Into the Black

That bogged down feeling of being stuck in a quagmire has set down.  Where once there had been boundless energy, a feeling of righteous certainty, and the knowledge that they were the ones with all the answers and that everything would be just fine if people would just listen, there is now nothing but a listless, semi-autonomous recital of used talking points and ideas long proved wrong.  It is as if, like a security blanket or a long forgotten religious rite, saying the old things might make them true once more.

Talk radio, always in some sort of a funk during the Holiday season as people’s thoughts turn to happier things, seems to be smelling even more funky than usual.  This election hurt, and the conservative talkers have been thrown for a loss.  They did there best, trying hard to use ever scary story of the dangers of liberalism they could come up with (and vainly trying to have the country treat this election as if it were to make Nancy Pelosi Prime Minister), and nothing worked.  The losses, from Rick Santorum to Tom Delay to J.D. Hayworth hit the rights’ talkers hard.  All were favorites of the right, frequent guest, and every right wing talker from Limbaugh to Hannity to Medved put their honor on the line telling their listeners that these great men would not fall.  (The day before the election, Medved told a national pollster on hearing that Santorum was behind by over 10 points and dead meat that he still believed that Santorum would pull it out; that was the election surprised he was calling).

They tried everything, from threatening that the United States would become Vermont, or worse, San Francisco, to promising a gay marriage in every pot, and nothing worked.  And that realization is seeping into their heads, which had known nothing but certainty for so long, and it seems that they are now being driven slowly but surely insane with the realization that their best days are gone. 

It is not as if talk radio is dead; Limbaugh keeps reminding himself and the diehards that are still listening that the coming of Clinton was the best thing that ever happened to him every chance he gets, but clearly his heart isn’t in it.  It is as if, having seen his zenith,   Since apologizing to his listeners for having lied to them to support the Republicans, has now taken five of the last eight days off.  The last two for something “very special” that was supposedly non-political.  It is, however, hard to believe that out side a trip for forbidden love in the Caribbean, which would be just between him, the persons who name is on the bottle of Viagra, and his local customs official, how anything he did will not be used to show how the liberals are bad in his next show.  Still, obviously, the old energy is not there.

Hannity has been wasting the last two weeks complaining that a person who no one said would become the next head of the House Intelligence Committee should not be made the next head of the House Intelligence Committee, and how John Murtha, because he did not commit a crime 20 years ago should not be in the house leadership.  Now that neither of these non-events have happened, he has no idea what to do.  Worse, he cannot seem to understand why more people aren’t fired up about committee appointments in the House (as if anyone ever did).

Medved finally found some energy the other day attacking the plans for the Feds to help fund a light rail tunnel in Seattle, but outside of the five local listeners that might have cared about the issue, it is hard to believe that such a small, reasonable appropriation that no one else in the United States cares about really did much for his audience.  The fact that his main argument, that people in Mississippi should not have to pay for transit in Seattle, is totally blown apart when you consider that Washington, on the whole, sends more money to the Federal Government than it receives back, was conveniently not mentioned.

Even locally, the old energy is gone.  The ‘tators have descended into the worse vices of both Ken Schram and John Carlson, focusing on little local annoyances like bad driving in Seattle instead of anything that might actually spark some real interest.  Most everyone else, when they care to be on the air, are on autopilot. 

Obviously things will get more interesting with time.  Locally, control of the legislature by the Democrats that is unprecedented in recent memory will play into the paranoid fantasies of the right and add a spark come late January.  Dan Sytman will have time to come up with all kind of bad nick names for Democrats that David Boze will dutifully wince through, and Ken Hutchison is taking every attempt he can to prepare the flock for the coming gay revolution (although one has a feeling that a little meth and a massage would solve the problem).  We just have to hold on for another month, and the worse will be over.

