02.17.12
The day’s quote, gently describing the loathesome
Gentle language describing the GOP as a party of angry old white bigots trying to re-fight and win the Civil War:
[When] you look at the numbers, it’s stunning how little this Republican primary electorate resembles the rest of the United States … They are much closer to the population of 1890 than of 2012.
From the New York Times, the piece continues: “[The nomination is] occurring in a different place, guided by talk-radio extremists and religious zealots, with only a vague resemblance to the states where it has taken place.”
This comes as no surprise. It’s easy to see the extremists are good at being horrible, particularly when financed by idiot billionaires who wonder why their old patriarchal jokes about women putting aspirin between their knees from Fifties aren’t funny anymore.
When I worked at the Morning Call newspaper in the late Eighties, editors wouldn’t allow such quotes into the newspaper, even if they were made by important townsmen at local meetings. People were gently saved from themselves.
Now this doesn’t happen. Perversely, there’s a big audience that loves hearing extremely angry white bigots be themselves.
It’s here in southern California in the guise of Los Angeles radio celebrities John and Ken.
Today, John & Ken were run off, finally, for repeatedly referring to Whitney Houston as a “crack ho.”
Since they’re the biggest thing in radio in the Southland it remains to be seen whether it sticks. It probably won’t for it’s not like the radio men don’t do such things regularly.
John and Ken have a huge audience precisely because they cater to the other California, not the place I live.
California, as anyone with any sense will tell you, is two states.
The one that matters, with the majority and a polyglot, diverse population, is found in the coastal cities and towns.
And there is the second California, mostly really angry white guys and their families, living in the interior. That audience likes to hear radio that blames all problems on people of other colors — the Asians, the Latinos, the “crack ho’s,” the homos, the liberals — and suggests we’d all be better off if they were either all in prison or given sound beatings.
That’s the audience of John and Ken.
The Los Angeles Times recently ran a profile of the two, one suggesting they are more nuanced than your average bigots.
I know Times people, have met many over the years, and saw them again at the memorial for my friend, Don. They don’t listen to John & Ken and they all knew the stuff their paper printed on them, in trying to appear fair and balanced, to coin a phrase, was nonsense.
Excerpted, all you need to know:
Broadcasting from a Democratic stronghold in a politically deep blue state, Kobylt and Chiampou have created one of the most popular local radio talk shows in the country by tapping into the contradiction that is California. Not a single Republican holds a statewide elected office. The Legislature is solidly Democratic … The angrier the Californians, the likelier they are to listen in.
For much of their tenure in Southern California, the New Jersey radio transplants have hammered away at illegal immigration. They spent weeks calling on Brown to veto the second half of the California Dream Act, which gives taxpayer-supported college grants to illegal immigrants …
They also gave out the cellphone number for Jorge-Mario Cabrera, spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, and urged listeners to give him a piece of their minds. More than 500 did, Cabrera said.
Transcripts of about 40 calls provided by Cabrera are filled with profanity. One man who called 42 times, Cabrera said, offered this sentiment: “You pig. I hope you die in your own vomit.”
The John & Ken audience is the same as the one ruling the GOP race.
Politically, John & Ken and their loyal fans have no power in California outside the ability to be spiteful and harassing. And if it weren’t for the newspaper, other media pieces and the occasional billboard, the majority of Californians wouldn’t know anything about them.
However, as in the small white idiot GOP caucuses in the heartland, as with the John & Ken fanbase, the loyalists are extremely focused. And this has been their time to show the rest of us what odious folks they truly are.
Over a year ago I started a tab on Ted Nugent, primarily to show how his special brand of stupid foaming-at-the-mouth incivility had traveled into the mainstream.
But today miscellaneous Ted Nugents, some far more well-dressed, are in the news daily.
Ted-style quote, still excessive and alienating as ever, has become the stuff through which the GOP rallies its own.
From some Republican dumping ground — Sangamon County — in Illinois, Ted collected his rather small, I would imagine, speaking fee — last week:
“We have a guy in the White House who is an absolute, America-hating punk,??? Nugent said. “And it isn’t really the punk’s fault. It’s we the people for bending over and letting the punk in the door.???
“How about a welfare program … (where) for every kid who gets a sandwich from the welfare program, there’s about 10,000 pigs buying bling-bling, dope and meth with my welfare money,???
“If we don’t fix the United States government this November, we will get exactly what we asked for,??? Nugent said, “and it won’t be the rabid coyote’s fault for getting into our living room – it will be our fault for not shooting him.???
“Prior to being elected President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln represented Sangamon County in the Illinois Legislature,” reads a Wikipedia entry on it.
Lincoln, as everyone knows, was fatally shot by John Wilkes Booth.
An amusing editorial cartoon of Ted Nugent standing before a portrait of Lincoln, from the Springfield, IL, newspaper is here. Click on it for a large version.