The LA Times can’t go bankrupt fast enough to suit my tastes. Some nut named Andrew Klavan has a a column today about how liberals are afraid to listen to Rush:
If you are reading this newspaper, the likelihood is that you agree with the Obama administration’s recent attacks on conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. That’s the likelihood; here’s the certainty: You’ve never listened to Rush Limbaugh.
Oh no, you haven’t.
[….]Which leads to a question: Why not? I mean, come on, the guy’s one of the figures of the age. Aren’t you even curious? I listen to all your guys: NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, The Times, the New York Times, the New Yorker — I check out the whole left-wing hallelujah chorus. Why are you afraid to spend a couple of hours listening to Limbaugh’s show and seriously considering if and why you disagree with him?
[….]I listen to Limbaugh every chance I get, and I have never heard the man utter a single racist, hateful or stupid word
I’ve listened to Limbaugh a million times and the truth is that most of it is dumber and more incoherent than the excerpts that you see when he says something controversial. That said, it’s approximately a thousand times smarter than Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Let’s face it — talk radio, liberal talk radio included — is a dumb medium. If you ever catch me blabbering about how brilliant anyone on Air America is, I want you to shoot me.
And never a stupid, hateful word? Rush had a segment about AIDS where he played the song “I Know I’ll Never Love This Way Again”.
All right, I know this is an easy target but for God’s sake, why would the LAT publish something this dumb?
(via)
From the comments, here’s more great stuff from Klavan:
There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.
used to be disgusted
Probably because the whole damn industry is circling the drain.
GSD
Mocking Michael J. Fox’s disease was the acme of decency Mr. Klaven. Yeah and all the chatter about Hillary and dikes is good old fashioned Christian compassion. Oh, and Limbaugh was paying kind tribute ro President Obama’s cultural heritage by calling him a Halfrican-American.
This dildo is so stupid he must be related to Cliff Klaven.
-GSD
Mako
I stopped listening to LA/DC radio when Howard Stern moved to satellite.
Rush never interviews lesbians. Like, what’s that?
Terry Colberg
Because the LAT is being pared down to its skeleton. There have been more layoffs there than I can remember in the last year. My poor local paper can’t even put headlines at the top of their articles anymore!
Comrade Desert Hussein Rat
Because, economically, it will be bankrupt before June.
Journalistically, it’s been bankrupt for years now. Certainly from the moment they signed up the Doughy Pantload as a columnist.
JGabriel
DougJ:
Tradition?
.
Silver
I assume this is the same idiot who wrote this one:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121694247343482821.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
flavortext
Not gonna miss the Times. The Daily News may be the more "conservative" paper, but at least it doesn’t publish Mr. Pantload.
used to be disgusted
"Like W, Batman is a son of privilege with serious father issues and a deep paranoid streak. And like W, he is widely reviled by the people he claims to protect.
The main difference is that Batman would find it easier to raise money for a library."
Dave C
I used to have to drive a lot for my job, so I would frequently listen to Rush in the car. The pounding anger helped keep me awake.
Comrade Desert Hussein Rat
Speaking of the LA Times circling the drain, Kevin Drum spotted a good one.
tag briefs subhead large.
More words of wisdom from the LA Times.
r€nato
This liberal listened heavily to Rush and local right-wing talk radio in general from the late 80s til the mid 90s.
I never agreed with their crap but I was fascinated by the phenomenon.
I haven’t listened since the GOP went nuts during the Clinton era. I had had my fill of the lies and hate-mongering.
TheOfficialHatOnMyCat
For the same reason you did.
Chuck Butcher
Regarding Batman and George II, Batman accepts the role of outlaw and is hunted. I can imagine situations where I personally might break the law and say…hurt somebody very badly for reasons I believe are moral and ethical – I don’t get to escape prosecution because I thought I was right.
What is egregious is the idea that power enables such behavior, essentially vigilantism. These people are fuking idiots and they support weasels. Cowards.
