Failure™ Magazine

Left Turn

One Man’s Journey From Dittohead to Democrat.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Arts & Entertainment

Can you describe the typical dittohead? Are they really the smartest, most informed radio listeners in the country?
[Laughs]. I believe that’s how they feel. I know I did. Rush makes you feel like an insider—like you know what’s going on politically and everyone else is an idiot. Having been a dittohead I can tell you that the only benefit is that you really know one side of an issue; you know nothing about the other side of that issue. You maintain a blissful ignorance about anything that disagrees with your worldview.

What separates Limbaugh from the other right-wing talk show hosts?
What makes him special is that he’s the originator—the one who framed the debate for the right. He spawned this entire right-wing media empire and to a large degree it still looks to him as the voice of the movement. A lot of people ascribe these really nefarious motivations to him, but I don’t think he’s evil. I think he developed a worldview that made sense to him, and by the time he took to the airwaves it was a very polished easy-to-understand message. It worked well for him in the early 1990s when Clinton and the Democrats were in charge.

What has happened is that since the Republicans have taken power he has become an apologist for a Party that is no longer conservative at all. Plus, a lot of the principles Rush espouses have been destroyed by reality. For instance, lowering taxes is supposed to equal more federal revenue, but for the first three years of George W. Bush’s administration federal revenue declined every year. That’s the first time that has happened in the history of this country. Now Rush is defending his principles reflexively, even though there’s not a whole lot he can point to that supports them.

I also think things are starting to get away from him a little bit, because Sean Hannity [syndicated radio host and co-host of FOX TV’s Hannity & Colmes] has eliminated the idea of coming up with an original message. Hannity just reads whatever the G.O.P.‘s talking points are for the day. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Hannity move ahead of Rush in the next two or three years in terms of audience size, because he’s already very close—within a quarter-million listeners. Yet a lot of true Rush fans can’t stand Hannity. They don’t like the way he debates, he’s inarticulate, and not a good flag-bearer. Hannity is the Simon Cowell [American Idol, Pop Idol] of political conversation. He says horrible things and people apparently have an affinity for people who say horrible things.

Since you mentioned Hannity I’d like to ask about a few other right-wing media commentators. What comes to mind when you hear the name Bill O’Reilly?
The funny thing is that if you are a conservative you don’t consider O’Reilly to be a conservative commentator. I know that sounds crazy. My dad doesn’t like O’Reilly because he says he’s too liberal, which to any liberal is just high comedy. But because he identifies himself as an independent, and one out of every hundred positions he espouses doesn’t toe the party line, people tend to get turned off by him. I think he’s a gift to the left because he unashamedly makes stuff up. He’s a poster child for unexamined conservatism.

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