Conservative talk radio loves to condemn the bias of the mainstream media. The hosts have persuaded their audience to ignore and discount any information coming from the MSM. The result is, the media has been delegitimized, the normal guideposts are down, the referees are discredited.

Of course I’d believe that, disliking conservative talk radio as much as I do. Naturally I’d blame them for harming our national discourse by demonizing the media. But I didn’t say it. My first paragraph is a paraphrase from a column written by Charlie Sykes, a well known conservative talk show host from Wisconsin. Here it is in his words.

One staple of every radio talk show was, of course, the bias of the mainstream media. This was, indeed, a target-rich environment. But as we learned this year, we had succeeded in persuading our audiences to ignore and discount any information from the mainstream media. Over time, we’d succeeded in delegitimizing the media altogether — all the normal guideposts were down, the referees discredited.

It’s a fascinating column from a guy like Sykes whose conservative credentials are impeccable. “I helped advance the careers of conservatives like House Speaker Paul D. Ryan; Gov. Scott Walker; Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee; and Senator Ron Johnson,” he wrote in the column. He dislikes collective bargaining and is a staunch supporter of school choice. He and I have nearly nothing in common politically or ideologically. The only thing we share is a dislike of Donald Trump. And that’s where his trouble began.

He lost listeners because he wouldn’t back Trump, and he fell victim to the social media hatred the right generally reserves for Democrats and the “liberal media.”

Unless you have experienced it, it’s difficult to describe the virulence of the Twitter storms that were unleashed on Trump skeptics. In my timelines, I found myself called a “cuckservative,” a favorite gibe of white nationalists; and someone Photoshopped my face into a gas chamber. Under the withering fire of the trolls, one conservative commentator and Republican political leader after another fell in line.

Sykes doesn’t like Hillary Clinton either, but he’s disturbed by the way she’s perceived by many of his listeners.

For many listeners, nothing was worse than Hillary Clinton. Two decades of vilification had taken their toll: Listeners whom I knew to be decent, thoughtful individuals began forwarding stories with conspiracy theories about President Obama and Mrs. Clinton — that he was a secret Muslim, that she ran a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor. When I tried to point out that such stories were demonstrably false, they generally refused to accept evidence that came from outside their bubble. The echo chamber had morphed into a full-blown alternate reality silo of conspiracy theories, fake news and propaganda.

He blames thoughtful conservatives for the current state of affairs because they condoned the views of the right wing crazies by not criticizing them.

For years, we ignored the birthers, the racists, the truthers and other conspiracy theorists who indulged fantasies of Mr. Obama’s secret Muslim plot to subvert Christendom, or who peddled baseless tales of Mrs. Clinton’s murder victims. Rather than confront the purveyors of such disinformation, we changed the channel because, after all, they were our allies, whose quirks could be allowed or at least ignored.

Sykes calls this a “moral failure” on his part and others who knew better. (Glenn Beck, by the way, said almost the same thing and blamed himself, among others, for the current state of the Republican Party.) Sykes is quitting his talk show, a decision he made well before election season, but he’s breathing a sigh of relief about his decision.

I’m only glad I’m not going to be a part of it anymore.

All this is far more powerful coming from Charlie Sykes than from me.

A Small-Light-For-Me-In-The-Midst-Of-A-Dark-Election-Season Note: I learned something this election season which I kinda knew but also kinda ignored. Many conservatives who I disagree with vehemently are thoughtful, intelligent, principled people. I was able to better understand that listening to the NeverTrump-ers on MSNBC and CNN. When they discussed their concerns about Trump, I could listen to what they had to say without my defenses up, meaning I could hear the quality of their thought and the depth of their analyses. It was more than just hearing them agree with me. I hear plenty of progressives on TV who bore the hell out of me because they have nothing original to say. After hearing a few words, I think “You’ve got nothing” and tune them out. But the quality of what many of the conservatives said impressed me, and I had to abandon my tendency to think they were just self-serving pundits giving their audiences what they want, especially these folks who were risking their conservative audiences by going against Trump.

