How Liberals Control Popular Culture

By Michael P. Tremoglie
Tremoglie's Tea Time Blog

While watching the C-SPAN History Channel last night, I heard two programs dedicated to political history. One was a symposium by the Smithsonian about presidential biographies. The other was a conference at the Arizona Historical Foundation about Barry Goldwater and the Conservative Movement. Both were repeat broadcasts from months earlier.

During both presentations Conservativism and Republicans were linked to racism and segregation. It was laughable how the speakers totally and completely ignored the Democratic Party's historical and true role as the American political party of segregation and slavery.

(This history has been chronicled in depth by Frances Rice's National Black Republican Association website. Ms. Rice is a retired lawyer and Army Lieutenant Colonel).

Yet, somehow Republicans were blamed as perpetuating segregation and attempting to block the passage of civil rights legislation. Now keep in mind these talks were given by college professors and dignitaries. People who are seen as being authorities.

Because of past seminars like these, the idea that Republicans are racist and conspired with southern segregationists, took root in the popular culture. These current offerings merely help to perpetuate the myth. One can easily find in books, television programs, movies and music this notion of Republican/conservatives as racist.

Such seminars are one vehicle how liberals spread their misinformation. Liberal academia conducts symposia mentioning Republicans=racist idea. The liberal media communicates it.

It is eventually repeated in fiction and music. The next thing you know Republican presidential candidates are apologizing for being racist. (Please refer to the 1996 Bob Dole presidential campaign).

Conservatives do not respond. Even is they did, there are only a few media available to conservatives and they really are not all that committed.

They can roughly be divided into three axes - New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

New York consists of News Corp.(i.e. Fox News, NY Post, and the Weekly Standard), talk radio, the Wall St. Journal and the National Review.

Fox News is Fox News. It will be conservative as long as there is money to be made. If anyone doubts this, imagine this scenario: Sean Hannity is called into Roger Ailes office one day. Ailes, the Fox News honcho, tells him that Rupert Murdoch has determined that liberal commentary will be more profitable than conservative. Therefore, Hannity must start praising Obama.

Who out there thinks Hannity will resign in protest?

The Wall Street Journal is another conservative medium, however, it is nearly exclusively business oriented. WSJ is the "fiscal conservative."

National Review has drifted libertarian over the years.

Talk radio has made tremendous inroads into the popular culture. Limbaugh has been a veritable genius.

However, talk radio has its limitations. It rarely originates news, preferring to merely repeat what other media such as the WashTimes or my own old paper The Bulletin reported. Also talk radio is evanescent. You can't easily refer to what was said on a prior show, the way you can turn to a newspaper's archives.

The Washington axis is the Washington Times and Regnery Publishing, a printer of conservative nonfiction books.

The WashTimes is going broke. Some have mentioned that it will close soon.

Regnery has had its own problems. Two years ago it was sued by its own writers: Bill Gertz, Jerome Corsi, Buzz Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Minniter for "deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.” Eagle owns Regnery.

The Los Angeles axis consists of people like Matt Drudge. They have minimal impact without the other two.

So, given these obstacles the conservative movement either cannot or will not respond to slanderous allegations. Instead these allegations become part of the conventional wisdom.

The so-called "new media" cannot and will not replace the old media. It can't for no reason other than the fact that organizations like the New York Times have more resources than any conservative blog or forum. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply masturbating mentally.

Liberals dominate the popular culture. As long as they do, liberalism will dominate the political culture as well.