Sex, Drugs, and Punditry / By Tom Risen

These be golden years for the pundit and the ideologue that we’re living in, Sonny Jim.

Pundits prowl wild the internets to radio, and no one is safe from their rants that they spent an entire hour researching. They drink as deep from the font of human ignorance as Joe Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, or any old-timey yellow journalist ever dreamed.

But who is this Rush Limbaugh person we’re expected to care about and what happened to that other fat white man from Fox News that kids today were raised to hate even more? Why is every crazy claim that comes out of the cheeto-crusted mouth of a radio show host so important all of a sudden?

Gather round and I will tell you a tale of the rise and decline of Papa Bear Bill O’Reilly.

With the rise of television’s availability in the 1970s, demand for broadcast news rose and for a time standards shrank.

This would have been temporary had the availability not continued to grow. In the past 10 years, broadcast media became more available than anyone could’ve imagined. Nearly everybody had a TV and more people than ever had cable TV.

Not to mention the internet.

Though YouTube was still a few years away in the 1990s, pundits were dabbling in websites and information was of course easier to get than ever. This began a turn-of-the-century boom of cable news.

But news is hard, and when cable channels like CNN started popping up everywhere promising constant news all around the clock, they found themselves in over their head..

Cable news, eager to stand apart from traditionally reliable networks, diluted the news and pandered to entertainment and celebrity news nuts, creating new ones along the way. This was the origin of the opinion news boom we see now.

Its easy news: say what you think with minimal research.

You could even just say what you think, period.

You could make good news stories, but the desire to keep up the flow of interesting news is hard for any reporter (OR BLOGGER) to reasonably deal with. Some give into the dark side.

Like Bill O’Reilly, who spent time at CBS and on ABC World News Tonight, and was offered an anchor job on the brand new FOX NEWS. It was even better than that, he got his own solo show and was paid to talk about whatever annoyed him that particular day. It was like being a rock star, and it was every broadcaster’s dream.

“Quicker, easier, more seductive is the dark side,” said Yoda, certified Jedi Master.

The O’Reilly Factor became the show of the moment after 9/11/01 when FOX NEWS was getting exclusive after exclusive, basking in the jingoism of the early years of the Bush Presidency that they helped create. Their ratings skyrocketed.

“Some people watch Fox News like it’s a religion,” said Brandon Wily of Olney MD, whose father is a Defense Department employee and loyal Fox News viewer.

There was even a merger between the White House and FOX NEWS in 2005. Tony Snow went straight from FOX reporter to Bush press secretary just like that.

Since FOX NEWS has burned out after their moment in the sun over the past few years, the man who was on the opinion scene since the beginning moved once more to the forefront of controversy. Rush Limbaugh, the original iron man of conservative radio, rode the first wave of punditry in the late 80s and never let go.

After a decade in radio where no professional station would take him because he was such a blow-hard, Limbaugh’s father’s buddies in the Reagan Administration repealed the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine had always required that radio stations give free air-time for responses to any controversial opinions they broadcast. Reaganites repealed this in 1987 and opened the floodgates for editorial commentary where jowl shakers like Limbaugh were free to denounce anybody as a communist or a cross-dresser and get paid for it. Rush promptly got a job and an audience.

Daniel Henninger wrote, in a Wall Street Journal editorial, "Ronald Reagan tore down this wall (the Fairness Doctrine) in 1987...and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination."

Limbaugh quickly got high on his own ranting and recently got addicted to prescription drugs. This is hilariously parodied in the movie “V for Vendetta”. O’Reilly, on the other hand, has been accused of sexual harassment numerous times, so his ratings are lower and the drug addict is the top gun of “conserv-opinion” once more.

O’Reilly’s conspiracy of a “War on Christmas” by elitist gay French liberals, his claims that the American Civil Liberties Union is “the most dangerous organization in America”, and repeated accusations and examples of conservative bias, have slowly diminished his reputation.

This is a rare example of radio has proven to have greater staying power than television. Every revolution devours its own, and I think Bill O’Reilly’s time at the top might be ending.

After talking about lame brained punditry I think I’ll end on an intellectual quote from Jean Sartre. In his play “The Flies” he writes about a false god who rules through endless fear and a young brother and sister who dare to reject him.

“Your defiance has signaled the start of my decline, but my reign is long yet,” says the tyrannical Zeus. “Join my flock or your suffering will be unending.”

[Thanks Tom for his contribution!]