Just to be able to write this blog, I tuned in to Rush Limbaugh
for a couple of afternoons this past week. President Obama has only been in office for a month now, and he inherited a mountain of difficulties unlike anything seen by a new president since Franklin Roosevelt, but nonetheless, former top 40 DJ Jeff Christie 
-now known as El Rushbo to his hordes of parrots - sees fit to criticize him in vile terms, even going so far as resort to the old gossip column trick of reading something factual and then questioning its veracity.For instance, conservative talk hosts all have their knickers in a knot over their fear that the Pelosi-Obama-Biden team - those people who have seized control over "their" government - will soon reinstitute some version of the Fairness Doctrine, which would purportedly require crackpot rightwing broadcast outlets to present an intelligently-stated opposing viewpoint! Since these people detest opposing points of view like Limbaugh hates salads, this becomes a call to arms! Even though there's nothing to it!
The first sign I had that this sort of crazed broadcasting would be dangerous to our society came about 15 years ago, at the very onset of the Clinton years, (you remember, that was when the government actually ran up a surplus and we had eight years of unprecedented peacetime and economic growth) when a guy I worked with came in and breathlessly reported, "I just heard it on the radio - Bill Clinton had Vince Foster killed because Hillary was pregnant by him." Now, this man was not exactly what you'd call well-read or well-spoken, so I just had to ask what reliable news outlet had broadcast this story. "Oh, a man called Rush with the story - it's big news!," he said, conflating the maniacal rantings of some dufus with actual news. Yes, save for the fact that it wasn't news, or true, or big, it sure was...something.
That was the first time for me, but there have been plenty of examples since. People listening to the radio or watching Fox "News" on TV hear some rumor, some made-up fable being used to explain what some can't understand (same reason for Greek mythology), and they believe it to be factual, since they heard it on the radio or TV. Along the same lines, we see our fellow citizens claiming something must be true because "it was in the paper" and the paper they refer to is the National Enquirer or some other checkout rag.
Anyway, the point that avid drug consumer Limbaugh
(nice mugshot!) kept hammering away at (and none too subtly; his audience seems to require insistent repetition in order to grasp his - soon to be their - tenets) was, "I am presenting to you the information that the LEFT doesn't want you to hear."Folks, I am part of the left, and I warrant to you that we don't care to censor what anyone wants to say. Unlike those people who carry on and demand that people be fired or prosecuted or waterboarded or forced to go hunting with Dick Cheney, we have nothing to lose by letting anyone and everyone be exposed to anything and everything in the field of political discourse.
If you ever get chance to see the movie "A Face
In The Crowd," check it out. I won't wreck it for those who don't know the story, but it presents a cautionary tale about those who get on the radio and bellow insincerely. You must understand that smokeblower 
Limbaugh believes very little of the claptrap he seems to espouse. He is far too intelligent to do so. He was smart enough to parlay his gift of bloviation and self-promotion into this multi-million dollar enterprise. He plays a part on a radio show. He is an actor, a performer, a tool of the real brains over there - i.e. the Roves 
and the Cheneys
, the script writers who send out the talking points for the Rushes and the O'Reillys.
Every radio has an on-off button and channel changer. I used mine to go back to NPR.
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