#conservative radio

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dan Rather at Steady:

The morning after the election, I was talking with a friend who said something that made me pause: “The American people aren’t buying what the Dems are selling.” At the time I acknowledged the notion but filed it away for closer inspection, once the shock wore off.  Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party were selling hope and freedom, upholding the rule of law, saving democracy. What’s not to buy? With the benefit of lots of discussion, reading, watching, and thinking over the past 17 days, it became apparent that that analysis is incomplete.  It isn’t that the American people didn’t buy what Harris was selling; they didn’t know what she was selling. The increasingly powerful right-wing media championed her opponent’s message while distorting hers. And millions of Americans bought it. 

As The New Republic editor Michael Tomasky wrote, “It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things, which points to one overpowering answer.” The right-wing media now controls the agenda.   For those of us who grew up on a steady diet of truth-telling, it’s gut-wrenching to see this mega misinformation machine grow into a multi-headed monster.   Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock. Gallup says trust in the media is at an all-time low. The most trusted news source according to YouGov is … The Weather Channel. Couple that with exit polls showing people who consume a lot of news from traditional sources voted overwhelmingly for Harris. 

If you only read The New York Times or watch CNN or so-called legacy networks such as CBS News, you might be surprised to learn there is a vast right-wing media ecosystem that goes well beyond Fox News. Founded in 1996, Fox is the granddaddy of the far-right media but has since been joined by Newsmax and One America News Network. This media universe also includes Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns hundreds of radio and TV stations — reaching 40% of the viewing public — and newspapers, including the recently purchased Baltimore Sun; iHeartMedia, which dominates right-wing talk radio and podcasting; Trinity and Bott Radio, two massive Christian broadcasting networks; social media platforms like Trump’s own Truth Social and X, owned by Trump bestie Elon Musk; and a multitude of hugely popular far-right podcasts.  Collectively, these various and varied media outlets have been feeding growing audiences a constant diet of disinformation for years. They have been fighting and winning an information war Democrats didn’t seem to know existed. The 2024 election may have been the inflection point when the right-wing media’s influence finally eclipsed the mainstream media. That is a major reason a convicted felon won with just under 50% of the popular vote.

The landscape is changing at light speed. Today, traditional media is not where most people get their news. Not so long ago you had to pick up a morning newspaper or turn on a television at a specific time to get news. Now “news” is available 24-7, from hundreds of sources, in tiny bite-sized portions, often without the benefit of context or even fact-checking. Right-wing outlets peddling half truths have learned how to navigate and thus dominate this new landscape. It is important to note that this battle is being waged between right-leaning media and mainstream media. The combatants are not two ideologues. One group is pushing a hard-right agenda, and the other is striving to report and expose the truth. The social media landscape mirrors this reality. On the right, you have Truth Social and X. On the left, not much. In reaction to the misinformation rampant on its sites during the 2020 election, Meta-owned platforms like Facebook and Instagram removed most political content.

An excellent read from longtime CBS News journalist Dan Rather on how right-wing media propaganda being fed to millions of Americans without any real fact-checking of lies is what led to Donald Trump become a Presidential candidate in the first place, let alone win twice.

[amethystsoda]

Also for those of us in unsafe states, please get unofficial resources to help cope with stuff like adhd and autism. They’ve already been demonizing it and cracking down, and if you’re undiagnosed and can cope for now, please stay that way until it’s safer.

Find whatever resources you can for emotional/physical regulation and subtle ways to protect yourself for overstimulation and meltdowns.

[filthyfundie]

A while ago I was looking at Jinger’s follow list (no idea why) and noticed she followed Kat Von D. I was mildly amused and then immediately forgot. But I just learned that KVD publicly converted to Christianity last October and has condemned witchcraft and the occult (also yoga and nature). She’s been blacking out all of her tattoos and moved to Indiana because the BLM movement in Los Angeles made her feel unsafe.

So I went down a bit of rabbit hole and now you all have to hear about it:

Kat was sent to the same boarding school as Paris Hilton when she was a teenager and describes it as incredibly traumatic.

