Left and Right

As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry (over here), conservatives began to use the media to peddle their points. When Clinton was in power, they were the attack dogs, criticizing anything they could criticize. When Bush was in power, they were apologists for the government, repeating talking points that were dished out to talking heads that were trotted out as so much propaganda.

The left (and really, it's the American left, rather than the left as Europe knows it) had no counterprogramming. The stuff that existed was shrill and horrid, the equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. While some viewers/listeners gravitated to that, it was never as accepted by the NPR crowd as it was in "real smalltown America".

The first two shows to begin to provide alternatives were The Daily Show and The Colbert Report who used comedy and a crack team of researchers that would comb through the media content and point out the tactics being used by the right and make fun of it because these tactics were so simple-minded, and yet, sadly, so effective, because no one was prepared to connect the dots and show this kind of propaganda.

These were on the air quite a while before the next two shows became more popular, especially in the year leading up to the campaign. They are MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show.

The reason these two shows succeed where previous ones have failed is that the right tries to find something, say, Obama's idea for some kind of local militia, and then demonize it, say, by comparing it to Nazi Germany. Fox News is always good at making one side look bad, but pretty bad at making themselves look good.

The left, by contrast, typically finds outrageous things said by the right, and finds evidence that it is ludicrous. This is now being handled by the blogosphere and various reporting agencies. They were the ones able to sift out Palin's wardrobe excesses, or Palin being pranked by Canadian comedians who convinced her that she was talking to French president Sarkozy.

The reason that Olbermann and Maddow are intellectually more satisfying, though not as much as Stewart and Colbert, is because they refute arguments, and find evidence to do so. The right simply asserts X is bad. They haven't created the equivalent of the "truth squad" that finds out the details of things. The right is in the demonization market. Find something, and make it sound evil.

There was a recent convention of Republican governors where some felt they needed to rework the message to have a more populist appeal. The attack machinery, which served them well for so many years, has been deemed ineffective. However, with its past success, you can't imagine Republicans will give it up, especially if they are losing. Thus, ads by Elizabeth Dole and Chambliss spew vitriol hoping the public will fall for it. At one point, they appeared to do just that. While I have doubts that the public is getting much smarter, these shows do at least provide some defense against the lies and spin provided by the right.

At the very least, some of that should reduce down with a change of presidency. Sure, this will cause the right media to crank up their messages of hate, but at least there are shows that counter that, and it seems they are gaining in popularity.