Reply #44: TV and print can't make shit up and distort like talk radio can because

[certainot]

there is still some competition and for print the evidence is right there to see. you can wave it back in their face. TV still must offer balance even if it is pretend balance or within the limits of a particular framing. it is the coordinated uncontested repetition that counts.

discussing the edwards haircut for hours on TV is made possible because of talk radio repetition earlier in the day or week. no guest or host is going to use precious TV time for it if that one liner or talking point wasn't prechewed on radio first possibly for days. who's going to take the first shot except one of rove's GOP operatives on fox, which basically exists to put visual whipped cream on the talk radio lie turd pie. and few people read the same stories over and over. talk radio is the medium that can decide what molehills the roves decide to turn into mountains. and they've been doing it for 20 years without the dems noticing because they turn the dial instead of listening to the attacks that give them headaches. it has been the perfect weapon.

blowing up the immigration issue was something talk radio did. dobbs didn't jump on that bandwagon until weeks of talk radio work got going right after katrina. as a matter of fact the katrina disaster wouldn't have played out like it did, with bush/rove waiting 5 days for black on white violence, if they didn't think it could be used by limbaugh and hannity all the way to the elections.

it was talk radio that did the swiftboating of 'flip flopper' kerry. it is concerted coordinated last day/week radio blasting of the country that gets dem appointees abandoned and neanderthal supremes passed. it was talk radio repetition that enabled the bush admin operatives the certitude with which to lie us into iraq- they knew rush and hannity had their backs and the lies they were telling had already been pounded into the earholes of tens of million, some of whom would also attack and complain about media giving time to traitors who dared to question bush. the days before the vote to give bush the OPTION to attack iraq the air when the dems wanted to keep debating, ALL the RW bloviators were chanting the same mantra- call your senators and tell them to "stand up and be counted".

a great deal of america;s political victories and defeats have been analyzed in a talk radio vacuum because until obama finally did what gore and kerry should have done and named limbaugh the most important man in the GOP, as point man for the talk radio monopoly, dems have completely ignored democracy's biggest foe.

as for approval at 19%, it is his ability to mobilize the misinformed, and establish the GOP framing and talking points as common knowledge that spreads way past that 19% to friends and family and then into the rest of the media that makes it so effective. it is the biggest soapbox in the country and it includes many local and national wannabes repeating the same crap that allows them to determine what is and what isn't acceptable in US media. while creating the whole concept of liberal political correctness there has been no bigger PC cop or censor-by-threat than the coordinated talk radio megaphone.