Squirrel2634
I found his article funny…I’ve listened to Limbaugh dozens of times. Every time I have to do a boring drive, like across Kansas, I listen to him to keep me awake. I can always count on him to make me laugh with his absurdity, or cause my blood pressure to rise with his lies. I’ve been doing this for years and have yet to fall asleep at the wheel while driving cross country. I don’t know if this would work for everyone, but it works really well for me.
Dave C
n/m
Dave C
@Squirrel2634:
As per my earlier post, I used to listen to Rush for reasons similar to yours. I later found out that the intellectual stimulation gained from listening to shows on NPR did just as good a job at keep me awake without resulting in quite so much excess aggravation.
Lupin
Have you read Adolf Hitler? Which leads to a question: Why not? I mean, come on, the guy’s one of the figures of the age.
Have you dined with Ed Gein? Which leads to a question: Why not? I mean, come on, the guy’s one of the figures of the age.
The dipshit is too easy to parody, and his point is totally worthless.
Joshua Norton
Um, who exactly is afeared to listen to Limpballs? Apparently some people mistake being opinionated as being informed.
If I wanted to hear clueless wingnut spew for a couple hours, I’d listen to the homeless dude at the Montgomery St. Muni stop that hollers about the government trying to control him by sending radio signals through his teeth fillings. And much as I don’t Limpballs, I don’t listen to whacko homeless dude because I’m "afraid", I don’t listen because he’s is batshit crazy.
Comrade Baron Elmo
If this schmuck believes that every television network sans Fox is part of the "left-wing hallelujah chorus," then it makes perfect sense that, in his Cheeto-crumb-flecked world, Rush Limbaugh has never uttered "a single racist, hateful or stupid word."
Um, we are talking about the same Limbaugh who told a black caller to "take the bone out of your nose," right? The same guy who asserted that the NAACP "should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies"?
Up yours, Klavan. And up yours even further, LA Times, for printing this tripe. Between crap like this and publishing the Pantload Dribblings, you have reduced yourselves to eunuchhood.
AnneLaurie
‘Idiot Cowards Supporting Weasels’ is not only a great name for a rock band, it’s the current GOP platform distilled into bumper-sticker-ready format!
MikeJ
When exactly did Obama "attack" Limpballs? They made fun of him a few times, but I don’t recall anything that rises to the level of "attack".
Mako
heh, just read the article. Same thing as they always said about Howard Stern, who basically invented that radio shtick. Say outrageous stuff, people will talk about you and then listen.
Klaven’s doing the print version.
Doug J, instead of being a follower, lead. Write something truly outrageous, something Friedmanian about you and your hedge-fund friend and Baltasar Garzon visiting a whore house in Nevada and how it relates to the current Amish puppy farm scandal and Latvia.
Seriously, we’re not paying you to just recycle stuff from the LA Times.
b-psycho
My brother actually listens to Limbaugh & other right-wing talk types — purely for comic relief. Only thing he’s remotely "conservative" about is immigration.
I see his reasoning. Earlier between basketball games I was flipping channels & paused just in time to see Glenn Beck apparently discussing Obama’s economic policy. In a baby talk voice. With a dead fish. Seriously. Then right before I resumed channel surfing he reads my mind & blurts out "this is the dumbest damn show…".
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
Ugh, I remember when this meme was playing right around the release of "The Dark Knight." Glenn Beck was spouting this crap. too. You really need to get your head examined if you believe you should take your legal and foreign policy cues from a freakin’ movie BASED ON A COMIC BOOK THAT HAS VILLAINS AND HEROES DRESSED UP IN BAT AND JOKER SUITS.