On the national level, though, where the malaise is worse, the solution is also much farther off.  Congress is a slow moving creature, and attacking the amorphous blob that is Congress only plays to the true believers.  In reality, most people don’t care who is doing what in congress, as long as they are not lining their pockets or diddling the help.  Instead, the right is left hoping for a disaster that they can blame the Democrats for.  Be it a terrorist attack or a Kennedy drinking, they know that their only hope for a quick revival is for bad things to happen to America.

Otherwise, they have to wait for the Democrats to pick a standard bearer.  And it is over a year until that process even gets underway.  Sure, they will trot out Hillary Clinton every chance they get, although at times it seems the only people that hope she runs are right wing radio host.  But having played that card for the last five years, one gets the feeling that even Hannity dreads having to say her name over and over for nearly 400 days.  Even then, having no new ideas, one wonders if they will find the old energy again.

These are the dark days for right wing talk radio.  There seems to be a secret dread amongst the national talkers that the big wave has come and gone, and that being on the down-side will not be as much fun as being on the rise.  Limbaugh’s subs make this point obviously clear; where once he had a deep bench (Hannity, Medved, Snow), he is stuck with minor league bomb throwers who no one ever heard of and who do little but remind us of the one great truth, that Democrats are nothing more than the Communist party by any other name. 

Having lived through their zenith, a fear is creaping into their hearts.  If they stay the course, they are doomed to a chaotic quagmire of their own making.  But to change would mean having to admit they were wrong and, most scarily to them, having to question their fundamental beliefs.  So far, the President has shown an inability to accept his failures and change his path, preferring to wallow in a quagmire of his own making rather than admit to having been wrong.  The question is will those that have carried his water for so long be able to change, or be doomed to wallow in the mud that, for so long, gave them life.

Comments

[ryder]

Well I for one would like to see some hosts do something they will rarely, if ever, do. Open up the lines for a discussion of talk radio.

Dori will do it now & then after first telling the listerners that he knows none of them are really interested in the topic. The discussion will last an hour then be discarded for another couple of years.

And yet, I think it would behoove all of them to do just that. Let the listeners rant about way too many commercials. Talk about other hosts, not just the one on air at the moment.

They might be able to save their market. Otherwise I fear it will not be very long before most of us get sick of all the "I just gotta get to a break" lines that seems to come up whenever a topic is interesting.

[joanie]

Ryder, shame on you. Don't you know it is all about profit? Actually, I think they would make more profit with fewer commercials and better radio.

I have the same problem with TV and watch a lot less because of it. But then, I'm no longer in their target audiences.

[John]

Great article, I love it.

[sparky]

You "worry" needlessly, methinks. A Democratic Congress is a right-wing talker's dream. They get to blame them for everything from the weather to the price of cheese. They are just pretending to be upset..they know this is money in the bank for them.
In fact, some of them have already started. Chris Wallace was OUTRAGED, i tell you, OUTRAGED that Jim Webb was MEAN to the President the other day.

Meh...

[Fremont]

Now, that's "listening to talk radio so I don't have to"....Well done, Jeff!

OUTRAGED, REALLY OUTRAGED, is that what you're just sayin' Sparks?! The art of spin is fascinating...outrageous, yet marvelous!

[Bill]

Geeez, how I long for the days when a 3 hour talk show consisted of one hour with a guy trying to mass-market his electric car invention, one hour with an entertaining celebrity passing through town or a media discussion roundtable, and the last hour open line.

I just want to be entertained a little, amused occasionally, and made to think most of the time. Is that to much to ask?

Political talk and sycophantic formats are really starting to make my head hurt.

[sparky]

When Dori was fun, he had a Friday program where he asked about 50 trivia questions and people could call in and answer them...you didnt win anything, just had the satisfaction of being one who could answer.

[Thom]

Jeff Bradley...paragraphs are our friends.

...my eyes!! my eyes!!

[FREMONT]

Applause to Jeff for braving the labyrinthine innards of typepad...paragraphs be damned!

[JDB]

Paragraphs are your friend, but I'm just an amateur blogger, and TypePad kept refusing to put them in place. Why it wouldn't double space between paragraphs after the first I have no idea. Technology, bah humbug.