Andrew Sullivan recently
asserted, "No one is involuntarily exposed to [Limbaugh's] poison." Many of his readers begged to differ. One wrote:
"I make all sorts of efforts to not listen to Rush Limbaugh - namely, I don't like his bullshit and don't want to hear it so I don't listen to it on the radio. ... But now your blog lights up with his vitriolic misogynistic garbage, as does the rest of the Internet. Even in Lent, where I've limited my hours spent reading Internet people, I can't escape it; my Daily Show/Colbert Report wind downs in the evenings are mired in it; Maddow is talking about it; there's no escape in CNN. I suppose I could limit my television to, I don't know, Top Chef and RuPaul's Drag Race, but I like to stay reasonably connected to the news. And what Rush Limbaugh says, for whatever damn reason that is beyond me, is news. In order for me to consume any amount of news, in almost any medium I regularly stay attuned to, I'm exposed to Rush Limbaugh."
Interesting point. It's the Palin Syndrome. Limbaugh would disappear overnight if the media-internet industrial complex (esp. the outlets on the left) would simply ignore him. Trust me, that's not gonna happen. Both sides feed off of each other for ratings and page views. But it's hardly the end of the world. The vast majority of Americans do not read political blogs, listen to talk radio or watch the cable chat shows. So, this "debate" is mostly taking place inside a hermetically-sealed echo chamber. Ergo, this matter is much ado about nothing. Still, it is remarkable how the politically-informed among us thinks everybody else is paying attention, too. Sorry, they're watching NCIS.
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