She says the hardest criticism for her is the accusation of being racist because (I kid you not) she’s a proud Latina. Iykyk.

After her baptism went viral she went on Allie Stuckey’s podcast.

I knew about the backlash over the Lolita lipstick for her makeup line but there was also issues over a shade called Selektion which was a German Nazi word for the selection of prisoners during WW2, her defense of this was that she actually named the very pink lipstick after a piece of artwork that she really liked. The artwork was a series of photographs of Christian, Jewish, and disabled children living in Germany in 1988??

Her current husband has faced controversy over his swastika tattoo and the fact that he maybe disowned his daughter after she “had sex” with some of his friends. The quotations are due to it being unclear if his daughter was over 18 when this occurred. He has stated that the event ruined his life and he went four years without seeing his daughter and when he did he told her that being married to Kat Von D is his good karma for surviving what she did to him.

So…. Yeah. That’s what she’s been up to.

[thedawningofthehour]

I'm confused why is Angel a Trump supporter?

asdfghjkl I don't actually remember when or why we started saying that. He's just always been a dick and we accuse him of all sorts of shit. We've called him a terrorist, my mom accused him of being antifa once. Back when Trump had a Twitter we'd regularly tell him "stop tweeting, you're worse than the president!"

He's also a covid denier, and that one actually has basis in reality. Angel hates hands. Like, it can be a struggle to pet him sometimes because he'll occasionally remember that the magnificent bird scratchers are actually just ugly human hands and won't accept pets. (but will still demand them, which leads to a difficult situation) This causes conflict when we go to the bathroom to wash our hands, since he's usually playing/bird-loafing in there and gets very upset when we stick our disgusting bare human hands into his sink.

Obviously, during the height of covid we were making extra sure to wash our hands often and properly, and naturally Angel objected every time. He'd run laps around the sink, squeaking angrily, hissing and trying to bite our fingers.

So naturally we started saying he was objecting to hand-washing because he didn't believe in covid.

Mom: "Angel, this is our bathroom too. We're allowed to wash our hands in here. God, he's so mad, doesn't he know we're in a pandemic?"

Me: "I told you, he's a covid denier. He probably denies climate change too."

Mom: "Did you vote for Trump?!"

Angel: "Meep!"

Mom: 'aghast gasp'

[justgot1]

TFW your new friend turns out to believe right wing propaganda.

[alwaysbewoke]

[ineffablefool]

Hey, if you're having a good lol at Trump's ridiculously tiny hands on that New Yorker cover, then I hope you know that I -- a transmasc AFAB person with small hands and gotdamn do I wish I could change that -- am taking notes on Who Thinks Laughing At Transphobic Humor Is Fine, Actually, As Long As I Personally Think The Target Deserves It.

I am not telling anyone what to do, or not do; and here on our beloved hellsite, I am a total unknown to about 99.999944% of you, meaning you have essentially no reason to care what I think.

Maybe you've got a friend who's got Small Hands, though. Maybe he's dysphoric about it, or they get clocked a lot because of it, or xe is just tired of people pointing it out. Maybe at some point you told them, her, whatever, that no, there is nothing wrong with nir hands. They aren't laughable. Those are good hands, dammit, and you don't see a single funny thing about them, and anyone who does is just an asshole.

Oh, your friend might think, looking from your reaction to that image, and then down at their own little hands. So that was a lie, then.

Intellectual honesty would seem to lead to the conclusion that these cheap physical-appearance-based digs are either always appropriate regardless of your opinion of the target, or that they are never appropriate regardless of your opinion of the target. If you are scrambling to justify why it's totally cool, actually, to use transphobic humor if only you can find a target who's bad enough to "deserve" it -- that means you think transness can be worth mockery. You're just saving the transphobia for when you think nobody in the room will call you out for it.

I'm not the boss of you, though, so. If you really insist on your sacred right to being able to make fun of a dude's girly hands -- some dude, somewhere, there has to be a situation where you can finally make these jokes that you've been sitting on all this time -- then I guess that is your decision.

(same with any other kind of humor that trades on bigoted stereotypes. believe me, I'm not looking forward to all the upcoming political cartoons that will Very Creatively exaggerate Trump's weight, either.)

