The Wisconsin situation gets more unusual every day. I have been hearing a lot from the progressive side about the teachers, the Governor and the legislature, but I hadn't been keen on listening to the conservative side. The few things I've heard, and they have been from FoxNews, painted this opposite world which would have been perfect propaganda examples from the book 1984. The past few days I decided to change that and I have listened to some local conservative radio talk show hosts, some podcasts from a conservative station out of Los Angeles, and more in-depth FoxNews coverage.

I have people I know who refuse to even consider listening to the other side. Their thinking is they know what they are going to say and listening to it will only make them mad. They would rather not subject themselves to that. I can understand why, but you really don't know where people who listen to this stuff every day are coming from. It's kind of like going to another country and learning about the people. You can read brochures, see news reports and can make assumptions about the people and the culture, but until you actually immerse yourself in the culture you are going to get a filtered view of the people. It helps that in the case of the Los Angeles station I have listened to them for years and have heard the change in programming and the potion of the on-air hosts become a bit more conservative, however in the past, with the exception of a few, they seem to take a middle of the road approach to their conservatism. In other words, they at least can entertain the idea of listening to what the other side is talking about and will attempt to find common ground.

I'm sorry to say that sense of bi-partisanship is gone. Be it someone on the national stage like Limbaugh, the big market radio station or the local station, everyone eagerly hit the talking points of the Governor was good, the protestors are bad. The shift is rather noticeable because if you haven't been following a lot of these talkers for years, you wouldn't know that in the past, they had been great supporters of teachers, police and firemen. They had been called the backbone of the nation, the protectors of youth in the case of teachers since they teach our children. They have advocated to retain good teachers, talked about how police do a job that can't be measured in pay, yet when it came down to this issue, suddenly the citizens are ungrateful.

The people protesting in Wisconsin have been called thugs, they have been called selfish children. Teachers have been accused of brainwashing the children and setting a bad example for not following the law. On the LA station a teacher called into one of the talk show hosts and the host immediately attacked her as a leftist, demanding that because of the low amount of work she does she should be paid less.

The argument for these attacks is the same; because of a budget crisis public servants haven't sacrificed enough so they must do so now. They also like painting the issue with a broad brush. They use examples of bad government workers, the jokes about the DMV, the inefficiencies of the welfare system, and they put everyone in the same melting pot. Many of the local talk show hosts used bad examples they had with government workers and used that as a reason why they all should be punished. The fawning sheep that listen to the shows chime in with their own bias, fueling the impression that all government workers are this political cycles welfare queens.

Quite a few progressive hosts have surmised the release of the recorded conversation of Governor Scott Walker, where he talked for 20 minutes to someone he assumes is one of the Koch brothers and gives scathing information about the underhanded tactics he is thinking of using, would be an eye opener to those who refused to see the truth. Well, I must say the editors employed by the conservatives are very skilled. The conservative hosts downplay the significance of the recording and as proof they play heavily edited editions of the recording. On the LA station they have been careful not to play the first part of a segment but will cut out the incriminating material. They mentioned the incriminating material, but dismissed it as being much ado about nothing and without hearing it you can't determine the context. The few callers who have challenged the context of the call have been shouted down or cut off.

The danger we have with the segmented media we have now is there is no middle ground or even neutral ground for people to get their news. While I can complain about the lack of progressive radio in my area, I can try to find it in other areas of the country. The thing I can't do is turn on the national news and hope to get a comprehensive perspective of the situation. On a national news cast there may be five minutes to tell the story, if lucky, and that doesn't cover all of the nuances of the situation. That means most people are going to rely on cable and the partisan rhetoric which will devote more time to the story, but will focus on their political leanings.

 

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On the Other Side of the Looking Glass - February 25, 2011
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