The Vast Right Wing Chatter

In spy-land circles, when you detect chatter, it means, roughly, that the object you are spying on or watch over has increased both its activity and, if an entity, its internal communications. We notice: thus, so and so, Al Qaeda for example, has upped its chatter and may be about to engender some move or attack against us or our allies. Here, a chatter increase is not a good thing, but cause for concern.

I contend it has the same meaning outside of Langley: a chatter increase should give us pause. Clearly, something is afoot, and it may be a conspiracy. Since Obama’s election, either chatter has increased exponentially or I am simply more acutely aware of it, being an Obama supporter. I tend toward the former. Narrow-minded, voluble folk seem to come out of the woodwork; what’s more astonishing is that our national/regional media gives them a voice.

Actually, it is a conspiracy; a unified effort to make as much money as possible while contributing an acerbic absurdity to the national debate about, uh, anything anti-Obama or Hilary or — you know what I mean. In order for someone to contribute something, someone has to receive the contribution: and we’re nothing if not a nation of gullible, unthinking fools. And that means all of us (sometimes even Air America, boring as it is, makes sense to me)! 

I remember hearing famed record producer Don Was (at least I think it was he) say, once, he’d driven from NY to Los Angeles listening only to AM radio, and was suddenly very frightened to be living in this country. At the time, and this was years ago, I too was behind the wheel quite a bit, and, while I may not have entirely agreed with Was, I understood his thinking.

Now, mind you, I am talking about maybe five, eight years ago. There was only, at that time, the Oxycontin-ingesting behemoth Rush Limbaugh, plus assorted local, small town idiots who were picking up on the Rush ratings parade and trying to act as a kind of one-to-two hour lead-in for the Obese One; or were following him, as if to bask in his metaphorical weight. Many of these local folk would actually base their programs around every topic Rush covered that day in his: like adding laziness to unoriginality.

I sense that a lot of these local programs are gone, replaced by nationally syndicated talk and sports, which is only a marginal improvement. But I’ll take what I can get.

Together with the intermittent evangelical (I traveled in the South) whose desire for humanity’s condemnation was nearly orgiastic, both they, the Conversionists, and Rush, the non-tumescent one, made for pretty ragged psychological edges, come hotel destination time after 400 miles of AM radio. (It is not really possible to drive and listen to FM radio. Really now, how many times in one day can you actually listen to REO Speedwagon’s “Take it on the Run”?  (Heard it from a friend who/Heard it from a friend who/Heard it from another you been messin' around.) I mean, seriously?

Article Author: Stephen Foster

Stephen Foster (no relation to the composer) works in the investment business to pay the bills, but writes about the arts and popular culture because that's what he loves. He is the publisher and managing editor of www.culturecrank.com.

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