(spoiler alert)
There was a great post on the web speaking about this very point, which I can’t find right now. But basically, the gist of it was that if you really look closely, you’ll find that Batman ends up suffering everytime he embraces Bush-like policies, like torturing or warrantless surveillance. No? For instance, Batman throws Maroni, the mob boss, from a couple stories high to break his ankles to get info about the Joker. The result? Maroni didn’t know anything to begin with so Batman got exactly squat, and instead he’s more frustrated. Next, Batman uses ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques on the Joker in the cell. The consequence? The Joker reveals the addresses for Harvey and Rachel but switches the address around and Rachel ends up dying. The Bat Sonar that Batman uses to trace the Joker to a building? When Batman reaches the building floor that the Joker is on and tries to pinpoint his location, he’s ambushed by the Joker as a result of the sonar obscuring his vision. There’re plenty of other examples where the movie clearly rejects the principles that the Republicans have been so damned excited about during the last eight years.
If you’re going to choose a work of fiction as a showcase of Bush-era policies, at least pick one that supports your hypothetical conclusions (say, like 24). Jackasses.
I really wonder how the hell these idiots even manage to get their pieces published. It’s truly pathetic.
slappy
According to some Zogby poll left wingers do in fact listen to limbaugh.
(I swear I read about this story right here on BJ but this was the best I could do with google)
link
Max Power
Rush promoted "Barack the magic negro", and called Obama and Halle Berry "halfricans". End of discussion.
used to be disgusted
Uh-oh. I didn’t realize there was a cover charge.
Ash Can
Klavan starts out by making shit up, so you just know the whole column is going to turn out simply smashing.
To gin up a little controversy, get people’s attention, boost their hits, same old crap. Even if everyone posting about the column is doing so to say that the writer’s an asshole, it’s still evidence of readership. The danger with this, of course, is that readers run out of patience with stunts, which can eventually put the newspaper in financial peril — oh, uh, never mind.
Mike D.
Al Franken’s show was fantastic radio. The rest of Air America is dreck, though (and that includes Rachel Maddow).
guest ****
i caught a repeat of rush that gets played over the weekend. he blamed obama as the reason why we are hated around the world.
arguingwithsignposts
Oh My God.
Why do they make that "newspapers are crucial to democracy" argument and then print this kind of dreck.
Note to Klaven: I’ve listened to Limbaugh on occasion, even back in the 1980s, when he was just coming into his own. He was an ass then, and he’s an ass now. And that was when I considered myself a conservative!
Mike S
I wrote an LTE to them praising his satrical essay. I told them that it was a perfect portrayal of Rush and his followers but that they would probably miss the irony of it.
I think that will piss them off more than the people who write in all upset about it. It’s a lot harsher to get laughed at than yelled at.
Mako
What, you think Doug J just rehashes Washington Monthly posts for nothing? Come on there’s real work being done here, buy something from Amazon.
Ian
An inconvenient truth. The whole concept of Batman requires a certain degree of contempt for the rule of law ("we have to be criminals" DKR), but the Dark Knight took that in some new directions. On wiretapping:
So, giving someone vast, unaccountable, illegal power is is good idea so long as you give that power to a person handpicked by the lawbreaker in chief. You don’t want the terr’ists to win, do you?
Riggsveda
…And like W., Batman is a cartoon.
Mako
I would like to invite Mr. Klavan to repeat these insults in front of my hairy, 50+inch chest (I once bench pressed 500 lbs),dated Julia Childs and was Steve McQueen and after admiring my martial arts trophies. We’ll adjust his assumptions a little. And we’ll see who quivers.
I don’t listen to Rush because I have a life full of people, wieners, art and activities I love, and I’d consider it both a crime and a sin to waste an instant of it on the likes of Rush. Let me continue. I would never spend one minute talking about that asshole Rush Limbaugh. Wisdom, Klavan asserts, is to be found by listing to Rush, which tells us all we need to know about Klavan’s depth and intellect. Talk radio is to wisdom what bumper stickers are to philosophy.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_03/017509.php#1478132
Spokane Moderate
I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again…
All I need to know about Lush and his listeners is this: Lush went on the the air for a significant period of time high as a kite, and no one could tell.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Uh-oh, Klavern is after Jonah Loadedpantie’s High Queen fReichtard crown.