So that presents me with a new challenge. When principled conservatives attack ideas I hold dear, I shouldn’t dismiss them as partisan hacks. True, many of them deserve the “hack” label, along with most politicians, but not all of them. I have to try and keep my ears and mind open to what they have to say. They may begin with a different set of assumptions than mine, but their intelligence, logic and sincerity can be equal to what I hear from the best analysts on my side of the political spectrum, so they deserve a fair hearing, if for no other reason than they can help me understand some of the flaws in my own thinking.

This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2016.

33 replies on “Out Of the Mouths Of Conservatives”

  1. My dad used to say “the only thing that belongs in the middle of the road….is a stripe.”

    Goodbye Charlie. Write a book, while Trump makes America Great Again. Who is next Glenn Beck?

  4. Sounds like your dad was a simpleton, TRHMEA. Your guy won’t make America great again, he’ll sell you out. He’s selling you out now.

  7. It is interesting that you blame conservative talk radio. Don’t know how such a distinct minority could affect the majority. In Tucson less than 10% of the people listen to any talk radio, (including PBS and liberal talk). So these folks must be incredibly influential or you are focused on the wrong target. Could be the media itself has lost credibility. Consider when Candy Crowley stepped over the line with Romney in the debate against President Obama. She was no longer perceived as fair and unbiased. I watch CNN daily and the bias is palpable and laughable at times. We need to have journalists who report the news, not make the news.

  8. Safier blames conservative talk radio because they pitch for his political enemies. His method for the past three years has been about that simple: “If it’s on the other side of the fence, attack it. If it’s on my side of the fence, defend it.” Many times he has attacked the same behaviors on the other side of the fence that he has either defended or remained silent about on his own side of the fence. The most offensive passages in his commentary are those where he pretends, for the sake of one of his bash-my-political-opponents-blogs, that he has a respect for the truth. He knows what the truth is in many cases where he is writing to conceal it, ignore it or distract from it. He uses it when it supports his ends and ignores it or aggresses against it when it does not.

    You are right, Doug Martin. The problem is much broader than talk radio. Supposed bastions of unbiased, well researched journalism like The NYTimes were so clearly biased and selective in how they reported the Democratic primary process in this presidential election that some of us will be walking away from close observation of the campaigns with an entirely different, and darker, view of the country we live in and the media that “reports” on it.

    As for Safier’s closing assertion in this piece that “I have to try and keep my ears and mind open to what they have to say […] they deserve a fair hearing, if for no other reason than they can help me understand some of the flaws in my own thinking,” it sounds good, but I’ll believe it when I see it. There’s been very little in what I’ve read of his blogging to date that suggests that he’s capable of it.

  9. All I know from everyday experience is that (a) when someone says that they are “conservative” I brace up and just wait for what comes next, like an angry diatribe or insult of some sort, and (b) when I ask these same conservative individuals exactly what a “conservative” is I get very different answers. The same goes for the mainstream conservative media. Just getting jacked up feels good but does nothing good in the long term. It is kind of like that strange commercial on TV where the guy says, “Yes, you have a really bad cavity, but I am just a ‘dental monitor’ who won’t fix anything.”

  10. “Sounds like your dad was a simpleton, TRHMEA.”

    Well, I’m sure that you know that old cliche Peabo:

    “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  12. Here’s a good article on the press and one American politician’s relationship to it:

    https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/06/how-lincoln-played-press/

    Gets rid of a few of our sentimental illusions about what the media is and has been, including the notion referred to in this piece that in some golden age in the past we had a “mainstream” media that could serve as a reliable “goalpost” and / or “referee.”

    (Interesting that the domain referred to in this blog to help us understand politics is professional, competitive sports, which continues to be the most powerful source of metaphors and allegories for so many Americans, and may be one reason why we can’t get around our political polarization and partisanship: if the majority of the people in the country are focused regularly on games which organize themselves as all-out battles between two teams and the result is always someone wins and someone loses, that makes it a little hard to pitch cooperation as a legitimate strategy to use in politics, another area where there are “two teams” and “winners” and “losers.” People can’t envision the Rs and Ds sitting down in the middle of the field to develop a collaborative strategy to deal with the nation’s infrastructure or immigration problems because that’s not the way the game is played. They expect politicians to use issues as weapons in their never-ending war to score points against their opponents and that expectation in the electorate and in the campaign funding contingent is part of the problem. Politicians will do what wins them favor with the voters and funders who put them in office.

