Break on Through to the Other Side

Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder’s “Majority Report” is probably my favourite Air America radio program, due to the fact that it’s a little more independant from mainline DNC than the others.

I was surprised by something said by Rush Limbaugh’s guest host today.

Whenever Janeanse and Sam get on the topic of “black box voting”, or computerized voting, they insist, somewhat humourously, that their callers call into right-wing radio hosts and discuss the possibility that hackers might want to hi-jack the election, and perhaps hackers would tend to be liberal (instead of a coordinated assualt from Republicans, as they tend to suggest by quoting the Diebold official, and his ties with the Republican Party).

(My guess is that hackers would change the election to a Kevin Mitnik / Bill Gates ticket, but nevermind…)

So, what does the Limbaugh replacement say?

He goes off on the ways that the Democrats are thinking of stealing the election. They seem to have a problem with the idea of ex-felons voting (the back-drop explanation for Jeb Bush’s pre-2000 and pre-2004 antics on the subject). And “foreigners monitoring the election.”

But, he said it, in a list of ways the Democrats are scheming to steal the election. “Eleven year olds hacking into the computer – voting equipment…”

A positive, more than likely, on the road to bi-partisan understanding of the trouble with computerized voting equipment.

………….

On the same show, an ignorant lady called in about the Liberal Media and their mischaracterization of the situation in Iraq. “Heck! It took us what — 60 years to get move out of Germany, and back after the war, the Liberal Media were painting the same bleak image of post-war Germany.”

She was, as far as I can tell, referring to this chain email. (Who writes these things, anyways?)

But, more perplexing than simply being taken in by disinformation designed to fit your own pre-conceptions and prejudices, is the call at against the “Liberal Media.” The isolationists, to the degree that they weren’t drowned out by World War II and weren’t completely knocked off by the Republican decision to nominate Willkie in 1940, were in the conservative camp. (Hence the current distinction between “paleo” and “neo” conservativism.)

The “Liberal Media” would not be trying to knock away Harry Truman.

Leave a Reply