Did you ever wonder, “what the hell are all of these right wing idiots doing on TV?” Or why are there so many right wing talk shows? As it turns out, this is not entirely an accident. For the last 30 years, a few very wealthy right wingers have been funding things like think tanks and publications. Throw Fox News and Clear Channel into the mix and you end up with air waves overrun with reactionary bile. In the corresponding years since all of this has been happening, political discourse has been pushed very far to the right.

Think about it. Are we really a right wing country? I doubt it. Sure there are more than a few right wing nuts and, by nature, many of them are very loud and angry, but how did they take over all three branches of government and the media (disingenuous protestations about the liberal media aside)? As our friend Laurie Spivak has astutely pointed out in a series of excellent AlterNet pieces, polls consistently show that a vast majority of Americans are much more closely aligned to Democratic policies, yet many more people identify themselves as conservatives then liberal. This is because during the last 3 decades the republicans have been able to hoodwink us with superior marketing. (http://www.alternet.org/election04/18786/, http://www.alternet.org/story/18395/).

The apparatus behind this superior marketing is a conservative ''message machine’ that today spends more than $300 million annually to promote its agenda.” (Matt Bai, Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, New York Times Magazine 7/25/04 NY).

About 30 - 40 years ago conservatives were on the outs. Americans overwhelmingly supported the policies of the New Deal and Great Society social compact. Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 trouncing of Barry Goldwater was a good meter of American political attitudes.

Matt Bai’s great New York Times Magazine piece points out how during this period, the seeds of today’s ‘vast right wing conspiracy’ were planted:

“[A] handful of families -- Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Coors and others -- laid the foundation for a $300 million network of policy centers, advocacy groups and media outlets that now wield great influence over the national agenda. The network, . . . includes scores of powerful organizations -- . . . that he says train young leaders and lawmakers and promote policy ideas on the national and local level. These groups are, in turn, linked to a massive message apparatus . . . everything from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to Pat Robertson's ''700 Club.'' . . .''This is perhaps the most potent, independent institutionalized apparatus ever assembled in a democracy to promote one belief system,''


And it’s worked. Aside from making ‘liberal’ a dirty word, let’s have a look at the electoral record:

"From the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 until the Republican takeover of 1994, Democrats never lost control of the House of Representatives for more than one election before regaining it, and that only happened twice. They have now failed to control the House in five straight elections. Similarly, for 46 of those years, Democrats ruled the Senate by a margin of at least 10 seats. In contrast, they have spent most of the last decade in the minority, and during that time they have never enjoyed a majority of more than a single vote. More sobering for Democrats, the realignment that began in the 1960's -- when the battles over civil rights and Vietnam began to drive white men and rural voters away from the party -- has finally begun to erode the party at its very foundation: the state and local level, where it was dominant for decades. Thirty years ago, Democrats could claim outright control of 37 state legislatures, compared with only 4 for Republicans; Democrats now control just 17." (Matt Bai, New York Times Magazine)

So basically, a bunch of well funded and well organized right wing zealots have constructed a $300 million/year media apparatus to promote reactionary policy, demonize their opponents, and radically shift the nature of American political discourse.

It’s almost like clockwork. The talking points start out with republican spin doctors, are amplified by the likes of Rush and Fox News, and then echoed in the mainstream (formerly liberal) media.

How could this have happened? How could we have been so blind to this humongous elephant in our kitchen? Denial and myopia. We just figured everyone else read the New York Times and listened to NPR, like us. Sure, somebody must be listening to Rush and reading the National Review, but they were on the fringe.

As it turns out, they’ve damned near made us reasonable progressive types into the fringe. Not only have they demonized everything we stand for and co-opted the language of populism to advance a very right wing agenda, but they’ve established a giant media juggernaut that reaches millions and millions of Americans. This vortex is the spine of the conservative movement, and it is where many Americans access their information. It is the basis of many opinions, and it is huge. As former right wing hatchet man, turned progressive crusader David Brock points out:

"The most influential political commentator in America, Rush Limbaugh, and his hundreds of imitators saturated every media market in the country, providing 22 percent of Americans -- not only conservatives but independent swing voters -- with their primary source of news. Conservatives had changed the face of the cable news business with the establishment of the top-rated FOX News Channel, a slicker broadcast version of the Moonie Washington Times. Pundit Ann Coulter and her fanatical ilk topped the best-seller lists, becoming superstars in the world of political punditry. The Spectator juggernaut -- which had a circulation of three hundred thousand per month at its height in the early 1990s -- had been replaced by Internet gossip Matt Drudge, who gets more than 6.5 million visitors to his site every day. Although enormous subsidies were still being pumped into right-wing media that did not turn a profit, right-wing media also had become a multi-billion dollar business, a development that powerfully affected all other commercial media." (Reprinted in BuzzFlash.com)

Fellow Progressives, Democrats, and yes, LIBERALS, the time has come to fight back. It's time to shout out the truth to power, and to expose falsehood and propaganda at every point. It’s time we stopped backing down, intimidated and ashamed of our own value and intellect. More Americans prefer democratic policies, so if the media really is liberal, it’s time to be proud and be loud!

That’s why we’re here.