[re Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare] 'I tracked down Hannity’s guests, one by one, and did my own interviews w/them.'
much more, here.
The most visible...is Mark Zuckerberg's new organization. Launched...in April of this year, the group is called FWD.us, and is being mobilized to push for immigration and education reform, issues that affect the tech industry's ability to access trained workers. Right out of the starting block, it caused a stir last spring by running ads praising conservative senators' support for such conservative causes as the Keystone pipeline and drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in order to provide political cover for a potentially unpopular vote in favor of the Senate immigration bill. The group even ran ads on the Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh talk radio shows. Progressives were furious, and several high profile members withdrew from the group. Nevertheless, the group is pressing on...
more.
Times change and audiences are fickle. Shelf-life is probably shorter now than it has ever been. Liberal talker Bill Press notes this phenomenon in his book, "Toxic Talk." As Press notes, Rush Limbaugh's optimism was well-suited to the Reagan/Bush/Clinton era, Sean Hannity's uber-patriotism felt right during the early George W. Bush years, and Glenn Beck's paranoid populism resonated well after Obama's election and the economic downturn. To be sure, talkers can survive (and even do well) after their prime, but they do have a prime.
more here, in a piece about Keith Olbermann and MSNBC.
“I will continue to speak out...They’re not going to shut me up. They’re not going to shut you up, or Rush, or Mark Levin, or Tea Party Patriots or those who respectfully or patriotically petition their government for change. They can’t make us sit down and shut up.”
+++++
art: drawing by Larry Roibal
If you call it a public option, the American people are split. If you call it the government option, the public is overwhelmingly against it."
Frank Luntz,
who counseled the GOP on how to sell the 1994 Contract With America, told the Fox News host [Hannity] to stop using President Obama’s preferred term for a key provision.
A staff memo from Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon followed:
“Please use the term ‘government-run health insurance,’ or, when brevity is a concern, ‘government option,’ whenever possible.”
more, here.
Former Bush communications adviser Nicolle Wallace took to MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Wednesday..."I believe that if she were on the cusp of becoming the nominee for the Republican party a whole lot of people... would talk about some of her more troubling deficiencies...Her incredible cynicism, her bitterness, her aggressive attempts to claw anyone that points out an area for her to work on...these things will continue to reveal herself and the people that love her will continue to love her, but the people who are not so sure about her will, I think, formulate harder opinions and more clarity about her."
she goes on:
"No one's gonna cut her off at the legs...Only Sarah Palin can beat Sarah Palin, and let me tell you why no one will take her on. Her defenders and supporters, the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity—people I admire—are so powerful on the Right that nobody wants to anger any of those people, nobody wants to end up in the crosshairs, and nobody wants to look like they are unwilling to let her do her thing."
So?
"...she is going to be exposed enough to the American public that she will reveal what her nature is. I think her nature has been revealed lately as very prickly, very cynical."
more, here.