Popular culture

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Sat Jan 11 01:08:07 PST 2003


Brian O. Sheppard">...You all had to know it was only a matter of time before Adorno...

(And, on another thread, Chip said that Gramsci is studied by the Right. See the Charlie Bertsch piece elsewhere on Bad Subjects, if memory serves. Doug told me that Ralph Reed has read Gramsci. Rush Limbaugh has mentioned him.)

Joel has a book Doug blurbed that y'all, including me who has had a copy for months should read on Israel and Palestine and much else like Rock and Roll.

I'm too tired to find the cite for the newish book from Routledge that is entitled something like, "Adorno and Christian Talk Radio."

<URL: http://eserver.org/bs/24/schalit.html > The Information Super Yahweh Joel Schalit
> ...Unlike offline Evangelical broadcasting, where one encounters more
> traditionally mainstream conservative opinions, religious online services
> and web pages provide us with a sampling of the entire spectrum of
> Evangelical politics. For example, in the Religion and Ethics forum on
> AOL, Elder Ronald Schoedel of Christian Identity frequently contributes
> pro-Nazi tracts dismissing the Holocaust and anti-Semitic 'Jew World
> Order' conspiracy theories, adding to the traditional stew of homophobic,
> pro-life and family values literature we tend to associate with the
> Christian Coalition. If you've ever wondered how far a leap it would be
> for an Evangelical talk show host to move from gay-bashing to anti-
> Semitic conspiracy theories, here's your opportunity to witness the
> logical continuum of conservative Christian politics. It didn't used be
> so transparent.
The openness to all forms of communication supposed to inhere in the Internet has allowed traditional religious broadcasters to continue to break the taboos that liberalism historically imposed on conservative programming. As early as the 1940's, Theodor Adorno wrote that it was difficult to discern the Fascist politics of radio ministers because American democratic ideology had evolved certain prohibitions. He theorized that breaking these prohibitions might jeopardize the subversive activities of pro-Fascist preachers of that era such as the pioneering radio minister Father Charles Coughlin. The twenty years since the end of the Vietnam War have witnessed a discrediting of liberalism that has made these prohibitions obsolete. The collapse of the welfare state and the rise of violent anti-statist protest movements have played a major role in eroding the institutional basis of liberal taboos originally attacked by the student movements of the 1960s. Those liberal taboos have been supplanted by a discursive ideology of free expression perfectly in step with the new base of economic production, information technology. The degree to which individuals communicate among themselves, and the politicization of contemporary broadcasting is a direct reflection of the productivity and growth of the new market under present political conditions. The openness which we associate with Internet communications has nothing to do with the physical medium of cyberspace itself. If this openness reflects anything, it is the breakdown of American democracy and its concurrent Enlightenment ideologies of free speech and social tolerance. Much of what we mistakenly attribute to the frankness of communications on the Internet is already present in other broadcast mediums such as talk radio, television and rock and roll. The reactionary, common-sense populism of talk radio hosts preceded the 'ideal speech situation' we call the Internet by a long shot. Rush Limbaugh, Bob Larson and like-minded radio personalities have been hosting inflammatory talk shows for years. Just because the Clinton administration decided to wage a smear campaign against right wing organizations who publish their opinions on the Internet after the Oklahoma bombing doesn't mean that the political potential of cyberspace is anything new. The real problem is that the Internet adds new layers of right-wing propaganda to a media landscape already saturated by it.

into this one:

-- Michael Pugliese

I got an axe-handle pistol with a graveyard frame. It shoots tombstone bullets wearing balls and chains. I'm drinking TNT. I'm smokin' dynamite. I hope some screwball start's a fight, 'cause I'm ready, ready, ready

Muddy Waters, "I'm Ready."



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