There's a political blog called "Stop Me Before I Vote Again." It's one of those leftish blogs (cf. also the libertarianish IOZ) that rants alot about how the Democrats are too far right and that there's some kind of conspiracy (or accidental synergy) between the two main parties in the US that prevents truly leftist agendas from being pursued – that the Democratic Party's leftism is a sort of subterfuge, essentially. I read the blog, occasionally, but the quality of the writing has decreased – or else I just don't get the point – there's really only one writer there that I even find coherent, to be honest.
But one recent post by Mr Coherent (Michael J. Smith – is this a real name or pseudonym?) made a striking and noticeable point about the stridency of right-leaning talk radio in the U.S. A quote (he's talking about the show called "Focus on the Family"):
Focus on The Family is a radio product; that is, it's a commercial enterprise with a political angle. It's a show; everything on it is contrived and scripted. It's a fishing boat, and the "Fundies" — for lack of a better word — are the fish. Some come into the net, of course, and others do not.
Strelnikov [the person being criticized here] has never swum with the fish in question; he knows nothing at all about their lives and feelings and thought processes. What does a trawler tell you about fish, except that they can be caught and sold?
This is a very important point.
"What does a trawler tell you about fish, except that they can be caught and sold?" I'd like to apply the same essentially marxian logic (I'm thinking of how ideologies are deployed to preserve systems, a la Eagleton) to how we think about behemoths like Fox News – these things are not reflecting views, they're designed to draw people in with the views they express, and maybe, incidentally, they cause the "fish" to swim in certain directions they wouldn't, on their own. Let's never forget that the current "far right looniness" in the U.S. is caused mostly by people who realized they could make money off of it. The rational market is going to eventually self destruct, at this rate, it seems to me.
[Daily log: um, no]