Eric Boehlert: Unhinged in 30 days: The right-wing media's Obama era implosion

[babylonsister]

Unhinged in 30 days: The right-wing media's Obama era implosion

by Eric Boehlert


The Republican Noise Machine doesn't need the customary 100 days to size up the new president. Right-wing commentators barely needed 30 days to come to their conclusion that they hate everything Barack Obama stands for.

In terms of speed and efficiency, the right-wing collection of bloggers, AM talkers, pundits, and yes, newspaper cartoonists, may have set a new land speed record for becoming collectively unhinged, as they wail and moan about how the new Democratic president's turning America into a fascist state, or communist, or socialist, or whatever other bugaboo claim Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham are tossing out to viewers and listeners on a daily basis.

Barack Obama is "arrogant," "dishonest," and "radical," Fox News' Sean Hannity announced during a single 10-second chunk of prime-time TV last week -- a casually hateful appraisal that didn't even raise eyebrows, simply because that kind of blanketed disdain for the new president has already become so commonplace.

Rush Limbaugh's original anti-Obama proclamation at the outset of his presidency -- "I hope he fails" -- already seems benign in retrospect. Since Inauguration Day we've learned Obama has "Marxist tendencies" and is "addicting this country to heroin -- the heroin that is government slavery" (Glenn Beck). That, "there are eerie, eerie similarities" between Obama and Nazis" (Michael Savage's guest host, Chris Stigall). And of course, Limbaugh himself famously bemoaned that "e are being told that we have to hope succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles ... because his father was black."

Meanwhile, last week widely read right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin was seen smiling while getting her picture taken with an Obama hater who proudly brandished a swastika placard at an anti-Obama rally in Denver. And the following day, Rupert Murdoch's far-right New York Post published a grotesque cartoon that seemed to associate Obama with a bullet-ridden monkey who'd been shot by two white cops on a city sidewalk.

If we just pause and take one or two steps back from the daily/hourly barrage of hate, it's obvious that faced with the new Obama presidency, the Republican Noise Machine has already lost all perspective -- has gone totally loco -- and it's only February, a mere month into Obama's first four years in office. Who dares to even imagine where the right-wing "conversation" goes from here?

It's astounding to watch the avalanche of hate ooze from conservative media quarters. And why? Because Obama passed an economic recovery bill. Good Lord, imagine if he had failed to win the popular vote and then led the country into a pre-emptive war based on faulty intelligence, a war that lost thousands of American lives, and tens of thousands of foreign lives, while milking the U.S. treasury out of a few trillion dollars in the process.

more...

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200902230016

[damntexdem]

1. While Obama's popularity soars. And remember how popular B. Clinton remained after the impeachment.

The RW shoots its mouths off, but it doesn't bother to aim, nor would matter if it tried.

[Andy823]

2. The right wing media

Is coming off as a bunch of idiots, who only spew hate and promote violence and other than their right wing radical base, which is shrinking, nobody else agrees with them, matter of fact the polls show that the majority of americans agree with what Obama has done. What they are doing simply will not help the republican party find a direction, but will split the party, and that will not be good for them. One side will be looking for a new direction far removed from what Bush gave them, and the other part will be living in the past with idiots like Rush, Hannity, and Coulter spewing their hate. Good for democrats, not good for republicans.

[babylonsister]

3. Yet that's not stopping any of them. They don't seem to care, or

are confident their base isn't going anywhere.

[depakid]

6. The only thing that will mitigate this is responsible media regulation

Much the same way as the only thing that's going to bring sanity back to the economy is responsible public policy and regulations.

[OhioChick]

4. K&R

:kick:

[bemildred]

5. Bullshit becomes a discipline, a way of life after a while. nt

[Elidor]

7. The old dynamic remains in place

Many villagers are instinctively scared of republicans (Exhibit A: Wolf Blitzer). They have little reason to be scared of democrats, and they can score a lot of cheap points by trashing them. If Rahm Emanuel can do any good at all, maybe he can start to change that dynamic a little bit. It needs some serious work.

[bobthedrummer]

8. Class-ical conditoning/b.mod=political mind control n/t