HOW ANGRY IS TOO ANGRY?

[Holland Cooke]

Members of Congress are being threatened.
U.S Capitol Police have several under protection.
The FBI is investigating some threats.
Members' homes and offices have suffered scattered acts of vandalism.
Cross-hairs icons on Sarah Palin's map of "targeted" Congressional races urge supporters to "re-load."
Has our national conversation become toxic?

Rush Limbaugh wanna-be's still mock me for sounding-a-well-publicized-warning about how-words-have-consequences: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/17/1930/10234

I SURE hope they're right and I'm wrong.

HC
www.HollandCooke.com

 

[ericdxx]

Did you know that Jodi Foster has inspired more assassination attempts than talk radio hosts?

And ironically Alan Berg got himself murdered during the same era.

 

[jhguthlac]

Nancy Peolosi's march to Capital Hill sparked a lot of anger.

That said, I wish Hannity would tone it down a bit. Rush usually knows the boundary.

 

[Holland Cooke]

Have you noticed?

Rush usually knows the boundary.

To quote the late Phil Hartman portraying the late Ed McMahon:
"You are CORRECT, sir!"

Limbaugh knows EXACTLY where The Line Is.
And when he crosses it, he does so knowingly.
Why: To out-shout all-the-other-guys.

Have you noticed? Every time, recently, he's been interviewed, he stifles a wince when asked about looking-over-his-shoulder-at Glenn Beck.

 

[listener-in]

Members of Congress are being threatened.
U.S Capitol Police have several under protection.
The FBI is investigating some threats.
Members' homes and offices have suffered scattered acts of vandalism.
Cross-hairs icons on Sarah Palin's map of "targeted" Congressional races urge supporters to "re-load."
Has our national conversation become toxic?

Rush Limbaugh wanna-be's still mock me for sounding-a-well-publicized-warning about how-words-have-consequences: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/17/1930/10234

I SURE hope they're right and I'm wrong.

HC
www.HollandCooke.com

Members of Congress are being threatened.
U.S Capitol Police have several under protection.
The FBI is investigating some threats.
Members' homes and offices have suffered scattered acts of vandalism.
Cross-hairs icons on Sarah Palin's map of "targeted" Congressional races urge supporters to "re-load."
Has our national conversation become toxic?

Rush Limbaugh wanna-be's still mock me for sounding-a-well-publicized-warning about how-words-have-consequences: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/17/1930/10234

I SURE hope they're right and I'm wrong.

HC
www.HollandCooke.com

Mr. Cooke, I sure hope so too. As someone in the broadcasting business with no axe to grind except, I believe, providing clients the best advice you can, you are rare in the industry, and I applaud you for asking a question that all too many of your fellow broadcasters have washed their hands of. I, a mere listener, have raised the topic on these boards before; I even used the word toxic. For doing so I have been ridiculed on free speech grounds and on the grounds that stations are free to spew anything they want in order to make money.

As a liberal, I admire the old conservative philosophy which says that with freedom comes responsibility. Unfortunately, what passes for conservatism now has thrown that idea under the bus. I'm sure there are plenty of conservatives in politics and in the business of running broadcast stations who still subscribe to that old-fashioned value but fear to speak out for fear of being vilified by their peers or their bosses – witness the few republican politicians who have first criticized and then scrambled to apologize to the likes of Rush Limbaugh. Dwight Eisenhower must be turning in his grave.

Let’s be clear, the first amendment guarantees you the freedom to speak, but it does NOT say that anyone has to provide you with a platform or a microphone if one chooses not to do so. Broadcast managers and executives who enable the harm done to our public life by some of their on-air ”stars“ are totally irresponsible, regardless of the bottom line. In their private lives, do they continually address others the same way that the toxic talkers address their audience? Would they tolerate it in their children? How would they like to be constantly on the receiving end? Would they tolerate a station employee even once using the same tone of voice to them that the star performers use on the air? Can they look themselves in the mirror?

 

[Holland Cooke]

RE "I applaud you..."

