US Politics Mega-thread - Page 359

There was plentiful schadenfreude on the Internet this morning at the news that Rush Limbaugh (along with Sean Hannity) is apparently parting ways with the company that distributes his show on some 40 stations around the country. Limbaugh’s been a liberal bugbear for as long as he’s been a right-wing poster boy, and as such, the former are responding to news of his apparent downfall with glee. But really, this should be a source for celebration for everyone, because Limbaugh both personifies, and has at least partially responsible for, much of what is problematic about American politics in the 21st century.

Clearly, much of what liberals find objectionable about Limbaugh is perfectly valid — this is, after all, the man who gave us “Barack the Magic Negro,” who back in the 1970s told a black caller to his top 40 music show to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back,” and once claimed that “feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of American life.” He’s a shit-stirrer and a professional troll, and those who find such statements offensive will rejoice in his absence from the airwaves as much as devoted fans will lament it.

But then, it’s that exact polarization that speaks to a more fundamental reason why Limbaugh shouldn’t be missed: the type of political discourse in which he trades has been responsible for the sorts of deadlocks that have plagued Washington over the last few years. It’s easy to forget these days, but politics doesn’t have to be the sort of adversarial spectacle we’re used to seeing today, where the two sides behave like spoiled schoolchildren, where filibustering and other obstructiveness for the sake of political point-scoring take priority over effective governance. It’s been on the rise since the 1960s and 1970s, but really took hold during the 1980s — there’s some interesting statistical analysis here.

The world is undoubtedly a less straightforward place than it was in the years when polarization was at its lowest. Discontent tends to breed in adversity. But then, it’s how we deal with that discontent that’s important, and people like Limbaugh tap into and exploit it in the most populist and destructive of ways. In Australia, we call it dog-whistle politics, the sort of subtly nasty electioneering of which former PM John Howard was a master (and which his chief attack dog, Lynton Crosby, is now peddling for the Tories in the UK). It’s something of a cliché to say that electorates get the politicians they deserve, but equally, politicians get the electorates they deserve — the more they trade in institutionalized polarization, the more they perpetuate the problem.

No one’s arguing that Limbaugh and his ilk are the cause of this; they’re more a sort of pustule on the ass of American politics, a symptom of a more fundamental disease. But equally, the presence of Limbaugh’s divisive politics on primetime radio helps to legitimize the sort of negativity in which they’re rooted. Cheap politicking is a sort of coprophagic feedback loop, where newspapers and talk-show hosts feed the agenda of politicians, who feed it back to whichever media mouthpieces fit their particular agendas. In the end, it helps no one — we all end up eating shit, regardless of whether we’re Republican, Democrat or Monster Raving Loony Party.