Huh? Obviously Coulter (and Hannity) are still alive and well. So if there's a vacuum, what caused it?

I listened to his show every day for a while a few years ago. And whatever talking points Karl Rove issued from the White House, came right out of his mouth- almost word for word. A lot of it as we now know turned out not to be true, and what's worse damaged our economy and prestige on the world stage.

Rush was carrying water for Bush/Cheney — and very seldom split from them. Even worse now, he and Beck are seen as the leaders of the GOP- not Michael Steele, not Mitch McConnell, not John Boehner. He manipulates public opinion with distortions, lies and quotes out of context to further his agenda. That, my friend is propaganda. It may be entertaining but that doesn't change it.

I've heard all of those right wing hacks tell their listeners that they can't trust the MSM, so they need to get their news right from them. You can be a dittohead or you can be Hannitized— but you'd better not disagree with them on the air. Basically its brainwashing. Levin is like Michael Savage – loud, rude, and very extreme.

I would never listen to anyone – or at least believe them- who told me to get my news from just one source. Billo does the same thing with his “no spin zone”.

I don't consider most of what he says (at least what I have heard) to be propagandistic. I believe he's been wrong about this and that, on occasion, when I've listened to him. (At the same time as his show, at lunchtime here, is the Thom Hartmann show, on the station that plays far lefty talk radio, and I often listen to Hartmann instead; if I'm out in the afternoon, I'll listen to Ed Schultz rather than Sean Hannity, for example. And of course, I don't neglect NPR on FM radio.) Limbaugh isn't as bad as the other righties (who are copycats with a loud edge, as a rule) and makes much more sense (to the extent I've heard him and the others, at least) than many far-lefty talkers (though probably anyone can make more sense than dippy Stephanie Miller and her morning I-think-I'm-a-comedienne show).

To say the least, that's a Gore-like, ahem, “exaggeration.”

Limbaugh, in fact, remains the best. The others are followers-on, who typically are louder and aren't as entertaining.

In fact, what Obama should do is try to get onto Limbaugh's show if he's any more desperate than he already is with the health care effort. (Or he can reserve it, that decision and attempt, for some other, appropriately effective time later this year or sometime afterward.) Most open-minded liberals would enjoy hearing Limbaugh have to face Obama (if only indirectly, behind his Golden EIB Microphone in his Attila the Hun Chair from his studio that day) and be properly deferential — almost sucking up to the President, in fact.

Or it's just a ratings war, filling the Coulter (and Hannity) vacuum.

They are the Father Coughlins of our time and are a real threat to our democracy.

But levin is the last one to complain about Beck. In fact he's a bigger assh%%e than Beck.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/05/th…

I don't listen to talk radio a lot, because I have a short commute between office and home. But last fall, I got into the car with a colleague to go pick up a pizza (we were working late), and heard some conservative talker with a screechy voice just making an ass of himself. Even when I disagree with Limbaugh, he's interesting to listen to — funny and entertaining. So too with Laura Ingraham, and even Anne Coulter. But this guy was just horrible. He sounded horrible, and he whined and moaned and basically carried on like the shrill crackpot at the bar that you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to get away from, and then head for the door.

“That's Mark Levin,” my friend explained.

Conor Friedersdorf listened to a Levin bit the other day, in which the radio talker had the following exchange:

MARK LEVIN: Answer me this, are you a married woman? Yes or no?

CALLER: Yes.

MARK LEVIN: Well I don't know why your husband doesn't put a gun to his temple. Get the hell out of here.

If anything, blacks should be mad at him for being so damned white..lol.. My daughter has a friend just like him, half black and white and raised in an area where I think I've seen about ten black people in a year's time. She's absolutely as white as the whitest girl you can find [but with maddenly beautiful dark skin and a body like a model, over six feet tall]. She's a crack up. Her voice is so quite and soft that you have to really perk up your ears to hear what she's saying. She likes bands like Tom Petty, Madonna, Modest Mouse and so on. Unless she's looking in a mirror I doubt she has the slightest clue about how she's “supposed” to be different from all her friends. Nobody reminds her and so she remains the one white girl who tans better than anyone else..lol..

Great girl by the way, super friendly and smart. Pretty much like Obama.. If Beck pulled his head out of his arse he'd figure out he'd make more hate-headway courting the blacks to hate Obama..lol..

As others have said above, this is really the pot calling the kettle black. Beck and Levin are both bad for conservatism, and Levin has hardly been the voice of reason.

Frankly, calling Mark Levin “right-wing” is an afront to the entire “right wing” movement. Mark Levin is a professional hatemonger.

Is there's a right-wing talk show host who is not a professional hater?

However, Beck is correct if for no other reason than a McCain administration would be filled with former
Bush administration types who spent eight years showing the world how incompetent they were.

Since conservatives are irrelevant to politics and governance, maybe progressives should spent their time disucssing real issues and those who really are relevant to poltics, policy, and governance instead of talking about a group that is irrelevant.

For those people who think O'Reilly loses all sense of civility when he shouts at his guests, you haven't heard ANYTHING until you'd heard Mark Levin.

Mark Levin is a certified warmonger. He appeared on Sean Hannity's radio show back in January/February of 2003 so that he could “debate” some antiwar activist who apparently didn't have any idea who Mark Levin was or what he was getting himself into. During the brief time that the debate lasted, Levin shouted non-stop ad hominem attacks at the antiwar activist.

During his tirade, Levin compared people who spoke out against the Iraq War to 1930's Germans who allowed the Holocaust to occur.

Think about that! According to Mark Levin, darling of the conservative movement, speaking out against a pre-emptive war is equivalent to being indifferent to the systematic murder of more than six million Jews!

Mark Levin also regularly used ad hominem attacks to lash out against Ron Paul supporters during the 2008 Republican Presidential primaries.

Frankly, calling Mark Levin “right-wing” is an afront to the entire “right wing” movement. Mark Levin is a professional hatemonger.

I think Beck is just another agitator- demagoging the party faithful with half truths, lies and distortions– but he DOES have a deceptively populist approach that appeals to a certain sector of the GOP. Glenn Beck has a reasonable approach to his subject matter– so if you don't read sources on both sides, he almost sounds convincing.

Its different from Hannity, Limbaugh and Levin whose shows largely consist of serial bashing of anyone or thing that remotely approaches liberalism.