My attitudes towards Rush Limbaugh have gone through a lot of changes over the past couple of decades. While many of you were first introduced to him when he came onto the national scene in 1988 I was aware of him several years earlier during his broadcasts in Sacramento. During those early years I had several occasions to meet him in those early years and he was always quite polite.
Indeed when he was broadcasting on local radio he was very kind with all of his callers, especially those who disagreed with him. Since the Sacramento radio market includes places like UC Davis and the SF Bay area it was not difficult to find people to call in and dispute his conservative positions but he was always quite kind. He was also relatively humble about his position and tended to disdain people who called with praise for him.
Needless to say this attitude has changed over the years as Rush has become, in my opinion, far too sold on himself and the repeated calls from his legions of Dittoheads. There was a reason behind the Roman tradition of having a slave on hand to remind a conquering hero that ‘all fame is fleeting’, you just can’t get too sold on yourself
My experience with the style of Keith Olbermann has, of course, been considerably shorter than my background with Rush Limbaugh. He did not come onto the scene as a political commentator until 2003 and it was probably right around then that I started to hear his broadcasts. Prior to that I’d been vaguely familiar with his work in the sports broadcasting world but that was obviously non political.
Because he was pretty much confrontational and disrespectful from the beginning I can’t really discuss if his rise to fame had an impact on his attitudes to those who disagree with him or if he was always that way. But I do think it is fair to say that his attitude toward President Bush, Republicans, conservatives, etc is a mirror image of Limbaugh and his behavior towards President Obama, Democrats and liberals.
In both cases I have serious problems not with the content of their messages (though I obviously do disagree with both on many topics) but rather with the manner of their style to those who disagree with them
As I said before, when Rush first came to the airwaves in the Sacramento area he was just as flamboyant in style and just as firm in his convictions. If you called in to his show and disagreed with him you were going to get a solid debate from him and he was not going to concede ground. But he was respectful about it.
Similarly, while he was no fan of the Democratic party during the 1984 and 1986 election campaigns and made it clear that he thought they supported bad policies that would have negative results. But he never took the Morton Downey step of attacking them as people.
That has, of course changed massively over the last 2 decades to the point that he oozes a level of contempt for opposing viewpoints that would make Kim Jong Il proud. During the Clinton years he made references to the evil people in the White House, expressed his hate for those in the administration and so on. Right now he is openly rooting for the President to fail in his efforts to bail out the economy.
On the same topic, Olbermann is stunningly intolerant of anyone who expresses an attitude that is off of his own mantra and seldom has guests from the other side, unless it is to attack them for whatever ‘evil’ policy or public figure they have chosen to support.
As I was planning this post I happened to catch an episode of the West Wing. My relationship towards that show has also been mixed, sometimes I found it entertaining and thought provoking while other times I felt it went too far in promoting the agenda of the left or in attacking the agenda of the right. But there was one scene which I felt sums up my attitudes towards these two men.
In the scene a young Republican attorney has been offered a job working in the Democratic White House. She is planning to turn the job down until she meets with some of her GOP friends. In the scene they express their hatred for those in the White House and discusses how evil and awful they are. Her response is worth quoting directly here.
Say they’re smug and superior, say their approach to public policy makes you want to tear your hair out.
Say they like high taxes and spending your money.
Say they want to take your guns and open your borders, but don’t call them worthless.
The people that I have met have been extraordinarily qualified, their intent is good.
Their commitment is true, they are righteous, and they are patriots.
I would say the same thing to Mr. Limbaugh and his supporters. I have many issues with the Obama agenda and with the policies being proposed by Pelosi and Reid in the Congress. I think that they are far too willing to expand government and far too eager to raise taxes.
I am concerned about the degree to which they want to nationalize the economy and I worry about efforts to expand the power of often corrupt labor unions at the expense of small businesses. I do not like the ideas that some in Congress have for imposing federal control over the content of the talk radio.
At the same time I also have concerns about some of the policies of the political right. I think they are often far too eager to impose a social agenda on the country while at the same time frequently ignoring the problems faced by many of the children they seek to protect. I think they are far too concerned about what goes on in the privacy of the bedroom and not concerned enough about what goes on in some corrupt boardrooms.
But I do not doubt that these people are, for the most part, just as described in the quote above. They are dedicated people, they are educated people, they are patriots. They want to do what is best for this country and they want to solve the many problems currently facing us. They disagree on how to get there but they have the same goals.
If Rush wants to attack the policies of the Obama administration then I am all for it. If he wants to oppose the agenda of the Democratic Congress, that is his right and his duty as a good citizen. But he should not sink to the level of attacking their dedication to this country or to their sincerity.
By the same token, if Keith wants to rail about how the Republican policies are bad, then he should do just that. His job is to say what he thinks and to try and rally people to his cause. But things like ‘the worst person in the world’ which attack people as being ‘evil’ just because they adopt different viewpoints is wrong.
Doing that is beneath him and it is beneath our grand experiment in freedom and democracy and both men should be ashamed of themselves.