How far to the right can the media go?

Newspapers are going away and Americans are getting their news from the television. If you've watched television news lately, you've noticed that the airways are filled with radical wackos. Sane people just don't make the news. One of them spews some ridiculous nonsense with nothing to back it up and all the channels pick up on it and discuss it as if this opinion means anything. Not only that, politicians are joining in on the nonsense. Do they use "1984" as their play book or what? If it wasn't for bloggers who work hard to scour the newspapers for actual news and find facts, we'd surely be taken over by the likes of Newt and Lush Bimbo. Progressives may try to use the same tactics as the right to get their point across, but alas, they are too late.

Newswriter over at A World of Progress laments that her colleagues aren't aware of what is going on... radical opinions are all over the news these days.

Seems there are significant numbers of my colleagues who have no fucking clue what the right wing extremist radio and television hosts are actually saying.

I know. How could they not know? Mostly it appears that my very busy colleagues just don't have the time to keep up with the specifics of what's being said on the airwaves. More importantly, though, is what they tell me about how they set their priorities regarding what they pay attention to and what they ignore.

They don't have the time, they say, for the fringes. And those right-wing bloviator dudes, they're the fringes.

Coulda knocked me over with a feather, I'm tellin' ya. So let me get this straight. My beloved colleagues are so busy parsing what it means for the president and the first lady to take a date night and run up to New York for a show that they don't know that the talkers are poisoning the air waves with the most vile and ugly shit since, well, the presidential campaign. And apparently my collagues missed all that nastiness for the very same reason.

They think it's coming from the fringes, and therefore should be ignored.

In the WaPo, EJ Dionne in Rush and Newt Are Winning points out that the Limbaugh's and Gingrich's are dragging the media to the far right.

When one of them spews, it's all over the news. Did you notice that when Obama went to NY last weekend, it turned into a circus on the television news... why? Because the right wing fringe lunatics made it so and dragged the media along. If you, god forbid, turn on Faux News, they are complaining that the media is too liberal. I have no idea what they are talking about... but that is their plan... to make baseless accusations and get the rest of the media to discuss it and try to prove that they are not liberal at all. It's reverse psychology. This drags them more to the right.

If you ask any progressive or liberal if Obama is progressive or liberal, they laugh and say, "of course not." If you ask anyone else, they tell you that Obama is a socialist! Granted, most of these people don't even know what socialism is because they only know the right wing fanatical fringe definition is... and furthermore, it's not even true! My hair is falling out on its own. I don't even have to rip it out.

When was the last time there was a progressive slant to the news on television? The 70's? I noticed in the 80's during the Reagan years that this war against America by the fringe right was taking hold and it hasn't let up a bit.