You're gracious to say so...but BE CAREFUL...BE VERY CAREFUL complimenting consultants here!
You'll be shunned quicker than an-Amish-guy-with-an-iPhone.


But seriously...

To-the-extent-that I'm that whistle-blower from within, I expect push-back.
What because what-I'm-saying questions icons, it's fundamentally threatening.
That's only human nature.

And, admittedly, I'm no fun to talk politics with in any event, because I happen to feel that how-I-feel doesn't matter.
I'm too busy listening to talk. I'm a professional eavesdropper.
Sure, I have a viewpoint.
But, at work, it's irrelevant.
I need to be politically agnostic.
If my client station is the Rush Limbaugh affiliate, he's the biggest star on radio.
If my client station competes with his affiliate, he's the biggest buffoon on radio.
As El Rushbo hisself explained, when keynoting last year's Talkers New Media Seminar, it's about TSL, not politics.
He admitted that his real goal isn't changing-anyone's-mind, it's selling Sleep Comfort Mattresses.

Which is all-well-and-good.
'Gotta sleep somewhere, eh?

But we-with-microphones have a responsibility.
Voxpop new-tech like Twitter is obsoleting middlemen like Talk hosts.
By comparison, what-comes-out-the-radio -- a trusty early-20th Century appliance -- has the-ring-of-truth.
What-we-say is presumed to be...so.
So the over-statement now baked-into uber-competitive Talk Radio is risky.
Those preaching "personal responsibility" are also talking to nutjobs who, personally, might not be responsible.

So today's Rush Limbaugh Show theme -- "Who, me?" -- will be shallow comfort if threats escalate.

MIGHT there be a market for (dare I say this?) a voice of reason?
And MUST it take something-terrible-happening for that voice to emerge?

Those who knew Glenn Beck way-back-when consider him "a convenient Conservative."
NOBODY can jump-in-front-of the parade like he can.

The next Talk Radio star might be looking-around-the-corner at pent-up demand for The Voice of Reason.

 

[del_griffith]

Sadly, the voice of reason doesn't resonate with the population.

To a point NPR attempts to fill that niche or demand. They attempt to bring reasoned balance with reasonable voices. While it has a decent listening base, NPR is not for some reason energizing it's listeners who are looking for a balance approach and attempting to find rational answers beyond hearing what NPR is saying.

I don't get the forwarded emails about an NPR program that I get from the latest Glenn Beck expectation of killing fields in our future. I'm surprised Beck hasn't suggested blowing up Mount Rushmore because Teddy Roosevelt had a touch of progressive in him.

For some reason the vast middle doesn't seem motivated to encourage the screaming voices to stop the insanity.

And I've found that even among NPR listeners who also share their ears with the Beck's, Limbaugh's and Hannity's of the world, they are buying more into the what those guys are saying over what they are hearing on Morning Edition or All Things Considered on the way to and from work.

There is more of a trust factor with the flame throwers over the reasonable voices.

 

[Holland Cooke]

RE "NPR attempts to fill that niche"

Good point!
And less-of-a-niche post-1996 de-reg, when the consolidation pig-out forced cash-strapped stations to dumb-down and over-sell and otherwise chase-listeners-away-to NPR's less-abrasive tone.

the vast middle doesn't seem motivated to encourage the screaming voices to stop the insanity...There is more of a trust factor with the flame throwers over the reasonable voices.

That's business-as-usual alrighty, and I HOPE I'M WRONG about it being such risky business.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

And I've found that even among NPR listeners who also share their ears with the Beck's, Limbaugh's and Hannity's of the world, they are buying more into the what those guys are saying over what they are hearing on Morning Edition or All Things Considered on the way to and from work.

There is more of a trust factor with the flame throwers over the reasonable voices.

Maybe you need to get out your glucose meter, your bathroom scale, or whatever device measures one's ability to see things objectively. I would suggest you are letting your personal bias color what you think you are observing around you.

There are the NPR true-believers, and then there are the Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity fans who are willing to listen to NPR. Two different groups! Don't try to meld them all into one group and then think you are a shrewd observer of human behavior.

