I live in LA, and I’m lucky. I was able to take a Sharpie and redirect the hurricane over Mar-A-Lago Comedienne Stephanie Miller
It’s been one helluva long run, better than anything I think any of the principles ever expected. The run of the far right, FUX News generated bubble sphere has lasted more than a quarter century. But just like that submersible that tried to make one too many trips down to the Titanic, the cracks start to show eve if no one sees them.
I’ll explain. We’ve had the news media, mainstream and otherwise around us for decades. And we’ve had an endless array of media personalities to choose from for our news.
But every once in a while, in whatever media, one personality becomes dominant. For instance, there will ever be only one Jim Henson. Ditto for Fred Rogers. No more Howard Cosels for boxing and football, one Verne Lundquist for March Madness, and never another Vin Scully for baseball. And for national affairs, if you weren’t getting your news from Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley or Barbara Walters, you were sadly misinformed.
And so it was for the far right bubble sphere as well. For some 25 years Rush Limbaugh was the only voice on conservative radio worth listening to. He built what should have been a towering radio empire, until, like Icarus, he slew too close to the sun, called college student Sandra Flook a slut, and social media took care of his fat *ss. On FUX News, Billo-the Clown O’Reilly ruled the roost, until his sexual quirks, like confusing a falafel with a loofah laid him low. Worse, FUX News architect Roger Ailes couldn’t control his glands, and got bounced. The latest media conservative icon has been the filthy Mother Tucker.
But media has changed in the last 25 years. Fewer people listen to radio every day, Sirius has cut in, and more people listen to streaming media or podcasts. And on television, FUX News is now assailed on all sides by renegades like Sinclair Media, NewsMax, OAN, and digital streaming. As long as they had Limbaugh and O’Reilly, FUX and conservative radio were safe and secure. Their audiences weren’t going anywhere.
As Media Matters President Angelo Carusone pointed out today on MSNBC, the 2022 midterms were the first elections held in 25 years without the verbal spew and venom of Rush Limbaugh dominating the airwaves. Say what you want about Limbaugh, and I have nothing good to say, his following was legion, and a single word from his lips was enough to open the floodgates to the polls. The same thing went for O’Reilly. Since Bill-o, FUX Has burned through Sean Hannity, Cruella de Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson. Carlson came the closest to O’Reilly, but he’s banished to the outlands of The platform formally known as Twitter.
A couple of points here. I do this pretty much as a passion and a vocation, I don’t make enough for a living. And as a result, I tend to keep my ear to the media ground, especially since Flush Limbaugh cut us all a break. And I have yet to hear, in any media outlet, even heard a whisper of anybody in conservative radio, even on Sirius XM that’s even on the path to recreating Limbaugh’s empire. And Carlson at his zenith never seriously approached O’Reilly’s death grip on his audience.
FUX knows they’re in trouble. According to MSNBC today, FUX News has devoted a full 22% of their GOP primary coverage to Traitor Tot out of a 10 candidate field. Shades of 2016. But Trump holds nothing if not a grudge, and is skipping the Wednesday night GOP debate of FUX to appear with Mother Tucker instead. Which should be fun, since Elon Musk’s wet dream crashed for his highly touted Ron DeSantis announcement, which figures to garner far fewer viewers than a Trump-Carlson lovefest.
For almost a quarter of a century two men, Limbaugh on conservative radio, and O’Reilly on FUX News literally commanded a turnout machine juggernaut. Both are gone. And there’s no one on the horizon to replace them, especially since the grounds of engagement have changed. But ask yourself this one simple question. If Rush Limbaugh had still been alive in 2022, and if he had picked a pet peeve, gone on air with it, and turned the heat to high, might that have been enough to alter the voter turnout, and with it the results of the 2022 midterms? We’ll never know.
People die, I have been around long enough to see it happen. Rush ruled for decades. Orally was top of his game, Ailes at fox, then they were not. Is Orally still alive? Radio is dead along with rush, the kids dont care anymore. they stream stuff like joe rogan. Fox is for boomers. nobody watches anymore who is going to be alive in 10 years.
Since we are talking about RWNJ a-holes I’d rather not use polite words like implosion. I’d rather talk like Navy folks do, and use the term crush-depth. It’s supposed to be quite the thing to hear as the bulkheads inside a ship give out, the rending of the metal. And once that happens water rushes in so fast anyone inside doesn’t have time to scream before the water crushed the life right out of them, turning them into a mess of human pulp. Call me savage, but I wouldn’t lose a moments sleep if the lot of these RW media pricks went on a luxury cruise and their ship got ripped open by an iceberg in the middle of the night and sank so quickly no one made it out of their bunks before it was underwater, sinking to crush depth. Due to the Titan incident at least they’d experience a small amount of time to feel the terror of knowing what was about to happen to them!
Well, Limbaugh had a MAJOR advantage that the current crop of con-radio non-personalities severely lack: NO REAL COMPETITION.
Limbaugh got his start in the late 1980s, not too long after Reagan gutted the Fairness Doctrine and opened up AM radio to a virtual non-stop talk radio (mostly con-talk radio) format that didn’t have to worry about silly things like “equal time for other viewpoints.” Until Fox “News” came along–nearly a decade later–Limbaugh had the field virtually to himself which allowed him to “brand” right-wing radio and everyone else that came after him was nothing else but a Limbaugh wannabe. O’Reilly was never a real “name” until after he joined Fox “News” (this was after spending the early 90s at the tabloid TV program, “Inside Edition”-before this, he’d been a more-or-less legitimate journalist/correspondent for both CBS and ABC).
Funny you use Stephanie Miller. Her show airs on Free Speech TV every morning 9am east coast time. Her dad was a running mate of Barry Goldwater and a Nuremberg prosecutor. Check it out.
O’Reilly occasionally shows up on Chris Cuomo’s show on NewsNation, pretending to be some kind of elder statesman of conservatism. But it’s the same BS he spewed during his heyday on Fox News.
You forgot/left out, my favorite, Dan Rather!
Good argument that we can thank Limbaugh for President Trump.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-rush-limbaugh-invented-donald-trump
paywall, but if you haven’t been there lately you probably can read it for free.
All of the traditional media outlets (include MSNBC, CNN, etc. to that list) are dying out.
Or rather their viewers are. I think most people under the age of 50 get much, if any, news from them.