Fox News Host - Limbaugh endorses Obama

Having my first cup of coffee and watching the Fox News morning show - Fox and Friends and I heard Steve Doocy talking about the current "discontent' that conservative talk radio hosts have with John McCain who has just gotten Mitt Romney's endorsement (story here). The hosts had Mike Gallagher on to discuss this and Doocy said to Mike that "Rush Limbaugh had endorsed Barack Obama on this radio show", presumably over the presumed Republican candidate.

Let me correct the record here as I listen to Rush when I can and I actually heard the endorsement on the air. The transcript from Rush's website states:

Barack Obama, ladies and gentlemen, is a blank canvas upon which anybody can project their fantasies, or their desires. You look at Democrats in the audience, and they're swooning. He's saying nothing. He's saying nothing better than anybody in my lifetime ever has. The reason he says nothing so well is because everybody thinks that he's saying what they want. So they're able to project onto Obama their fantasies.

It was a joke! Obama uses words like "change" and "hope" and injects his speeches with soaring words that have little to back them up (including any real experience) but Rush's point is that is why he is leading in the polls. He is appearing to be everything to everybody - so why not appear to be the more conservative candidate? Again, to Mr. Doocy, it was a joke. You should issue a correction.

This current dust up between conservative talk radio and McCain should also put to rest any notion that those who listen to Rush or Sean or Mark Levin or Laura Ingraham are sheep who get their marching orders on high from talk show hosts and don't think for themselves. But I doubt the media will get to that story. It is so much easier to report how talk radio listeners are a bunch of mind-numbed robots then actually understand that talk radio (like the internet) is a source of intellectual discussion and dispute on a wide variety of issues. Talk Radio hosts are not king makers or leaders of some mob and surprisingly, there is a real diversity of thought on the radio spectrum. I wonder if listeners to the Liberal talk radio network were considered to be led around by the on air hosts? I am betting not.

OS