    Yet another reason why backing the alternative parties is important. Their presence and participation does something to dislodge the political game from the frame of reference in which it has been stuck for far too long in the minds of far too many voters.)

  14. Posted by The problem is much broader than talk radio post says it all Safier — “As for Safier’s closing assertion in this piece that “I have to try and keep my ears and mind open to what they have to say […] they deserve a fair hearing, if for no other reason than they can help me understand some of the flaws in my own thinking,” it sounds good, but I’ll believe it when I see it. There’s been very little in what I’ve read of his blogging to date that suggests that he’s capable of it.”

    Can a Leopard change it’s spots? Can a cat bark? Can the East meet the West?

  15. “Elitism cost your party the election. Learn and grow from it.”

    No, gerrymandering and the electoral college system did. Stop pretending trump won for any other reason.

  16. Boy am I tired of hearing mainline Democrats complain about the electoral college.

    How did Clinton win the primary against Sanders? Superdelegates and primaries in many states (including Arizona) in which independents could not vote. Yes, elitism, arrogance, and the equivalent of rigging the primary against the popular vote did win the primary election: for Clinton. And the Democratic party (and the nation at large) was punished for it in the general election.

    NYTimes exit polling indicated that 12% of voters who voted for Trump in the general approved of Obama — you think they would have voted for Trump if Sanders had been on the ballot? Seems unlikely.

    Wake up and place the blame for the Presidential contest’s outcome squarely where it belongs: on the Clintons, on the DNC, on Wall Street, on the NYTimes and on the so-called 100% SOLD-OUT “Democratic” party.

  17. The public has been good at separating Obama from his policies, because when asked, they can’t think of one thing that has worked well. But when confronted with the prospect of Clinton continuing an additional 4 years of Obama they said no. Had enough, it’s not working, we must try something else.

    Keep an eye on history as Obama will try to take credit for the stock market gains the last month, so that he can claim something for a legacy.

  18. That would be an irony. When Obama came into office, he was blamed for the economic problems that came about during George W. Bush’s presidency. It seemed large portions of the electorate immediately forgot who was actually in the Oval Office when “this sucker” (George W. Bush’s term, in a famous quote, for our economy) took a nose dive after the housing market bubble burst.

    But it’s a fiction that the front-man is responsible for what happens. They become the “face” of a network that sets the parameters for what can and cannot be done while they’re in office.

    Trump, like Obama, ran on a platform of change. It remains to be seen what he will and will not be able to get accomplished. The structural obstacles to any kind of meaningful change are at this point immense and the people backing policies that harm the majority of our citizens own the economy and have purchased the political system.

  19. “I learned something this election season which I kinda knew but also kinda ignored. … who I disagree with vehemently are thoughtful, intelligent, principled people.”

    “When they discussed their concerns about …, I could listen to what they had to say without my defenses up”

    “I have to try and keep my ears and mind open to what they have to say.”

    Quite an admission that you are a closed minded bigot.

  20. Can you imagine what the conservative media would be like if Hillary won the electoral college and lost the popular vote by 2.8 million votes? The self proclaimed smart guy would call for civil war while, guns sales would continue to sky rocket, Hannity would preach revolution, Graham would call for God to destroy America with floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes. McConnell would want to abolish the electoral college on day one.

  21. Trump will be like Brownback, all his nonsense will cause disaster, and you can guarantee it won’t be his fault.

  22. Yes, Frances, we can imagine what the conservative media would be like if Hillary won: very much like what the liberal media has been like in the wake of Trump’s victory.

    Clinton supporters were up in arms about how Trump said in a debate that he’d see if he would accept the results of the election and not too long after the election liberal news outlets (including that bastion of “responsible” journalism, the NYTimes) are full of stories about how Russian hackers are at fault for the results of our democratic election.