I’ll make popcorn in case they get to a slap fight.
Svensker
@arguingwithsignposts:
Ditto.
HeartlandLiberal
Just for the heck of it, I forwarded [email protected] the following list of some of Rush Limpbaugh’s greatest hits. Of course I suppose I should have included the actual video of him rocking back and forth mocking Michael J. Fox’ medical condition. Priceless. You just don’t get incisive, thoughtful political commentary like that anywhere but on Limbpaugh’s show. Well, unless you watch Glenn Beck. Or O’Reilly. All peas of a pod.
One thought: if this column is the sort of sick tripe this newspaper sees fit to print, maybe it is understandable the ship is going under. Why would anyone with any modicum of rational insight, knowledge, and intelligence, read this crap?
"The phony soldiers." –on U.S. service members who support withdrawal from Iraq (Source)
"He discusses his service in Iraq, the wounds he suffered there, and he says to me in this ad, ‘Until you have the guts to call me a ‘phony soldier’ to my face, stop telling lies about my service.’ You know, this is such a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said, then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media in a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into." –denouncing an ad by VoteVets.org featuring Iraq war veteran Brian McGough by likening him to a suicide bomber
"He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act. … This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting." –on an ad by Michael J. Fox endorsing Claire McCaskill for Senate for supporting embryonic stem cell research (Watch video)
"And don’t forget, Sherrod Brown is black. There’s a racial component here, too. And now, the newspaper that I’m reading all this from is The New York Times, and they, of course, don’t mention that." –on the 2006 Ohio Senate primary race involving then-Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is white
"This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation…I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of the need to blow some steam off?" –on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal
"Too many whites are getting away with drug use…Too many whites are getting away with drug sales…The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them up the river, too." –in 1995
"I am addicted to prescription pain medication." –in 2003
"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."
"We’re not sexists, we’re chauvinists — we’re male chauvinist pigs, and we’re happy to be because we think that’s what men were destined to be. We think that’s what women want."
"She comes to me when she wants to be fed. And after I feed her — guess what — she’s off to wherever she wants to be in the house, until the next time she gets hungry. She’s smart enough to know she can’t feed herself. She’s actually a very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn’t have to do anything for it, which is why I say this cat’s taught me more about women, than anything my whole life." –on his cat
"She sounds like a screeching ex-wife." –on Sen. Hillary Clinton
"I’ve been racking my brain. I’ve been trying to figure out how Bob Dole’s luggage got on my airplane…I told the doctor, I said, ‘Look, I’m worried about the next election.’ … A misunderstanding." –after he was detained by custom officials for possessing Viagra with a prescription made out in someone else’s name
"The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."
"They oughtta change Black History Month to Black Progress Month and start measuring it."
"Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it."
"Sorry to say this, I don’t think he’s been that good from the get-go. I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well." –on Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, while working as a commentator on ESPN
"The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them."
"There are more acres of forestland in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492."
"I know these people like I know every square inch of my glorious naked body." –on Democrats
Dennis-SGMM
From The Hill; more proof that George W. Bush never existed:
Zzyzx
I occasionally listen to the show repeats on my way to work and right now Limbaugh’s main themes are that people who are suffering from the recession are lazy or just haven’t looked at this right… and how dare anyone say anything bad about the multimillionaires who just want to use their private planes and get their 7 figure bonuses?!?!
