No, Patrick Ruffini: we don't need William F. Buckley back
Patrick Ruffini is a youngish up & coming conservative who longs for the return of "William F. Buckley conservatism" and regrets what he calls the "Joe Plumberization of the GOP." Well, first off, class warfare within the Republican Party dates back to at least the 1950s. Read the instant classic Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade for the...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: August 24-28
What boycott? As I’ve said all along, the Glenn Beck boycott is backfiring. First off, the group behind the boycott, Color of Change, keeps targeting big companies – most recently, RadioShack -- that have never had anything to do with Glenn Beck’s FOX News show. Other advertisers have decided to pull their ads from ALL cable shows, left and right,...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: August 17-21
The mainstream media touted the news that President Barack Obama would be speaking to a “conservative talk radio host” this week to discuss his failing healthcare proposals. I eagerly clicked on the link to this news story, anxious to see which of my favorite hosts had scored this programming coup. The answer was: Michael Smerconish. Who, you ask? Exactly. Why,...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: August 10 - 14, 2009
To leftists, there’s never a bad time to call somebody or something “racist.” But if a conservative uses the word “racist,” he must be destroyed! As you may or may not recall, Glenn Beck said Obama had a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture" on FOX & Friends back on July 28. (Of course, Obama attended...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: August 3 - 7, 2009
Rush Limbaugh just can’t win. For years, almost every liberal critique of Limbaugh has included the word “fat.” (The word even made it into the title of one of Al Franken’s books.) So – presumably after his weight was widely remarked upon following his televised address to CPAC – Rush Limbaugh went on a diet. He lost something like 90...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: July 27 - July 31, 2009
Let’s get this over with: Glenn Beck called President Obama a “racist.” If you care, click here. *** Controversial talk radio host Michael Savage now claims he was banned from visiting the U.K. because he is Jewish -- and he might be onto something. Documents obtained as part of Savage’s lawsuit against the British Home Secretary prove that he was...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: July 20 - 24, 2009
As we’ve reported here throughout the year, the White House has made no secret of its antipathy towards conservative talk radio. So Radio Ink magazine took note on July 24, when, discussing health-care reform at a "town hall" Q&A, President Obama said, "You know, all those folks who are out there saying, we can't afford this; this is socialism; this...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: July 13-17
Dennis Miller returned to the airwaves on Monday, after his vacation in Japan. Not a moment too soon -- I was going through withdrawal. On Friday, Miller had on Steven Crowder, the young video satirist whose short video expose on Canadian "health care" I posted here earlier this week. (To those uninformed snarkers in the comments here, remember that Crowder...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review (with call to action)
As reported here earlier this week (audio included), pundits like Rush, Ann Coulter and Mark Levin were the among the first to comment on Sarah Palin’s suprise resignation as governor of Alaska. The subject took up less time on talk radio than I figured it would for the rest of the week. In a nod to summer, Hugh Hewitt devoted...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: June 29 - July 3, 2009
Lots of talk radio hosts were on vacation this week, due to the Independence Day holiday. That means “best of” shows and guest hosts. Tammy Bruce (who has a superb new website, by the way) sat in for Laura Ingraham, for example (bringing to the show a blend of Ingraham's familiar candor with a much more agreeable speaking voice.)...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: June 22 - 26, 2009
* It was a week marked by celebrity deaths. On Monday, Dennis Miller remembered Ed McMahon, who’d hosted Star Search when Miller had appeared as a young contestant. Years later, McMahon called Miller to ask if he’d appear on a Star Search retrospective, having apparently forgotten that Miller had actually lost. McMahon was flabbergasted, and Miller said he had fun...
