From the “you can’t make this up” basket is this:
Democratic lawmakers in Washington are asking a North Dakota radio personality to take on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other conservative talk show hosts.
Ed Schultz, who earlier considered running for governor, has been tapped by national Democratic leaders for a talk show to start in January.
Democratic lawmakers in Washington are raising money for the show, and Democrats have pledged about $1.8 million over two years to get it off the ground, Schultz said Monday. He said a half-dozen stations are looking at whether to carry it.
“The Democrats are getting the tar beat out of them constantly by Limbaugh and Hannity, and they feel they don’t have a platform,” Schultz said. “There’s this conservative mantra that’s being jammed down the throats of the American people, and the other side of the story is not being told.”
So much to say about this article, so short a lunch break. This story should make any conservative’s chest swell with pride, assuming it’s accurate. They’ve got to go to Fargo to come up with a liberal talk-show host? Recall that Rush Limbaugh was wildly popular in New York City (pop. 7,348,000), not North Dakota (pop 635,000) before he went national.
And a “half-dozen” stations are interested in this guy? Wow. Limbaugh is carried on over 600 stations — none of which has dropped his program after he announced his drug troubles — and Hannity is on almost 400.
Maybe, just maybe, the thing that makes conservative talk shows popular isn’t the personalities, but the…conservatism? When people say that conservatism is “jammed down people’s throats,” and that’s why it’s popular, it’s a lot like news stories about the pope that say, “This pope is popular with young people, despite his ingrained conservative theological stances.” Ever think that he’s popular because he offers the perennial things, not the new and the transient?