I don’t know how long that will continue to play well…
Balconesfault
I occassionally listen to Rush when I happen to be driving around town at that time. Observations:
a) boring. Rush loves to repeat crap, and fill airtime with long-winded pronouncements about himself. Understandable, since he has to kill a lot of time each week.
b) pitiful playing the refs. Listen to Limbaugh attacking the media for deciding on a meme for someone and hammering on it over and over and over – when that is EXACTLY what he does with his show. You want to claim that the other side engages in drive-by personal attacks, then constantly put down Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Barack Obama with snide, derisive comments? You’re not a serious person.
c) cowardliness. Limbaugh never has on a serious commentator who would rebut his positions. When he takes a call where someone is challenging his assumptions, he gets rid of the caller as soon as possible, then spends the next segment mischaracterizing what the caller said, and making fun of him.
d) lack of memory. The man cannot keep track of anything that has happened in the past that might rebut how he currently views events.
e) Pitbull partisanship. Even when Limbaugh has to admit that the market system in any way has failed – he has to pin the blame on the Democrats somehow. Nothing can be discussed on an ideological level without concluding the segment with a partisan attack on Dems, even when it’s an extraordinarily weak link to what was being discussed.
Lots more things to annoy. I’ve come to see prolonged listening to Limbaugh as a correlation to a lack of critical thinking capabilities. I’m not sure where the cause-effect relationship is, but the chi-squared is pretty damned high.
guest omen
@Zzyzx:
a couple of weeks ago, i heard hannity mimick a woman who just lost her home in foreclosure with fake whimpering and sobbing.
kay
I dabbled in conservatism in the 90’s. I was disgusted with Democrats. I ultimately rejected it, but I did look into it. I like the conservative emphasis on state law and/or legislatures, and the idea that the states are a laboratory for government, but that’s really all I found of value. I did get addicted to the WSJ. That stuck. I can’t quit the WSJ.
I listened to Limbaugh. I even read his first book. Admittedly, I picked it up while in a vacation rental, so didn’t buy it, but I did read the whole thing. I didn’t find anything appealing or interesting in there.
Just Me
I used to work a very part-time job on my lunch hour for an attorney down the street back when Rush had his short-lived tv show. Said atty watched the show and I had to try to do paperwork while listening to that tripe.
This was early-ish in his career and very early in my understanding of current American politics, and I couldn’t comprehend why this guy was on tv making clearly untrue allegations and spewing hate.
Encountering Rush for the first time while mostly naive about politics is an interesting entry point into the conversation.
Balconesfault
@Just Me:
Oh God. The TV show.
The Horror!
I watched once. Before I’d ever even listened to Rush on the radio.
Rush was talking about how enviro-wackos were banning certain kinds of styrofoam because of effects on the ozone layer. He took some stryofoam peanuts and stuck them in his ears to somehow prove that they weren’t dangerous.
I never watched again.
used to be disgusted
I dated Rush for a while. Back in high school. He wasn’t as bad as you would imagine. After all, most high school boys are ignorant blowhards who overidentify with implausible fantasies of independence and prowess.
Watching CPAC on cable really took me back. I turned off the sound, lit some incense, and played "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights."
Ah, Rush. If only we all could go back to Ohio.
AkaDad
If it weren’t for Rush Limbaugh, I would have never learned about the insidious Feminazis. A cabal of women dedicated to furthering women’s rights by waging a second holocaust on the Jews.
Rush Limbaugh is a great man…if you’re a white supremacist.
SLKRR
@guest ****:
During Carnaval in Recife, I stopped for a drink at a newly renamed pub: Barack OBrahma. (Brahma is a popular Brazilian brand of beer). Above the name on their sign was a huge picture of Obama.
I don’t think "hated" means what Rush thinks it means.
August J. Pollak
Leave it to a middle-aged, right-wing white male to prove how oppressed his opinions are by writing 600 words in the fourth-largest newspaper in America about how no one is listening to the most popular radio show on the planet.
filmgeek83
Even if Klaven has never heard a racist thing out of Limbaugh on his show (tough to believe, but whatever) he must not watch Monday Night Football either.
Ask Donovan McNabb if Limbaugh is a racist or not.
anonevent
@August J. Pollak: It’s the Conservative meme: They’re oppressed on every front: Media – having the most watched channel and every other channel trying to emulate them; Religion – more churches are being built right now than any other building type; Porn – those women need to wear something over their heads. Somehow they have to be under constant attack, and if they are not, they make it up.