Then there is the group that you think you are observing: The "Primarily I listen to NPR" but I also listen to the flame throwers just to see what they are doing. I tried to be that for a while. One of two things happened... maybe both. The flame-thrower crowd turned up the heat hotter and hotter and hotter. Or, over a period of time the itch and burning sensation of Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity caused some kind of reaction in my system to the point I find them unbearable even if they haven't changed.

I am curious to know if some social researcher somewhere has come up with a measurement index that allows them to rate the "heat factor" of a given talk show over a period of time and tell us whether it remains constant or it does indeed contain moreor less jalapeño juice than it did 3 months or 6 months ago.

 

[Shoot From Hip]

Isn't it interesting that the same people who endorsed the shouting down of members of Congress last summer during the district hearings on health care (and cheering loudly when each hearing was disrupted to the point of being cancelled) were the first to cry foul when it happened to Ann Coulter in Canada a few days ago. Mob Rule seems to be okay by them, provided it's their mob trying to rule.

 

[Holland Cooke]

PROOF that I'm a nerd!

Mob Rule seems to be okay by them, provided it's their mob trying to rule.

Exactly.

And notice language.
A bill got "RAMMED-THROUGH" Congress when the other side had more votes than your side.

PROOF that I'm a nerd: Slogan envy.
I do slogans, so I notice when people respond to repetition of carefully distilled ideas.

Otherwise-intelligent people parrot-back things like "DEATH PANELS."
(Fearing that the government take-over a function that insurance companies now manage.)

Or "GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER OF HEALTHCARE."
(Grab a bullhorn at the next Tea Party and ask 'em if we should shut down V.A. hospitals.)

In Arbitron parlance:
Democrats won "the PPM war" over healthcare. They got the votes.
But I remain impressed by what effective "diary material" opponents' slogans were.

 

[quadraphonic]

Over the years, there have been plenty of people from the left shouting down people from the right, calling them names, making insinuations about them being racist, sexist, etc.
Only now is there a reason for alarmism, since it happened to the liberal side.

 

[Holland Cooke]

Now I REALLY feel like the-oldest-guy-in-the-room

Only now is there a reason for alarmism, since it happened to the liberal side.

Not "only now."

You may be old-enough to remember Quad' audio (and DIDN'T Sgt. Pepper's sound GREAT?), but I'm thinkin' you weren't tuned-into the '68 convention in Chicago.

And cue-this-one-up on the turntable: CSN "Ohio."

 

[Shoot From Hip]

To "quad": you're not alarmed by verbal threats against politicians, bricks through windows, coffins on lawns, propane tank lines being cut, graphics showing the opposition in a gun's sight, people spitting on members of Congress? That's not discourse, it's attempted intimidation. I don't care which side is doing it...I think it's wrong. Would it be okay if these things were happening to the people you appear to support?

 

[quadraphonic]

Re: Now I REALLY feel like the-oldest-guy-in-the-room

Only now is there a reason for alarmism, since it happened to the liberal side.

Not "only now."

You may be old-enough to remember Quad' audio (and DIDN'T Sgt. Pepper's sound GREAT?), but I'm thinkin' you weren't tuned-into the '68 convention in Chicago.

And cue-this-one-up on the turntable: CSN "Ohio."

I said "only now" in the sense that when it happens to conservatives, it doesn't get the press it's getting today, now that it's happening to the people it's happening to. Okay, maybe it gets that coverage every 40 years, I'm not sure about what went down in '68 in Chicago.

Let's stop talking about the health care debate and start talking about how bad the other side is [even if we got to make some of it up].

 

[johnbasalla]

Remember, there were a couple of movies that seemed to promote the idea of assassinating President Bush. One of them got some kind of award. It is very obvious to me that when threats, direct or indirect, come from the far left, they are pretty much ignored by most of the media. When the same thing happens from the far right, it's all over the place. These activities are wrong on both sides, and so it the biased coverage, or lack of coverage. That being said, I do get worn out by the bombastic chortling of Glenn Beck, and others. That's why I listen to Dennis Prager. He's not a drama-queen, and lays out his arguments in a forthright way.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Those of use who lived through the 60's came away with two sets of thinking. The majority of Americans realized that we needed to calm down, learn to discuss our problems and differences with civility coupled with some give-and-take in the whole political process.

