1994: Coming Full Circle

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Something big happened Tuesday. And something even bigger, in my mind, happened yesterday. Yes, the first involves the election but the other isn’t Rumsfeld resigning as you might expect (although I’m glad Rummy’s gone, it will have little practical impact on the war or the Bush administration).

A little background. In the fall of 1994, before the midterm elections that year, I had become increasingly concerned with the influence of rightwing talk radio. I was foreseeing it having an impact on the upcoming elections. My concern had less to do with ideology per se than with the staggering amount of, and I’ll be nice here, misinformation that was being disseminated. Equally bad, I felt, was the tone and viciousness that demonized opponents in ways I had never seen in the American political realm, at least not during my lifetime.

The rightwing talkers had only gained a solid footing in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the vacuum created when AM radio finally and totally gave up on music. They quickly gained an audience with their special blend of easy answers and vitriol. People like Rush Limbaugh became celebrities (remember Rush rooms). It had become fashionable to be an extremist.

What alarmed me the most about guys like Limbaugh, who I listed to quite frequently back then, was the style of propaganda they employed. It reminded me of another broadcasting experience I had had years earlier. When I was in my mid-teens I got a shortwave radio that allowed me to listen to international broadcasts from all over the world, including places like the Soviet Union and China. The propaganda coming out of my radio from Radio Moscow or Radio Havana Cuba was both amusing and obvious. It was what it was, but I often wondered why they even bothered. I mean who would believe this stuff.

By 1994, however, I was hearing the same style (different politics) of propaganda over our domestic airwaves. And people were actually buying it. That scared me and as the midterm elections approached, I feared it would have an impact. I was right. The “Republican Revolution” ushered in a whole new breed of conservative politicians that hve dominated the political discourse in this country ever since.

But that’s all ending now. On Tuesday the country, as a whole, rejected the propaganda. Then on Wednesday, the lead propagandist revealed himself:

The way I feel is this: I feel liberated, and I'm going to tell you as plainly as I can why. I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried. Now, you might say, "Well, why have you been doing it?" Because the stakes are high! Even though the Republican Party let us down, to me they represent a far better future for my beliefs and therefore the country's than the Democrat [sic] Party does and liberalism.

I'm a radio guy! I understand what this program has become in America and I understand the leadership position it has. I was doing what I thought best, but at this point, people who don't deserve to have their water carried, or have themselves explained as they would like to say things but somehow aren't able to? I'm not under that kind of pressure.

That was Rush Limbaugh yesterday commenting on Tuesday's election results and admitting he has been broadcasting things even he didn’t necessarily believe, all in the name of the cause. That, friends, is called propaganda. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s important to see Rush and his ilk for what they are. I’m just sorry that it’s taken the nation more than a dozen years to do that.