Tina Dupuy

The mainstream media gets denounced on cable news programs, corporate talk radio, best-selling books and behemoth blogs every day. This strangely doesn’t seem to bother the mainstream media as it heroically absorbs all the jabs thrown at it from, well, itself. It’s stoically unfazed. Admirable in its immunity.

Yes, this code word for “liberal media,” or “not liberal enough media” or “not-the-person-on-the-television-at-that-moment media,” is like rice deploring white. The ocean against wet. Trees condemning shade. It’s an epic struggle of hyperbolic proportions.

It seems some media conglomerates like the one owned and influenced by Rupert Murdoch, News Corp just don’t trust other media conglomerates. No honor among major media shares. And MSNBC feels like they’re not with the other two of the three 24-hour news networks and their multiple sub-networks because they often claim they counter the “mainstream media.” So it appears the entire mainstream media is against the mainstream media.

Almost poetic, isn’t it? But the mainstream media won’t tell you this. No you’ll have to check out ham radio, smoke signals or the cork board at the YMCA to find this out.

Right after the nation was aghast that Christian Broadcasting Network’s televangelist Pat Robertson stated the people of Haiti made a pact with the devil to get rid of the French as his explanation for the catastrophic earthquake, (described by one Haitian tweeter as a “natural holocaust”) Joe Scarborough was quick to criticize the “mainstream media.” Joe whose Twitter handle is @JoeNBC, literally meaning “the only Joe at the National Broadcast Network” pounced into his “I’m an outsider” schtick, “MSM will now obsess over Pat Robertson’s ‘devil’ comment but will pay no attention to his organization’s remarkable relief work worldwide.” And then Joe, host of Morning Joe watched by nearly half a million people every day, long time member of what’s called the mainstream media went on to list Robertson’s good deeds excusing Robertson’s pro-colonial/pro-slavery stance. Of course this made Joe’s first statement therefore, incorrect. There was someone in the MSM paying attention to Pat’s good deeds: it was Joe.

If you can complain about the mainstream media from a national platform, it’s akin to being a ventriloquist act without the dummy: you’re bantering with your own voice.

Speaking of which, also-ran veep candidate Sarah Palin loves bashing the mainstream media. She does so from an enormous national platform, a far bigger platform than most people who consider themselves members the mainstream media. So when she’s pleads with the “press” (people who make their living from the media) to “quit making things up” she’s technically addressing herself. She’s one of the mythmakers she battles against on her new gig as a paid Fox News Channel contributor. But she won’t just “quit making things up,” that would be letting the mainstream media tell her what to do.

The media, mainstream or not, is not a monolith. American Idol is a monolith. It has one singular goal, millions of devotees and a small group in charge of its content. The press in its entirety may have been a giant uniform mass years ago. But today, it’s especially fractured with general interest newspapers failing and more and more newscasts being broadcast to compete with other broadcasts. It’s getting to the point where one can absorb oneself in “media” all day long without ever stumbling upon one single idea with which one can disagree.

The alleged mainstream media is the Sasquatch of media criticism: a myth perpetuated by the fact it’s still being talked about. It’s a rhetorical tick, a throwback to when there weren’t millions of blogs, hundreds of newspapers, dozens of news channels all live-streaming on Twitter.

Not that the press shouldn’t be criticized. It should. Just not in sweeping generalities where no one can possibly be held accountable.

My plea is to everyone in the media: unless you put the “mainstream media” in the same category with unicorns, leprechauns and ethical bankers – stop talking about the mainstream media.

This piece originated at True/Slant

If you ask Ditto Heads, Republicans or just casual fans why they like Rush Limbaugh their answer is always the same: because liberals hate him.

No, “I admire his humanity.”  Not, “I like his high moral standing in the community.” Nor, “He inspired me to get off drugs/lose weight/have a family/find true love.”

No if you ask someone who likes Rush Limbaugh why they like him it’s solely because he makes liberals nuts. Some will say it’s because they think Rush is funny; he’s funny to those who love to see liberals go nuts.

It’s a political theater show: The warm-up act is Rush blowing hard into his syndicated microphone. There’s the cameo by people who agree with everything he says, just because he says it. But the main event is people reacting to Rush. Together it’s a hyper-partisan spectacle and Rush is being the producer solely by setting the tone.

“Limbaugh wants Obama to fail!” was a headline for two weeks last winter. It was talked about, denounced, analyzed, discussed, pondered, considered and dismissed in and around the media. In doing so this sound bite, a flippant comment made by a jock paid to shock was repeated a million times. So instead of maybe one million* disinterested people or so having their familiar day-time drone of Rush’s in-studio spit-cast on in the background, now every man, woman and child knows what he said about the freshly sworn-in Barack Obama. Rush’s proclamations suddenly got an exponentially larger audience than they would have otherwise.

All because what he said was offensive: It resonated with our lower nature and some of us are ashamed of that. When we lose, we secretly want the winner to suffer.

Rush is an agitator. That’s what his role has been for more than 20 years. He’s not a reporter, he’s not a politician nor is he a strategist. He just says horrible stuff and regular people, liberals and the media get whipped up and therefore more people hear him.

He’s also, like most of this current crop of conservatives, a contrarian. So whatever the current Democratic president is for, he has to be against. Obama is for improving the country’s health care system, Rush is for the opposite. Obama is for repairing our financial system, Rush is for the opposite. Obama is for American’s donating to Haiti, Rush is for the opposite. Remember when Rush was for everything President Bush was for? Neither does anyone else.

So since Rush, in the wake of the Haitian earthquake, before the bodies were cold, before the death toll was counted, before the aid could land, decided to bloviate “Obama will use Haiti to boost credibility with light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.” This seems to be a tipping point and there have been calls by liberals to boycott Rush Limbaugh.

Now I believe in Free Speech, protected speech. Therefore I believe in protecting hate speech. Even stupid speech. Even outrageous and poorly timed speech. It doesn’t mean I’m for corporate sponsored hate speech, which Rush Limbaugh is. He has the right for the government not to silence him, but not the right to have companies financially support his views.

So you’d think I’d be all for a boycott of Rush Limbaugh. No. No I am not. Here’s why: you can’t boycott something you’re not patronizing. So if you’re not listening to Rush’s show, then you have no leverage in a boycott. There was a boycott of Glenn Back after he called Obama a racist last year. Yes, Beck lost from some estimates 98 sponsors. But now his ratings are higher than ever and lack of sponsors or not, he’s still on the air. Did the boycott backfire? Yes.

Consider this: if a group of neocons wanted to boycott Rachel Maddow, everyone in the country would watch her show. If she managed to irritate a group enough to have them call her sponsors, her platform would swell.

The answer is to ignore Rush Limbaugh. Ignore him. Just stop being outraged by the stuff he says. You’re not going to change his dwindling fan base. He doesn’t command a voter bloc (remember when he asked his listeners to get Hillary the nomination?). If you disagree with Rush, you’re the audience that must walk away. We can leave ignorant and racist comments unchecked if it means a smaller broadcast of said comments. If the only reason his fans love him is because he makes liberals nuts, liberals have their job clearly laid out for them.

He has the right to say things and I have the right to not repeat them. Besides, Rush hates tolerance. What a more perfect revenge.

*His current ratings are reported at 13.5 million a week. At 15 hours a week of yammering, that’s less than one million an hour, average listening. But actual data of radio ratings are kept vague on purpose.

This piece originally appeared at True/Slant