This chapter in the book presents the basic premise that one of the major factors of americans becoming idiots is that they listen to Radio/TV Talk shows and accept the hosts of the show as an authority on the subject they are talking about. The reality is that pretty much all of these talk show hosts are only experts at getting listeners and telling them what they want to hear, thereby keeping them as listeners and generating revenue for sponsors.

I must confess, before I continue writing anything about this, that I am one of the crowd who watches some of these talk shows. I fall under the realm of Idiot America. At least before reading the book I came to realize how these are shows and not primary sources of political insight.

Ok, I am back to writing about the book chapter! So, after the Fairness Doctrine was repealed and the radio/tv stations were deregulated we now have talk shows all over the place, from Rush Limbaugh to Rachel Maddow.

Ok, I have to be fair and retract a bit here. The book does not specifically mention Rachel Maddow as a part of Idiot America. Also, to mention Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Maddow in the same sentence it would appear that I am saying that their political credentials are comparable. This is completely not the case. Rush is the common rule, where he is a College Dropout and has no formal education in Politics. Rachel Maddow is, unfortunately, the exception. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Political Science at the University of Oxford. Rachel Maddow is one of the few Talk Show hosts that has the academic qualifications to talk about Politics.

I do digress a lot; now I am once again back to talking about the book chapter. We now have lots of Radio Talk shows, and virtually none of them actually know anything about politics. They do know what they hate and fear, and more importantly they know what other people hate and fear. They know how to play on the hate and the fear of people. That is exactly what they do, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

What is really so sad, and at the same time so funny, is that there are comedy shows that take advantage of this phenomenon. I love those shows also, and I respect them because they cosistently say that they are not news shows. I would like to paraphrase Jon Stewart with ‘They are all snake oil salesmen, but Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert admit that they are!’ The part that is really sad is that even the radio talk shows cannot tell a signifigant difference between the comedy shows and real talk shows. They try to hold the comedians to some journalistic standard that the talk shows do not even adhere to. Another sad truth is that a large number of people view ‘The Daily Show’ and consider it their only real news source! This shows the deplorable state that the real news is at right now.

Why am I blogging this? Well, for one thing this resonated with my experience so I thought that it was blogworthy. Also, I realize that by reading his book and accepting that he is an authority of what he is writing about I would be effectively committing the same errors that ‘Idiot America’ does when they listen to talk radio. This is one avenue of research that I will attempt to use. All well written comments are welcome. I will be looking

Volcano Lightning

Scientist have finally been able to observe Volcano Lightning through the plume cloud that occurs in an eruption. Check out this cool picture, then go here to read the full story. You have to admit, that picture looks super cool!