The Insidiousness of Conservative Talk Radio

I started following Best of MetaFilter which pointed to this post by gjc at 4:54 AM on May 9: Take a look at your foot, does it fit this shoe?

"I listen to a fair amount of talk radio, since I'm in and out of the car all day. My impression is that the talk radio listener likes to believe they think for themselves, but in the end, they just parrot what their favorite talker says.

But also, guys like Limbaugh and Hannity have absolutely MASTERED the long con, as they say. There are two games I've personally witnessed:

1- They have their one-off sound bites for the casual listener. But for the dedicated listener, they do these thematic long-arc stories that last weeks and months at a time, feeding dribs and drabs of the intended message on a limited basis so that by the end of the messaging period, listeners will have digested the full message. Hannity did this with evil aplomb as the Treyvon Martin case was ramping up. His first few shows on the issue were actually thoughtful meanders through the issues. 'Wow', I thought, 'this guy is actually treating something with respect and dignity.' But then, as days passed, the old conservative theme developed. Guests were chosen that telegraphed the message. He got two african american community leader types to debate whether this was more about race, or more about guns. But both of the guests were 'urban' sounding. Overt message: Hannity is gathering opinions from diverse sources. Subtext: black people don't talk like white people, and are also scary.

2- They conflate issues. I heard Mark Levin, I think, starting a segment with an anti-Obama rant. He was interviewing an author about a book or an article critical of Valerie Jarret. Oh heavens, she likes to shop and was mean to someone once. But the whole time, the host was asking leading questions 'so, these women, like Jarret and Michelle Obama, they really like to let power get to their heads, don't they?' And the author would answer something like 'well, I don't know anything about Obama, but these are the facts I found about Jarret.' And then Levin ended the segment with a full on rant about what dirtbags the Obamas are. The goal was plain: get the listeners to confuse the specifics about Jarret and assign them to the Obamas.

So it isn't nearly as simple as being told what to think. The best way to impregnate (pun intended) an idea into someone's mind is to tell them to think for themselves, and then offer 'facts' that lead them to what becomes an unavoidable conclusion. While also sowing mistrust in all other sources of information."