BruinKid
It’s interesting, after I cancelled my L.A. Times subscription last year, I would get a call from them about once a week asking to re-subscribe, and they’d be pretty insistent on it, even after I said I wasn’t interested. I even said one time that I simply couldn’t afford it anymore, and yet they would still call me the following week and so forth.
Well, about three weeks ago, when they called, I decided not to let it go to voicemail (as I had been doing) and answer. And when asked, I first said that I needed to tighten the belt, but then followed that up by telling them that I wasn’t going to be giving any of my money to a paper that employed Jonah Goldberg. I gave his book "Liberal Fascism" as an example of how he wasn’t a serious conservative thinker, and how throwing the "fascism" charge around can be a dangerous thing.
The sales rep said he’d let his bosses know what my complaint was. Since then, I have not gotten any more calls from them asking to re-subscribe.
harlana pepper
Hey, Rachel Maddow was on Air America and is still doing her show, last I heard, along with her teevee show. There *are* brilliant people on progressive radio. Thom Hartmann is another one. Maybe he’s not the most exciting personality, but he knows his shit.
El Cid
Seconded on the Rachel Maddow and Thom Hartmann. And Amy Goodman started on radio, though it was leftist-independent, not ‘liberal’.
zzyzx
So I listened to a rerun again this morning because NPR is having pledge week. Rush somehow managed to turn a suggestion that we have meters that could both sell electricity we create into the grid and inform people when the grid is experiencing peaks so they could be more informed customers into a take of tyranny where the government was going to force every single house to have one of these – using government employees to enter your house to install these and presumably look around your house while doing so – and they’d use them to see who was breaking the rules.
Not only did this take about 4 leaps of logic to go from Obama’s statement to where Limbaugh ended up, but it also clearly showed that Rush didn’t have the slightest clue about how this technology worked. If we wanted to punish people who use too much electricity, we already have meters that do that after all.
He’s only a few years away from talking about the Internet being a series of tubes…
harlana pepper
. . . ?
cosanostradamus
.
Only buttmunches are listening to those buttmunches any more.
Here’s a nice picture of McConnell and some bipartisan Republican Jokes For The John.
I also have a link to the Boycott Rush info. It’s working, slowly.
.
harlana pepper
teh heh
harlana pepper
@HeartlandLiberal:
eh meh gehd, have you no mercy? what with all the enormous folds and flaps of skin to check (think Fat Bastard), i have a suspicion he doesn’t know us as well as he thinks
Bob In Pacifica
I listened to Limbaugh once, for a little less than an hour, because my conservative sister said "he made sense." That was in the early nineties. I felt like I needed a shower.
I don’t listen to him for the same reason I don’t turn on "What Not To Wear". You just don’t get those precious minutes back. Once you use them on Cyst Butt they’re gone. But at least "What Not To Wear" gives better makeup advice.
gnomedad
The LAT’s sister paper, the Chicago Tribune, published this cartoon about Limbaugh and the teleprompter "issue" this morning.
Faux News
There is a fine line between "peak wignut" and "delusional". Klavan has crossed that line. Pyschotropic medication might help, but probably won’t in this case.
El Cid
Occasionally I listen to Limbutt because I want to listen to talk radio, am not willing to pay for XM yet, and on AM radio it’s either sports talk (which gets old real quick for me) and screaming right wing talk.
Limbaugh is less entertaining than Savage (who I’m pretty convinced is all just a performance), but he’s often a lot more clever than pure hacks like Hannity, since Rush comes up with his own strategies to push the PR than simply repeating the GOP / nutsquad talking points.
But it’s interesting for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. Even less if he’s using the time to talk about all his riches and achievements and who invited him where and what exotic cigar or beverage he recently enjoyed.
