liberal (in the American sense), would view it that way. I don’t really listen to it ever, but the few times I have it’s always struck me as expressing deep frustration rather than being shrill. I suppose it could be deemed tedious in the sense that it’s basically cheerleading for one party, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many good points made and pertinent issues exposed and discussed intelligently. And it is true that liberals and Democrats are routinely delivered a virtual beating, which I guess could be deemed hateful and perhaps even tedious, but again, it’s not like these sorts of critiques are being delivered by the MSM, which is where the deep frustration comes from.
Of course, if I take Josh’s point correctly, it is kind of puzzling as to why Paglia would only now discover that she doesn’t like rightwing radio. Much less why she would think that “Talk radio will lose its broad audience if it continues on this nakedly partisan path.” If it wasn’t for that “partisan path” there would be no talk radio to speak of, and frankly it is exactly these sorts of rah-rah cheerleading programs that get big ratings.