niyad's request: Why I'm BEYOND THRILLED that roger ailes is in trouble.

[calimary]

70. Oh you make a great point, uhnope.

Pox Noise certainly is not the whole problem. But it's one of the biggest, loudest, and most glaring symptoms.

I, too, think it started with hate radio. What limbaugh did, as the first big success, was bring all the hate and racism and sexism out of the closet (or cooped up in the attic so the house would be "safe" and sanitized for when company came over) and into the mainstream.

Used to be you just didn't say things like that in public. Certainly not on the radio from coast-to-coast. You kept those anti-social, backwards and upside-down, Neanderthal opinions to yourself. You didn't repeat shit like that in polite company because it made you look like a complete oaf. But no! limbaugh, and then all the hundreds of limbaugh clones looking to cash in on a new fad, brought it all out into the open. Those opinions weren't shouted down or hushed up or closeted anymore. They were brought right out into the open, into the fresh air and sunshine (which promotes growth and propagation as any gardener knows). They were no longer shown to the back of the room and told to sit down and shut up. They were escorted proudly - not just to a seat at the table, but to the HEAD of the table. They were allowed to go mainstream. And it became okay to voice that shit and spread that shit and talk about it and glorify it openly - and proud. You were allowed to be proud of thinking like that. The host just agreed with you, and rather vigorously, as the like-minded brother-under-the-skin that he was, and asked you leading questions to get you to expound further on it, and then agree loudly and wholeheartedly with that! And then bring on other callers to say "mega-dittos!" to it and further validate and reinforce it and reward it and push it all the farther and make sure it gained in acceptability. And even respectability (as that kind of utterly regressive programming encouraged it to become), because after all, it was making money, and, as America well knows and freely acknowledges, if you're so smart, why ain't you rich?

THAT'S what brought this on. And for people like roger ailes, who'd been wanting so badly for so long to put it on TV, that was the green light they needed, and the new climate it fostered where that shit suddenly, and finally, had at long last become okay.