    The hypocrisy — and how many people fall for it and swallow the ridiculous lines whole and then regurgitate them in conversations and in the comment streams — is astounding.

    I always thought Orwell had pretty much nailed what our societies and political systems are becoming, but if there was any doubt at all about his prescience, the last few months have dispelled them.

  23. “Boy am I tired of hearing mainline Democrats complain about the electoral college.

    How did Clinton win the primary against Sanders? Superdelegates and primaries in many states (including Arizona) in which independents could not vote.”

    I’m not a democrat, and you say this as if I defended superdelegates.

    and nothing else you said changes the fact that trump lost the popular vote, and only won because of the electoral college. if he won because of “elitism” or any other reason then he would have won the popular vote. you cannot claim in any way that more people wanted him to win.

  25. Trump won the general (and Clinton won her primary) according to the rules of the game, which were not written to give the victory to grass roots democracy either in the Democratic primary or in the general election. So don’t criticize the Electoral College without criticizing the rigging of the system that went on in the primaries. We don’t know who would have won the Democratic primary if the rules had allowed Independents or Greens to express their preference for who would be on the ticket, so it’s meaningless to say “Hillary won the popular vote.” And don’t forget what the MAJORITY of citizens in this country actually chose: not to vote, which shows how much ignorance and / or cynicism and / or contempt and / or apathy the current system produces or inspires.

    The two party system as it exists now in this country is not genuinely “democratic” in any meaningful sense, with its capital-feed from the funders / lobbyists, its manipulation of its affiliated mass media outlets, and the disrespect within both major parties for the best interests and policy preferences of the majority of people in this country, ordinary citizens who work for a living and don’t have access to more capital than it takes to pay for basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter — and education for their kids, a thing that used to be a basic right that our economic system is increasingly turning into a luxury commodity.

    The campaign fundraising methods and communication strategies used by Sanders were much more aligned with a democratic respect for the voters / citizens. Let’s hope we see more of these methods (and of politicians like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) in the future.

    (And less of propagandists like Safier, who has used his commentary consistently for several years now to exacerbate our political and educational problems locally.)

  26. my comment was not to just criticize the electoral college per se, but to say that trump won because of anything but the electoral college is flat out misinformation, and needs to be called out as such.

    i do believe that the entire country’s system needs an overhaul to be more democratic. all primaries should be open; there shouldn’t be caucuses; felons should be able to regain their voting rights in every state; one should be able to register to vote or change their party up to the day of the election; superdelegates should be abolished; congressmen and supreme court judges need term limits.

  27. Gerrymandering and the electoral college had nothing to do with Hillary’s loss. Voters caused it. They stayed home in numbers because she lied and cheated her way without a real platform. Gerrymandering affects state races but everybody was entitled to come out and vote for President. Obama even encouraged illegals to vote. They couldn’t find a reason after 8 years of Obama.

    The electoral college has been used to determine the winner for over 200 years.

    Get a rule book and try complying with it.

  28. Not exactly, only five times in history now has the winner of an election lost the popular vote. Before bush won this way in 2000 it had not happened for over 100 years. Do you think that if this had happened repeatedly throughout the 20th century that people would not want to reexamine and abolish the system that denies them the worth of their vote?

  29. What is the difference if extremely large populstion states, say five or six, band together and diminish the votes of citizens in the other forty six states? The electoral college works just fine. It protects us from mob rule and gives the plurality representation.

  30. Even though he seemed quite prepared to lose (and then rampage on TV and sue people), Trump won. Fair and square? Quite debatable. Will he be a good president? We will know by this time next year, maybe long before that. Unlike his campaign where he made lying to people a very effective strategy, Trump’s brains and truthfulness are now on display all day every day starting already. He now has to demonstrate actual knowledge in policies when he talks about jobs, trade, warfare, health care, legal issues, global warming, women’s issues, children’s education, etc., etc. Mostly, he needs to show he cares about someone besides himself.

  31. Contrast that to Obama’s actions yesterday that lacked America out of oil exploration in the Arctic.

    Thereby giving it all to the Russians. Interesting huh?

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