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Rush Limbaugh is gone and The Presidential Medal of Freedom is Officially a Joke
{With the slightest of modifications, the below was posted in February of 2020}
Rush Limbaugh died this week. One of the worst and most damaging public figures ever to disgrace modern media is gone. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is now officially a joke. You can note the decline in American culture and the thorough degradation of public political discourse by drawing a line punctuated by those who have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom– Edward R Morrow, Jonas Salk, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks– to the current recipient Rush Limbaugh.
Perhaps no person is more responsible for larding American political discourse with hate, factual distortions, and the death of civility than Rush Limbaugh. He is Donald Trump lite. Limbaugh came first; he set the stage and established the context for Trump.
Limbaugh is a rank racist who wanted to make sure that the core of the Republican Party identity was white. Trump’s preoccupation with Obama’s birth certificate was an attempt to de-legitimize Obama, rooted in the fundamental racism of Rush Limbaugh. Trump went after those young black men (the Central Park Five) brutalized by the police with a fury and a determination that thoroughly exceeded what was justified. But these young men were black and that made them an immediate threat to Trump. Rush Limbaugh was blatant about portraying the other side (Democrats) as not a respected adversary but a dangerous enemy that must be eradicated. The other side was, as far as Limbaugh was concerned, irredeemable and must be eliminated. The only appropriate response is to burn with hatred.
Limbaugh continued his racism by labeling any piece of legislation from Obama as left-wing extremism designed to get what they deserved. This played on the fears of the populace by suggesting that an angry minority group was trying to overtake the political process. Notice how frequently Trump compares a legislative item of his own to Obama or the “previous administration.” Trump is more interested in delegitimizing Obama than he is in his own agenda. Again, this betrays his fundamental racism that he can’t avoid.
Limbaugh taught Trump that you can call people names and then laugh about it as if these things were harmless. Limbaugh cruelly told a joke about Chelsea Clinton who was 13 years old at the time. Trump is nothing if he isn’t callous, crude, and feeling deserving of the right to label somebody. He learned well from Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh created the subculture of talk radio. A subculture characterized mostly by anger, name calling, and the belief that anything someone believes strongly enough must be true. The Limbaugh subculture has devolved into narcissism and cults of personality fueled by the talk radio subculture’s big brother – Fox News. Any sensible concept of truth has evacuated. Just as Limbaugh successfully twisted the perceptions of journalism and media, Trump has convinced large portions of the population but most of the news is “fake.”
Just when you think Trump can’t do anything more offensive or crude, he awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh.
Working on My Better Angel
My own better angel has been working overtime trying to disentangle the actual blame for the partisan divides and nationalistic differences that characterize this country at the moment. From the time representative Joe Wilson, shockingly and disrespectfully, shouted “you lie” at President Obama to the present, the big lie of election fraud has been circulating in the Republican Party. Even the simplistic rhetorical move, which involves labeling something with the goal in mind of socially constructing a new reality, and the truth of the label be damned, has become a powerful force in a fertile rhetorical environment ripe for growth and exposure.
Timothy Egan writing in the New York Times describes America as getting meaner. Tribalism, contempt for the press, intolerance, disinformation, and blatant lies are the currency of the day. Like me (https://peaceandconflictpolitics.com/?s=limbaugh),
Egan traces contempt for the press to Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh was one of the worst and most damaging public figures ever to disgrace modern media. You can note the decline in American culture and the thorough degradation of public political discourse by drawing a line from Rush Limbaugh through modern social media, to the main demographic pockets in the United States.
Rush Limbaugh created the subculture of talk radio. A subculture characterized mostly by anger, name calling, and the belief that anything someone believes strongly enough must be true. The Limbaugh subculture has devolved into narcissism and cults of personality fueled by the talk radio subculture’s big brother – Fox News. Any sensible concept of truth has evacuated. Just as Limbaugh initially twisted the perceptions of journalism and media to the notion that news is “fake,” the Republicans have stepped up their rhetorical domestic terror by turning little lies into big lies (election fraud), erecting structural barriers to political participation (voter suppression), eroding democracy (civil rights violations), and continuing to find new audiences and platforms for communication with new social media.