...Read more
Black conservative calls Democrat Party 'racist' in new book
I wonder how long it will take partisan critics to dismiss Kevin Jackson's ideas because his upbringing was so unusual. But while Diff'rent Strokes was a silly sitcom, you might say Jackson lived a real-life, "lite" version of the show, and it gave him a truly unique perspective on race and class in America. An electrical engineer by training, Kevin...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: June 8 - 13
"I've said hello to Stephen Johns a number of times..." Dennis Prager is on the board of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, the scene of a fatal terrorist attack earlier this week. On Thursday, Prager remembered the Museum security guard who died in the line of duty. (Audio archives are members-only). Because the shooter was a known "white...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: June 1 - 5
Jonah Goldberg’s bestseller Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change is finally in paperback after 18 months. He made the rounds of conservative talk radio shows, talking to Glenn Beck on Monday. Goldberg congratulated Beck for his constant attempts to educate Americans about the history, and dangers, of “progressive” politics, telling...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: May 25 - 29
Monday was Memorial Day, so most conservative talk radio hosts took the day off and ran “best of” shows. Dennis Prager prides himself on working such holidays; on Monday, he took calls from listeners who wanted to honor friends and family who died in service of the country. It was a moving three hours. So I tuned into Tammy Bruce...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: May 18 - 22
Wendy Sullivan scored a major coup this week: she got “columnist to the world” Mark Steyn (as Hugh Hewitt calls him) to host the first anniversary episode of her podcast Brass Balls Radio. For an hour, Steyn spun esoteric records and talked about the time he was sexually assaulted by... Well, you’ll have to download the show (for free) to...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: May 11 - 15
As we noted here last week, controversial talk radio host Michael Savage unintentionally shoved Rush Limbaugh out of the news, when he was banned from visiting the U.K. as a “hatemonger.” Boris Johnson, the mayor of London and a one-time controversialist in his own right, insisted that Michael Savage posed no risk to British security, and bemoaned the Home Office’s...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: May 4 - 8
For weeks, Rush Limbaugh has been in the news. Ever since his big CPAC speech, the media and the Democrat party have targeted Limbaugh as "the de facto leader of the GOP" (like that's a bad thing, but anyhow...) Incredibly, Rush Limbaugh was pushed off the front pages by his fellow radio host Michael Savage. I don't write much about...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: April 26 - 30
Can't believe I forgot to mention this last week: Dennis Miller got an email from Admiral Stockdale's son, thanking Miller for passionately and articulately defending his father during the 1992 Presidential election. Miller's famous monologue at the time marked his the beginning of his turn from left to right; he was clearly moved to hear from the late Admiral's son...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: April 20 - 24
Hugh Hewitt’s new book slams the Fair Tax. I find Hugh wrong about 25% of the time, and this might be one of those times... Rush Limbaugh on Monday’s third hour: if Obama isn’t responsible for the Bay of Pigs, since he was only three months old when it happened – that means the rest of us aren’t responsible for...
...Read more
Mark Steyn: "If you're in the neighborhood, make sure you're there."
Mark Steyn writes: "Did you hear about the Catholic, the Jew and the Muslim who walked into a theatre in London, Ontario?" "It's a stellar bill -- Kathy Shaidle, Ezra Levant and Salim Mansur, three staunch friends of real human rights taking on Canada's pseudo-'human rights' racket -- live this Monday evening. "(If you're in the US, London, Ont is...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Roundup: April 6 - 10
Camille Paglia may be a lesbian liberal literary critic, but she’s also an unapologetic fan of conservative talk radio. In her latest exchange of letters and ideas with her readers at Salon.com, she rightly praises Rush Limbaugh’s house parodist, Paul Shanklin as “one of the most brilliant” – and criminally underrated – “satirists of our time.” However, she scolds Rush...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Week in Review: March 30-April 3
It was Mark Levin's week. His just-launched book Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto went into its 11th printing, hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and inspired a nationwide craze. Thousands of fans waited on line for hours to get a copy at one particular bookstore. Hugh Hewitt talked to Levin about his blockbuster book on Tuesday,...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Review: highlights for the week of March 23
Weeks after his news-making CPAC speech, and revelations that he'd been the target of a White House smear campaign, Rush Limbaugh continued to enjoy a through the roof ratings boost. Radio Equalizer crunches the numbers, adding this tidbit: "...implementation of the new, far more accurate electronic Portable People Meter (PPM) ratings system has benefited talk radio, as the manual diary-based...
...Read more
Right Wing Radio Review: Week of March 9
“What has talk radio done for us lately?” That’s the title of Andrew Pavelyev’s new article at David Frum’s NewMajority.com. Since Frum has been making a new career out of critcizing Rush Limbaugh – complete with a widely discussed Newsweek cover story -- you can guess the thesis of Pavelyev’s wonkish article: “While not actually offering any new compelling vision,...
...Read more
Score: 