Oh, and when I’m farther outside Atlanta in the metro South, you get smaller stations hawking genuinely frightening pseudo-science ‘alternative’ health quacks, telling people calling in whose relatives have cancer that somebody wrote an article somewhere that cancer was a fungus so maybe they shouldn’t be on all those mean medications and instead take more baking soda because fungi don’t like alkaline situations. I’m not making that up. That was on the aire.
vacuumslayer
And I should listen to a man who has already labeled me as an ugly Nazi why? I mean, come on. That’s really not an ideal way to start a meaningful dialogue.
BTW, I used to love Air America back in the Seder/Franken days. I still listen The Lionel Show. And the Ron Kube show is ok sometimes.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
Such a lot of attention for Mr. Klavan. My my!
But any read of excerpts of his work reveal a persona that, if he were posting here at BJ instead of on the pages of LAT, would be taken for spoof, and not really that good a spoof.
As we all know, once any line of patter has become indistinguishable from spoof, the spoofs have won. And that is clearly the case here. Whether this guy is a spoof or not, he can be taken for one, and so ….. who cares what he writes, except to admire it as performance art?
And who of all people in the universe should understand this but our host, a spoof’s spoof at heart?
So, as we glide along the moebius strip of consciousness here, what, again, is the reason why we are paying attention to this Klavan, who haunts the pages of the soon to be defunct newspaper out West?
DougJ
It makes me feel better about the (mostly terrible) fact that all the newspapers are going bankrupt.
ed
Rush Limbaugh is a racist asshole. Andrew Klavan is a jackass.
That’s it, that’s all. There’s no reason to go on.
joe from Lowell
I like the way CNN and the New York Times are the equivalent of the Rush Limbaugh Show. Remind me, does Rush Limbaugh provide a prime-time hour to the liberal equivalent of Lou Dobbs? Or allow extended editorials from the liberal equivalent of David Brooks?
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@DougJ:
Im torn between nostalgia for the good old days of the newspaper business, and the satisfaction of seeing change on the scale that we are seeing it today.
When I think newspapers, I think Hearst, and I am moved to think that nothing that ever happens in networld can ever match that kind of evil.
On the other hand, there was something comforting about the landmark papers, the NYT, WP, WSJ, LAT ….. you could sort of navigate by their signals. Those days are gone, and for good.
DougJ
@TZ
Losing local papers is going to hurt. A lot of the suck and we’d be marginally better off without them. But a lot of them are or were good and kept local bigwigs on their toes. We’ve really lost something when the Rocky Mountain News goes under.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@DougJ:
True. It’s too bad about the small papers. Many of them were, or still are, gems and critical resources to their communities.
Let’s invent a business model that lets them survive.
Comrade Dread
Oh, I did. I actually enjoyed the show a lot. Back in high school.
Then I grew up, put away childish things, and resolved to mock, deride, and hold in contempt anyone foolish enough to call themselves a dittohead and let any political party’s mouthpiece do their thinking for them.
DougJ
I think one’s out there and it’s a bit similar to the Politico, though people hate to hear that.
Jay C
@Mike S:
My favorite bit of Klavan’s I-Love-Rush screed was this one, though:
Seriously, what is this guy, like twelve years old? This crap reads like something a pissed-off high-school freshman would post on some I-Hate-My-School-dot-com blog after a bad day in Algebra. with spelling and grammar cleaned up (a little bit) ‘cuz it’s printed in the LATimes.
cosanostradamus
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Wasn’t "Klaven" the euphemism for *ssh*le they used at the Post Office where Cliffy worked, on "Cheers"?
Isn’t it also a group of Klansmen?
Is this guy a put-up job? A spoof? Are we being punked?
.
Comrade Darkness
My mom has Limbaugh on all the time, so yes, I’ve listened to him. His entire schtick is about getting people pissed off about Those Other People d’jour. He’ll pick on one minor aspect of some large issue and ignore all context to make his point true, casting the world into flat black and white like a child would.
