It's time to fess up
Jun. 15th, 2004 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theoriginalblurkerI listen to conservative talk radio. I listen to Pat Gray, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and *gasp* Michael Savage. I don't know why.
I started with Rush, way back in the days when NAFTA was being debated. He was amusing, and just a little frightening. What was really frightening was listening to the people who would call his show and take his (alleged) theories one step further down the conspiracy-theory tinfoil-hat path to destruction. It was good for me to know that these people were out there. And they voted.
When I moved to Houston I expanded my listening to Chris Baker on the way home from work. When I started driving home later, I picked up on Hannity. When rehearsals kept me out until after 10pm, I was driving home with Savage. Now I can't stop.
Don't get me wrong; I think Michael Savage is either (a) a deranged maniac, or (b) an actor portraying a deranged maniac. Either way, everything he says makes me want to find him and sit him down for a couple of weeks with a professional deprogrammer. Ah, what joy it would be to find the old Michael Weiner hidden away inside this amazing, foul mouthed, lying sack of manure. Perhaps then my eyes would stop bleeding during my drive home each night.
Then why do I listen?
I really don't know. However, I have been developing a theory.
When I was young, my parents used to tell me stories about anti-Semitism. I would listen, and sagely nod my head thinking, "well, maybe it was like that in the old days." How brilliant we were as children, no? Many years later, when I went off to college, there were a lot less "persons of the Jewish persuasion" around, but I really didn't notice because I wasn't all that religious by then. At one point in my junior year, however, a friend of mine, whom I had known since we were freshman, found out that I was Jewish. He stopped dead in his tracks, looked at me like I had told him that I was a cannibal, and said, "You're kidding! Really??" His reaction, such shock, really opened my eyes.
After grad school, I took a job in Midland, Michigan, the heartland of Christianity. I quickly learned to stay quiet about my heritage. It's not as if someone was going to burn a cross on my lawn, but it was clear that I was being treated differently, like I was a little dangerous, and maybe a little pathetic.
I didn't believe my parents when they said that there were people in the country who would treat me differently (ostensibly worse) because I was Jewish. Now I believed.
[I told you that story so I could tell you this one] <-- just for Ang, or deep fans of Bill Cosby
For a long time, I didn't believe that there were people out there that were so far to the right that they could possibly believe the stuff that Rush was saying. Then I heard his callers. Then I heard Hannity's callers. Then, heaven help me, I heard Michael Savage, and the crazed, hate-mongering, homophobic, racist freaks that call his show. They're out there folks...and they're breeding faster than we are.
As my Dad said, it's important to Know Your Enemy.
Yes, I know that there are kooks on both sides of the political spectrum, but I'm friends with several Liberal Kooks (and some folks would describe me as one), so I come in contact with their opinions often enough. Perhaps I need to hear the other side just to keep balanced.
That's my theory. Of course, I could just be a glutton for bleeding eyeballs. :)
I started with Rush, way back in the days when NAFTA was being debated. He was amusing, and just a little frightening. What was really frightening was listening to the people who would call his show and take his (alleged) theories one step further down the conspiracy-theory tinfoil-hat path to destruction. It was good for me to know that these people were out there. And they voted.
When I moved to Houston I expanded my listening to Chris Baker on the way home from work. When I started driving home later, I picked up on Hannity. When rehearsals kept me out until after 10pm, I was driving home with Savage. Now I can't stop.
Don't get me wrong; I think Michael Savage is either (a) a deranged maniac, or (b) an actor portraying a deranged maniac. Either way, everything he says makes me want to find him and sit him down for a couple of weeks with a professional deprogrammer. Ah, what joy it would be to find the old Michael Weiner hidden away inside this amazing, foul mouthed, lying sack of manure. Perhaps then my eyes would stop bleeding during my drive home each night.
Then why do I listen?
I really don't know. However, I have been developing a theory.
When I was young, my parents used to tell me stories about anti-Semitism. I would listen, and sagely nod my head thinking, "well, maybe it was like that in the old days." How brilliant we were as children, no? Many years later, when I went off to college, there were a lot less "persons of the Jewish persuasion" around, but I really didn't notice because I wasn't all that religious by then. At one point in my junior year, however, a friend of mine, whom I had known since we were freshman, found out that I was Jewish. He stopped dead in his tracks, looked at me like I had told him that I was a cannibal, and said, "You're kidding! Really??" His reaction, such shock, really opened my eyes.
After grad school, I took a job in Midland, Michigan, the heartland of Christianity. I quickly learned to stay quiet about my heritage. It's not as if someone was going to burn a cross on my lawn, but it was clear that I was being treated differently, like I was a little dangerous, and maybe a little pathetic.
I didn't believe my parents when they said that there were people in the country who would treat me differently (ostensibly worse) because I was Jewish. Now I believed.
[I told you that story so I could tell you this one] <-- just for Ang, or deep fans of Bill Cosby
For a long time, I didn't believe that there were people out there that were so far to the right that they could possibly believe the stuff that Rush was saying. Then I heard his callers. Then I heard Hannity's callers. Then, heaven help me, I heard Michael Savage, and the crazed, hate-mongering, homophobic, racist freaks that call his show. They're out there folks...and they're breeding faster than we are.
As my Dad said, it's important to Know Your Enemy.
Yes, I know that there are kooks on both sides of the political spectrum, but I'm friends with several Liberal Kooks (and some folks would describe me as one), so I come in contact with their opinions often enough. Perhaps I need to hear the other side just to keep balanced.
That's my theory. Of course, I could just be a glutton for bleeding eyeballs. :)