We have learned more in recent years about the kind of disinformation favored by those like Limbaugh. An organization called the Global Disinformation Index keeps track of disinformation statements by various politicians and ferrets out the data on who transmits the statement online to another blog or website (see New York Times, June 10, 2021 Business). This organization classified different accounts as either “left-leaning” or “right-leaning” in order to track which group ideology was being most stimulated. It became immediately apparent that Trump’s messages were forwarded to others by his followers thus continuing to spread his message. It didn’t matter very much that he was denied access to Facebook because his messages were shared anyway. In these situations Trump’s messages were passed on mostly by conservatives to conservatives. But when Trump criticized the Republican Party rather than just the Democrats his remarks were shared by both the left and the right.
These issues pertaining to how the blogosphere acquires and processes information are now receiving the research attention they deserve.
The Quality of Fox News Reporting
The above is an example of reporting by Fox news. Notice anything about the graph? The location of the trend line for the most recent number of 8.6 for November is higher than the placement of the line when the number was 8.8 back in March. Media matters first pointed this out. According to them when the unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 Fox news rounded up to 9.0! Maybe the chart below (also from media matters) gives a more accurate picture? I don’t think so but it does make the point. The claim that it is easy to manipulate impressions with “misleading” graphs is easy enough to defend and requires no additional elaboration.
Notice anything about the above picture? Seems like they got Romney wrong. It remains quite impressive how Fox news can continue to manipulate images and political inclinations. The Republican debate sponsored by Fox had very little to do with the press’s noble goals of providing fora for issues. The audience was loud and highly partisan and many questions were designed to highlight Republican platform positions and attack Obama rather than clarify issues.
Rush Limbaugh and the conservative talk radio crowd have been using these techniques for some time. These issues are a little beyond the “peace and conflict” subject matter of this blog, but they do speak to the issues of the press and its role in a political environment.
Democratic values as they apply to the press are important. Issues such as accuracy, independence, freedom from bias, and integrity are important. The news media should always make the distinction between factual news stories and opinion pieces. Fox’s manipulation is to blur this distinction. When conservative talk hosts are attacked for their partisanship the Fox leadership claims that they’re not supposed to be news but entertainment. There certainly is a place for intelligent opinion and perspective which are often essential to understanding the consequences of the story. But we can see from the above examples that Fox is a little sloppy when it comes to representing accuracy and authority.
A recent study of Reuters proprietary websites examine their reporting related to the Middle East conflict. The study ran tests of articles for problems with logical fallacies, propaganda, and violations of Reuters handbook. These were tested in order to determine attitude shifts and support for belligerent parties in the Middle East conflict. The results indicated that there were over 1,000 occurrences of reporting and ethical failures that attitudes did shift as a result of being exposed to these reporting and ethical transgressions. For example, atrocity propaganda or lies and manipulations about the extent of violence and atrocities increased favorability and sympathy toward Palestinians. The same was true for the use of pity and subordination propaganda. The authors of the study concluded that Reuters engaged in systematically biased storytelling in favor of the Palestinians, and these biases directly influenced audience affect and behavior. On the one hand, these findings are not surprising but they certainly demonstrate that errors, biases, and manipulated frames do have strong effects. Both Fox News and Reuters must work on improving clarity and accuracy.
A diverse employment environment is one response to these biases. This includes more than simply gender and ethnic differences but must include differences in terms of knowledge and perspectives. Fox with respect to national political news and Reuters with respect to international news must do better at accuracy, error correction, focusing on intelligent and coherent perspectives rather than bias, information quality, and balance. Fox will continue to maintain its distinction between traditional news and editorial or opinion and defend their use of the media designed to direct perspectives in a certain manner. They have found a business model that allows them to maintain a conservative ideology and still garner enough of an audience. Although there is nothing particularly wrong with representing a coherent political ideology, there is something very wrong with rank partisanship and mistakes.
Peace and Conflict Politics 