[PuppyTailWags]

I don't really agree with this. Rush Limbaugh successfully ran a platform on mostly entirely television that deeply poisoned the cultural landscape of the USA at the time (he was defending Reagan's neglect of HIV/AIDS and playing "another one bites the dust" when Freddie Mercury died), and laid the foundation on current polarized rhetoric strategies. He spread lies that Obama wasn't a natural born citizen. He blamed volcano eruptions on the Affordable Care Act. So on and so forth. It's spurious to claim that outrage bait on television hasn't messed up people's brains just because the internet is doing a better job at it. They're just modeling what television was already successfully doing.

[deltarholamda]

This is a really weird comment, because Limbaugh was almost entirely radio. His TV show was short-lived and not really popular, as he wasn't comfortable in the medium and it showed. He got his start in radio as a DJ, and went on to basically remake the AM band from farm reports and local sports talk to talk radio as we now know it.

This is really basic bio stuff about Limbaugh, and it doesn't speak well of your other assertions if you got this part so wrong.

What's really funny is that during the 90s the "Greatest Threat To Democracy Ever" WAS talk radio, more or less solely because the Limbaugh program was so popular. The targets may change, but the talking points never seem to.

[PuppyTailWags]

Hey, thanks for correcting me. You're right that the issue was Limbaugh's radio program, not his TV. I apologize for getting my example wrong, but I think my overall point is still a valid one (that just because social media is more effective at spewing bad rhetoric doesn't mean bad rhetoric is ineffective in other media).

[dr_dshiv]

Your point was valid but your example was creepily wrong.

[oyashirochama]

People remember him for his TV program but get the effects from his radio program, not exactly a creepy mistake just association mistake which happens to anyone.

[advantager]

I believe Rush did become famous on television, but after the mid-90s it was really all about his radio program. So it might be to your point, fundamentally it isn't the internet, or TV, maybe it was radio.

I do believe that the Rush style radio talk show lays the foundation for Tucker Carlson and all of the conservative pundit TV programming. Which is the basis for the problems we see with Facebook / Fake News etc.

[derac]

One can trace that lineage in conservative thought back to the John Birch Society.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society

[pyuser583]

Why stop there? Why not Fr. Coughlin or William Jennings Bryan?

[ch4s3]

Why stop there Girolamo Savonarola was doing it in the 15th century, or Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.

[dr_dshiv]

> Savonarola

Love that the Catholic Church burned him at the stake for being too conservative. Really! Go Renaissance Popery!!

[ch4s3]

Well, heresy and schism officially. But he was more of a populist than conservative and also weirdly sided with the invading French king which kind of pissed off the pope.

[Tainnor]

How do the Gracchi fit in here? They were certainly populist, but decidedly not socially conservative.

[ch4s3]

The comparison is that they're all fire breathing populists that stoked resentment, dabbled in conspiracy theories, and encouraged violence. My point is that these figures have always existed and aren't confined to the contemporary left/right binary. There's just something about people that makes these figures inevitable.