Saturday, November 30, 2002

Scoobie Davis is a great read and a useful resource in documenting exactly how and why the right wing's media power creates such huge problems with the American national discourse.

Want proof? Go check out his "very brief conversation with Limbaugh... a case in point of how the American right has a huge home field advantage when it comes to information transmission (as well as disinformation transmission)":

LIMBAUGH: Here’s Scoobie in Los Angeles. Hi, Scoobie. Welcome to the EIB Network.

SCOOBIE: Hello, Rush. How are you doing?

LIMBAUGH: Good.

SCOOBIE: Anti-dittos.

LIMBAUGH: Thank you.

SCOOBIE: I agree with Al Gore in the sense that the right-wing media is an uneven playing field that disinforms people.

LIMBAUGH: You know, I have to laugh. I am loving this. You actually—you agree with Al Gore that that there is a right-wing media conspiracy?

SCOOBIE: Absolutely. And you’re really on the forefront of that—along with the Moonie Times, what you call the Washington Times—which is nothing but a Moonie newspaper.

LIMBAUGH: Now, Scoobie. No need to be bitter here--just because it prints news that you don’t see anywhere else.

SCOOBIE: No, disinformation. Let me give you an example—[from this point on, I was muted. I was beginning to explain the Moonie Times smear of Bill Clinton’s 11/01 Georgetown speech (see below)—a smear that Limbaugh broadcast to his listeners as fact. I discovered that Limbaugh was talking but that I couldn’t interject anything into the conversation. When I played the show tape back, it confirmed that I was muted.]

LIMBAUGH [talking to himself because I’m muted. Rush did that the last time I spoke with him]: No, it’s not. Scoobie, it isn’t disinformation. The Washington Times reports factual things. It reports things that you won’t see in other newspapers and sometimes it does. I mean, some of the news is common, but it also—it reports things that happen, say, at a Daschle press conference that the New York Times will ignore. It reports things at an Al Gore press conference or a Clinton press conference that the Washington Post and New York Times will ignore. They just have a different filter with—through which they look at the news—same as I do...

REALITY: Being a talk radio host is a good gig. If you can’t stand the heat, mute the caller.
Aside from showing that Rush is a cowardly shadow of a man, it's a good example of scoobie's willingness to get up-front-and-personal with these people.

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