A minority of Americans came out of the era with their fists clenched and a chip on their shoulder.

Some of us are very sensitive to the rise in clenched fists, chips on the shoulder, and untamed mouths and we are scared of what we are observing today.

The 1960's brought us a very physical Civil Rights struggle, the assassination of two Kennedy's, The Democratic Convention in 68 in Chicago, the shootings at Kent State, thousands of people camped out in Washington, DC and the whole Vietnam thing with the bombing of science buildings at universities and spitting on soldiers returning from war. And I did Talk Radio in the middle of all that chaos. And I was told by management at a radio station that I could not refer to the female president of the NAACP for the state as "Mrs. husbands-name last name". I was instructed we call Black women by their given first name. Calling them Mrs. is an honor reserved for White women.

Rush and Hannity and Beck may want to be entertainers with a bit of showmanship, but they remind me some days of "the Real Thing" we had back in the 60s.... (before he took a turn toward decency)... the real thing called George Wallace and before that we had the real thing called Joe McCarthy and sometime before that we had Huey Long.

Maybe we have gone overboard with it a few years ago, but there is a very valid reason why we banded together in this country with some effort at what is called "political correctness".

 

[Holland Cooke]

RE "I'm not sure about what went down in '68 in Chicago"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epxmX_58tOo

As for that Crosby Stills & Nash song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OmZvyNrzAs

Then, Oklahoma City.
Just this year, that guy flies his plane into the IRS office in Austin.

Which-side-you're-on isn't the point.
Tonight, Chris Matthews called it "the zeitgeist" that careless crazy talk puts-in-the-air.
LEFTIE Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy.

Beware air pollution.

 

[quadraphonic]

To "quad": you're not alarmed by verbal threats against politicians, bricks through windows, coffins on lawns, propane tank lines being cut, graphics showing the opposition in a gun's sight, people spitting on members of Congress? That's not discourse, it's attempted intimidation. I don't care which side is doing it...I think it's wrong. Would it be okay if these things were happening to the people you appear to support?

I'm not any more alarmed than I was before, when the other side was shouting down whoever was the target at the time, insinuating racism into every discussion, pigeonholing the other side before the topics even come out.
It's far from "intimidation." I would have to know more before I got more alarmed. We can't even be sure of who's done most of those things, yet, can we? [Not unless we believe everything every politician says, the way they packaged it for us.]

 

[del_griffith]

I believe there is a vast middle who have given up on reasoned facts and tone and and are now allowing , heated rhethoric, no matter whether that heated rhetoric is from Rush or Olbermann, into their ears.

NPR isn't perfect by any means. But it is much more measured in tone than other information sources. Again, they are far from perfect.

And I've found that even among NPR listeners who also share their ears with the Beck's, Limbaugh's and Hannity's of the world, they are buying more into the what those guys are saying over what they are hearing on Morning Edition or All Things Considered on the way to and from work.

There is more of a trust factor with the flame throwers over the reasonable voices.

Maybe you need to get out your glucose meter, your bathroom scale, or whatever device measures one's ability to see things objectively. I would suggest you are letting your personal bias color what you think you are observing around you.

There are the NPR true-believers, and then there are the Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity fans who are willing to listen to NPR. Two different groups! Don't try to meld them all into one group and then think you are a shrewd observer of human behavior.

Then there is the group that you think you are observing: The "Primarily I listen to NPR" but I also listen to the flame throwers just to see what they are doing. I tried to be that for a while. One of two things happened... maybe both. The flame-thrower crowd turned up the heat hotter and hotter and hotter. Or, over a period of time the itch and burning sensation of Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity caused some kind of reaction in my system to the point I find them unbearable even if they haven't changed.

I am curious to know if some social researcher somewhere has come up with a measurement index that allows them to rate the "heat factor" of a given talk show over a period of time and tell us whether it remains constant or it does indeed contain moreor less jalapeño juice than it did 3 months or 6 months ago.