Being Polite

I listened to a professor of language and media this afternoon on Fresh Air on the public radio station attempting to explain the differences and difficulties in today's political discourse. So, to say that sentence again in the way some of you might read it - I was listening to a liberal talking about useless liberal college agendas on a liberal radio network.

He made a fine point that after all these years since American encountered the Bunker family on "All In The Family", our political debate today most often is characterized and shaped by media as an easy-to-follow, endless Archie vs Meathead argument, where the point seems to be focused on outrage at the Left or Right and that most of us hearing or seeing the argument have really already got solid views on whatever topic is being "discussed". Most of us know it's enterainment-based and simplistic. To constantly narrow the views one has thru a limited prism of Left and Right is a ever-limiting and distorting of Reality.

Talk show stars, like Rush or Coulter or Hannity or Boortz or Franken or Carville, are just members of our extended family whose eccentricities are indulged out of politeness on our part; rodeo clowns of distraction who served a limited and defined function.

Here's a fine post today from Huck in Nashville that pretty much explains as well why people who believe in the Church of Rush Limbaugh aren't in the mainstream - or even a sidestream - well, really they are kinda just extreme. Nice one, Huck.