Leaving off the bloviating style, the man is fact challenged to say the least. And he repeats himself. It’s like an opera. Sixteen times in five minutes he’ll repeat the same half-assed phrase, like a mantra, or like he’s having his way with the sound of his own voice. But funnier than that the next day he’ll accidentally pick up another facet of the previous day’s issue and get all uppity and argumentative with the other side of the topic. I honestly don’t think he grasps that the world is interconnected, so it’s like listening to the chronically incensed ramblings of a stoned homeless man.
Brachiator
To be fair, this Andrew Klavan’s nonsense is an opinion piece, not LAT editorial, or anything produced by a Times reporter or columnist. Granted, it’s very stoopid, but pretty much on par with the level of punditry these days.
And it also appears to be a set-up for an easy smackdown ("Next week: Hear from liberals who took the bait"), and a lame attempt to juice up circulation.
Still, I find this dancing on the graves of newspapers somewhat strange. Newspapers are not being replaced with alternative sources of information, but with opinion, ideology and infotainment. And the demise of newspapers give aggregators of news such as the A.P., and syndicated goons like Limbaugh more influence as local dailies die off.
Jason F
@Mike D.:
For reasons I can’t explain to my own satisfaction, let alone to others, I really enjoy the Ron Reagan show. I started listening during the last administration, so maybe it was the surreality of the son of a former president criticizing the son of his father’s vice president, himself now the president.
Balconesfault
@Brachiator:
Agreed. I love newsprint.
The problem was when big Corporations decided they had to cling to newspaper’s traditional 20% ROI by cutting local coverage and expanding news and op-ed feed from national sources.
At that point – why bother? National feeds all hit my computer screen multiple times a day.
Brachiator
@Balconesfault:
I love news. I don’t much care whether its a physical paper or online. But I don’t see that even online news organizations can survive if these organizations can’t come up with a new, successful business model.
The problem is more prosaic than this. Newspaper profitability was based on ad revenue, not subscription sales. The rise of the net reduced the number of eyeballs looking at the physical newspaper, and TV and Craigslist (and other changes) killed advertising revenues that the newspapers depended on. Fewer eyes reading newspapers, a severe decline in ad revenues, and a general economic slump — a deadly combination.
Oddly enough, this, along with declining ad revenues, is having an even harder impact on weekly newsmagazines. I don’t know how Time and Newsweek stay in business.
Butch
This week he’s shrieking about how the "dikes" that are failing around Fargo should be renamed because the term reminds him of "dykes." There’s no way to recount it and have it make any sense.
J. A. Baker
Pillz-E also used to do "caller abortions," where he’d hang up on callers he didn’t like while playing a series of sounds that were supposed to be imitative of abortion (screams, a vacuum cleaner and a toilet flushing).
And let’s not forget "Barack the Magic Negro." Ugh…
The Populist
Howard Stern, Tom Leykis and Adam Carolla are smarter radio than Rush.
Rush to me is a fat guy in love with the sound of this voice and he spends way too much time pausing and shuffling papers.
Argh…lame.
Roslyn Sanchez
For the record, Andrew Klavan is a very good crime novelist, perhaps best known for True Crime (of Clint Eastwood fame). Definitely a few cuts above average as a novelist – I had no idea he was such a right-winger.
xavier
thom hartmann and rachel maddow are very intelligent talk radio hosts. not the most ‘exciting’, but there is intelligent talk out there.
RueM
For the record, Thom Hartmann, Rachel Maddow and Sam Seder are funnier, smarter and more worthwhile to listen reading a phonebook than anything Rush ever spewed. And I have no problem saying I enjoy all their programs. Most of Air America or Jones Network, not so much.
Sue
Of course Rush has never uttered a single racist, hateful or stupid word. His racist, hateful and stupid words come out by the bucketful.
daniel rotter
How exactly does one "listen" to the New York Times or the New Yorker?
"…racist, hateful, or stupid word." Klavan thinks that those three things are mutually exclusive categories? Oh boy.