I’ve noted in the last few years the growing intensity and shrillness of conservative voices. In the media, on the net, and in newspapers. People like Michele Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck have become louder and more piercing, the volume knob turning higher and higher with each infraction of the left they perceive.
Here’s why: they're losing.
The country voted for a liberal Democratic president. Society is ever so gradually loosening restrictions for gay marriage (it’s legal in six states now). Abortion is still legal after over 30 years of struggle to outlaw it. The struggle for religious tolerance continues, but it has become more widely spread. Our society is becoming more secular and less dependent on religious leaders.
They're losing in every sphere of the culture war they declared.
All of this bodes ill for the screechers. So they screech all the more loudly. But apparently, fewer and fewer are left to listen.
2 comments:
Joe, I'm going to disagree. It's not a win-loss issue. Screeching sells. Eight years of screeching about the evil Bush made Olbermann and Maddow household names for left-wingers.
The news and opinion business is just that, a business. Pundits on either side are going to conduct their business in the manner that gets them ratings and advertising dollars. But there is a us versus them hatefulness in left-right relations this particular decade, and the talking heads on TV see money to be made fanning the flames. There are angry people on both sides, and they want a commentator who reflects their anger. I personally avoid Sean Hannity because I find him too nice and his arguments are kindergarten-level stuff. I prefer Andrew Wilkow on Sirius satellite.
It's a rich tradition in American journalism, look at the papers between John Brown's hanging and the attack on Fort Sumter, or how Hearst and Pulitzer got us the Spanish American War.
Oh, and this is SGT Dan from AOSHQ, by the way.
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