(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."