Loudmouths: Compare and Contrast

One of the inescapable phenomena in today's political climate are the plethora of pundits that threaten to block out the sun with their sheer numbers. There are those that stand out from the rest due to their bombast, intellect or sheer stupidity. We know the all-stars: Limbaugh, Savage, Malkin, Hannity and Beck. On the Left side of the shoutin' match you got your Olbermann, Maddow and Rhodes. What many people don't realize is that the intellectual prowess of one side kicks the living shit out of the other. Ironically, the side with the most followers, has the fewest credentials proving they have a little more than a smooth brain in their head.

All of this was brought to the fore by a blazingly enjoyable moment on Hardball with Chris Matthews. A little known right-wing radio commentator named Kevin James (not to be confused with fat d-lister Kevin James of CBS King of Queens fame) was paired with AirAmerica owner, Mark Green for an on-air debate surrounding another Bush fuck-up in which our President so much branded an unnamed Democrat an appeaser using the context of Hitler in front of the Israeli Parliament. Chris Matthews who fancies himself an armchair historian took it upon himself to do a little history check to see if James could back up his high-volume declaration that Barack Obama was an appeaser on par with Sudetenland seller, Neville Chamberlain. Well, this is what happened (grab some Kleenex now, because you're going to need it from the tears of laughter you'll be shedding):



The fact that this moron couldn't give Matthews a high school freshman rundown of WWII history brought to mind the fact that practically all of the right-wing pundits should be changing tires at Sears Auto Centers or putting together Happy Meals. Allow me to illustrate:

Rush Limbaugh: Flunked out after two semesters at Southeast Missouri State University and soon entered radio where he got his big break replacing Morton Downey Jr. We'll leave it at that.

Michael Savage: Probably the most educated of all, except none of it is germane to politics or journalism. Michael Savage aka Michael Alan Weiner (sometimes you can't make this shit up) has a Ph.D. from Berkeley in nutritional ethnomedicine. Which led him to be a disciple of LSD prophet Timothy Leary. A fan of Lenny Bruce and Alan Ginsberg, Savage was quite liberal in his day and somewhere around 1980 he went right...hard. Today, words like "fascist", "homophobic" and "bigot" follow Savage wherever he goes. Savage's book titles speak volumes, no pun intended: The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder and The Savage Nation.

Okay, enough with the Right-Wing nutjobs, let's examine the more vociferous liberal media megaphones.

Keith Olbermann: Host of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Olbermann's sails have caught the wind of Bush disapproval and as a more toned down love affair alternative to the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Olbermann is considered ridiculously bright as evidenced in his graduation from high school at 16 and entry into Cornell University. He has had a rocky relationship with his employers such as ESPN and MSNBC, but assuages the occupational bumps with substance and awards, like the Edward R. Murrow Award he received for reporting from the site of the 9-11 attacks for 40 days on ABC Radio and Los Angeles radio station KFWB. His recent Special Comment about Bush giving up golf as a personal sacrifice in light of his war has caught fire online and galvanized rancor amongst Republicans and Democrats alike.

Rachel Maddow: Host of the Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio and frequent MSNBC Political Commentator. Maddow is a Rhodes Scholar by way of Stanford and Oxford. I'll stop right there out of mercy for the rest. Oh, and formerly of Fox News, John Gibson likes to point out she's a lesbian. Kudos to Maddow for not pointing out that he's an ugly retarded heterosexual.

At this point I will refrain from shining a light on the rest only to tell you that the trend continues on both sides. The right-wing punditry is pathetically outclassed on the intellectual front. Does this invite cries of elitism and bleeding-heart liberalism? Sure it does. But please remember back to when your functional illiterate bullies in grade school always made fun of the geeks and fags.

Gone are the days of Will, Buckley, Vidal and Mailer. Their mantle has been seized by loudmouth assholes with little regard for topical fact, history and a cursory knowledge of the constitution. Extinct are the moments on Dick Cavett where the intellectuals would square off and piss each other off in a cerebral three-dimensional chess game of one-upsmanship under the cloud of war (Viet Nam) or social unrest (Kent State). Now, it's who can yell the loudest, blame the boldest and get the hell out of the way fastest so their mindless pitchfork and torch bearing masses can do the rest.

Fine, give me my pitchfork. I'm with the geeks and fags.