(inb4 "I'm trans and I will still laugh at Trump's small hands from now until doomsday": I guess that is your decision. It's probably good for your current followers and friends to know that about you, because that may give them info they need to make some decisions of their own.)

[smileandasong]

the DJs of my local alt rock radio station were giddy as hell yesterday. about trump's victory, and they were talking about it on the air. and this station plays bands like green day and rage against the machine all the time. it always baffles me how people can call themselves fans of punk music, and then go and be supports of conservative and authoritarian politics. how do you miss that irony??? how do you not realize that YOU are what they are singing about in these songs!?!?

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Martin Pengelly at The Guardian:

The former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s troubles deepened on Friday when he was suspended by WABC radio, for trying to use his show to discuss the lie that the 2020 presidential election was lost by Donald Trump because of electoral fraud. John Catsimatidis, a New York billionaire, Republican donor and owner of WABC, told the New York Times: “We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election. We warned him once. We warned him twice. And I get a text from him last night, and I get a text from him this morning that he refuses not to talk about it. “So he left me no option. I suspended him.” Giuliani said he had been fired.

In a lengthy statement, the former mayor said: “I’m learning from a leak to the New York Times that I’m being fired by John Catsimatidis and WABC because I refused to comply with their overly broad directive stating, word-for-word, that I’m ‘prohibited from engaging in conversations relating to the 2020 presidential election’.” A copy of a letter from Catsimatidis to Giuliani, dated 9 May and obtained by the Guardian, said Giuliani was “prohibited from engaging in conversations relating to the 2020 presidential election on your programs broadcast on WABC … and otherwise in your capacity as an agent of the station.

“These specific topics include, but are not limited to, the legitimacy of the election results, allegations of fraud effectuated by election workers, and your personal lawsuits relating to those allegations.” Claiming “a clear violation of free speech”, Giuliani said he would address the situation further on social media on Friday night. But he went on to say the move by WABC came “at a very suspicious time, just months before the 2024 election, and just as John and WABC continue to be pressured by Dominion Voting Systems and the Biden regime’s lawyers”.

[...] Catsimatidis told the Times that at the close of his WABC show on Thursday, Giuliani tried to speak about the 2020 election but was cut off by station employees. “Look, I like the guy as a person, but you can’t do that,” Catsimatidis told the paper. “You can’t cross the line. My view is that nobody really knows [about the 2020 result] but we had made a company policy. It’s over, life goes on.” In his statement, Giuliani accused Catsimatidis of “telling reporters I was informed ahead of time of these restrictions, which is demonstrably untrue.

WABC radio suspends serial election denier Rudy Giuliani for persistently disobeying directives to not discuss 2020 election lies.

[castles-in-the-eyre]

may the gods grant me the strength not to throttle my group project members by their thick republican athlete finance bro throats

[curiositykilledtheradiostar]

we’re in a hotel and since it’s on every channel for some reason we’re watching the American Democrat thing and. you all can’t seriously live like this right. this has to be some form of bizarre, jet-lagged fever dream. this can’t possibly be how this is done

[nero-neptune]

"kkkamala" was this written by a super racist right-winger Or a super online leftist? the answer will shock you!

[nientedal]

well you see nobody should be allowed to access gender affirming care because MY Bible says ever y one hav t dsc pwooo bbtttRRRRR deet deet deet [dialup modem noise] bwUuuuu and you're all hhg to ffarpLA ing to Hell if nnn inp let anyone of SPROING dittttg [ricochet.mp3] the DOWNFALL of AMERICA if hhhhg bitDING the rrrrrrrestRest of your life lifSOUL if AnYYYknnone play god then weeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEE let let let horg jrrrPYtr to Hell if [kettle shriek] ktktkkckstPING control t own b odie s i'mmm very intelligent,

[daydream-the-demon]

Salutations!

How are you faring today my genderless fellow?

My cosmic horror self has been doing great!

Salutations back to you my fellow Al!

[pulsar-1919]

God, reading about and listening to podcasts about queer history it's disappointing to see that people have been infighting about the same shit for years