Right Wing Radio and the Inauguration

Listening to conservative talk radio is painful. The radio hosts on these programs don't just express their ignorance. They celebrate it. Radio stations that broadcast these programs should require the hosts to read Surgeon General warning labels each hour because their programs are hazardous to our mental health.

Unfortunately for me, I have a perverse curiousity about these programs, their hosts, and their audiences. I often wonder how the hosts will creatively distort reality to match their audience expectations. This week I listened to Rush Limbaugh and his clone-in-the-Triangle, Bill Lemay of WPTF radio. I can listen for only a few minutes at a time (see Surgeon General warning). Therefore, the following is just a sampling of comments about Obama and his inauguration from the right wing radio perspective:

• True conservatives should hope that Obama fails.
• Obama's goal is to implement a "socialist agenda."
• Bill Ayers is going to be running the Dept. of Education from behind the scenes.
• Obama's inaugural address was "a rambling, disjointed, buzz kill."
• The audience at the Inauguration was down and depressed.
• The liberal media would have told us the speech was great "even if Obama read his car's owner's manual."

Perhaps, in the future we can create a public health response to the disease of right wing talk radio. The conservative entertainers will always have a right to speak but, I think young people should be inoculated against illegitimate sources of information that do not even try to speak the truth.