What I've Learned From Listening To Conservative Talk Radio

I love radio.

If you're under the age of 30 or so, you've probably never heard radio that isn't corporate owned and tightly formatted. But I grew up in an age where every music DJ had a distinctive personality and non-sports talk radio wasn't just a mix of angry white guys and CBS News stations. I love the medium and when I was a kid, that was the job I thought I'd have my entire life. The first job I was ever fired from was at a local Southern Indiana radio station after I played the song "Muskrat Love" backwards and claimed it included hidden messages from Satan. It was a joke, but thinking back, I suspect I might have been right.

I've done a lot of things over the years - stand-up comedy, tech reporter, feature writing, news manager for some TV web sites and now writing about television. But I've always enjoyed broadcasting and worked in the medium when I could. My last regular radio job was as host of a late-night syndicated talker that at its peak had about 35 affiliates. Then Clear Channel bought a station group that owned about half my affiliates and that was that. I've dabbled in radio in the years since, co-hosting here and there and doing lots of interviews. But in 2018, most of my radio interaction is as a listener.

Even though I am a Democrat, I listen casually to most of the national Conservative talkers, primarily because they're damn good broadcasters. Rush Limbaugh might be living in his own editorial bubble, but there is no one better at taking five completely unconnected points and mashing them together into a world view that seems coherent at the time. Until twenty minutes later when you're driving down the road thinking to yourself, "That makes absolutely NO sense." Limbaugh is like the Pied Piper of rational-sounding disinformation.

Glenn Beck is....well...Glenn Beck. His show is fascinating to me because it's this strange mix of formats and beliefs, and the tone of the show can shift radically from segment to segment. Sometimes he is the "why can't we just get along?" Beck and sometimes he unexpectedly reverts to the guy who used to fill his Fox News Channel show with whiteboards full of conspiracy theories and warnings of impending doom. But the strangest thing about Beck is he has guys on the air with him who seem to serve as sound-alike semi-co-hosts. Sometimes the only way you can tell them apart in a conversation is by listening to their level of exhaustion. Beck is typically the one who sounds as if he despairs not just about the future of America, but his ability to get up out of the chair.

For me, Hugh Hewitt is an acquired taste. He less of an overt rabble-rouser than some of his conservative brethren. He often sounds like a guy who wants to be a Republican centrist, but still sort of suspects Barack Obama was born in Kenya. He has a lot of Beltway journalists as guests on his show but to be honest, I don't quite believe his efforts to be the poster child for the slightly less-confrontational old-school Republican establishment. To steal a phrase from Bill Clinton, he seems to spend a lot of time trying to triangulate the optimal position on every issue.

On the other end of the listening spectrum is Dennis Prager, who combines a sleepy conversational pace with an absolute hatred of everything he describes as being part of the "Left." Leftists hate everything and he frequently argues they don't have a single thing to say that he wants to hear. Which makes it a pretty pointless show to listen to if you don't agree with his every political and moral position. Plus he fills an increasingly large amount of time plugging his "Prager U," which despite its name is a collection of short videos with titles like "College Made Me A Conservative" and "Is America Racist?" (Spoiler alert: apparently the answer is no). I'm sure Dennis Prager services his audience just fine but there's really no point in listening if you disagree with his point of view.

With the exception of Prager and the creepy rantings of Michael Savage, I'll listen to just about any Conservative talker at least a little bit each week. Aside from my love of radio, I also find myself listening to the arguments and trying to refute them humorously in my head. There are many times during the week when I'll hear an issue and think to myself, "This is what I'd say right now." So in some vaguely sad way, I'm not unlike a retired baseball player who watches random games on television so he can think about what he'd do if he didn't have a bum knee. But while I like formulating the counter-conservative argument, I'm not going to call in. Primarily because the national shows either have limited call-ins and/or limit the opposing callers to people who obviously aren't up to the task of formulating a coherent counter-argument. And also, I've had a show. I know no matter how good the guest, the person behind the mic gets the last word.

Local conservative talk radio is a bit different, although here in the Twin Cities there aren't many local shows in prime timeslots. Salem Communications owns 1280: The Patriot and it limits local programming to weekends. The workday schedule is filled with a lineup of lethargic talkers such as Michael Medved, Dennis Prager and Larry Elder. Much of the time, the hosts sound like they're 14 hours into a 15-hour radio shift. The rival local talker is the i Heart Radio-owned News Talk 1130 and while it includes the typical lineup of Beck/Rush/Sean, the station also has an actual live local morning show. "Justice & Drew" is formatted a lot like other iHeart morning shows. The generally upbeat duo with the sassy female screener. But because they deal with both local and national issues, they're more interesting than hearing some national talker discussing the impact of Ronald Reagan on the Republican Party.

I listen to the show at least a bit most mornings, generally in the time between when I drop my son off at middle school and when I eventually find a place to drink coffee and write for the day. And generally, when I sit down to start writing about television I'm still thinking about some conversation I just heard on their show. So I found myself slowly beginning to interact with Justice & Drew as well as some of their listeners on Twitter. And to be honest, the experience has brought a lot of clarity to my political beliefs.

Tweeting about politics can get you sucked into some hellish rabbit holes of anger and conspiracy theories, so early on I set some limits for my conversations. I don't have time for people whose only comments are insults. "That's stupid, you LIBERTARD. #MAGA." I'll generally try once to have an actual conversation, but otherwise, I block them. The world is too short to deal with angry talking points from either side.

I also don't get sucked into the "Yes, but the other side was even worse" argument. If I shoplift from a Target, I can't get a free pass when I'm caught if I argue, "Sure, I stole a shirt. But that guy stole a shirt AND pants!" We are all responsible for our own actions. If you want to talk about Hillary, I'm happy to do it. But whatever she may or may not have done has no impact on the failings of the Trump Administration. One thing I agree with Conservatives about is the idea of personal responsibility. We are all responsible for our own mistakes.

After a couple of months of going back-and-forth with a number of conservatives, I've learned a few things. Roughly speaking, the people I hear from on Twitter tend to fall into one of three categories and they're pretty much equal in number. The first group are the true believers. The ones who don't want to hear my side and who only seem to exist to yell at liberals on social media. Sorry. No time for that. The second group is people who are generally pro-Trump and mostly conservative. Both Justice & Drew fall into group, although my sense is that Justice is a bit more hardcore. But you can have a conversation with them even though you're not likely to change their minds. I find these interactions informative because it gives me a sense of what conservatives care about and their point of view on issues. Going back and forth with them hasn't changed my mind on any major issue. But I have a better understanding of how they see the world and that helps me understand what we Democrats need to do to reach some of the people on the other side.

The final group is the ones that are the most unpredictable. They are the ones that used to be Democrats or were just apolitical and in 2016, they supported Donald Trump. They might not be happy with his behavior, but they're not ready to walk away from his administration or the Republican Party. But they're open to counter arguments and I think I've learned as much talking with them as they may have talking with me. It's easy to look at that first group of true believers and see them as the face of the Republican Party. And in many ways they are. But there is also a group of Republican voters who can be persuaded, who are open to other ideas if they are delivered in a respectful way. 

Listening to conservative talk radio has given me hope about the future of America and for the chances of the Democrats in 2018 and 2020. The first year of the Donald Trump administration was just filled with so much rancor and irrational trolling from both sides that I entered 2018 truly worrying about the United States for the first time in my life. Interacting with conservative radio listeners has given my optimism for this country and while that probably isn't the impact these hosts were hoping to have, it's definitely made listening to conservative talk radio a strange life-affirming decision.