Michael MooreFollow

Guess which party people with PhDs overwhelmingly vote for?

I'm not sure what point you're making.

It's a rough bell curve. People with minimal education and people with advanced degrees vote overwhelmingly Democratic. It's more like 50/50 (adjusted for election cycles) in the middle.

From the last election:

 
  EDUCATION           Ob   Mc 
No High School (4%):  63 - 35 
HS Grad (20%):        52 - 46 
Some College (31%):   51 - 47 
College Grad (28%):   50 - 48 
Postgrad (17%):       58 - 40

Gonna respond to this before reading the rest.



Funny. I was going to say the same thing about you, based on the first sentence of your response. You labeled Rush "crazy", pretty much entirely because you don't agree with what he says. While I don't listen to him that often (he's on at an inconvenient time slot for me), and I certainly don't agree with everything he says, I've never heard him say something that I'd call "crazy".

Maher, on the other hand, clearly goes off the deep end pretty regularly on his show.

I even bought it to my dad and my bro.

The last time I bought either of them anything was... well, for Christmas I guess, but still, I rarely buy them anything.

Remember. I was responding to a statement assuming that Rush Limbaugh is the "spiritual leader of the Conservative Party". I wasn't the one assuming that one "side" gets their views and opinions from talking head type sources. And you're right, it's telling that so many liberals continually insist that conservatives just parrot what folks like Rush say. It occurred to me that people who assume that might do so because *they* parrot their own sources. So, I was wondering what those sources might be.




I agree. But some of us have absorbed knowledge from a multitude of sources, then listen to folks like Limbaugh and recognize that many of the things he's saying are the same things we've concluded on our own. While I'm sure there are many listeners to Rush who simply adopt whatever he's saying, there are many who listen because what he's saying resonates in some way with beliefs and opinions they already hold.

I'd also assume that other people view him as a "loudmouthed bigot" because he expresses opinions they don't hold. I guess my point is that your viewpoint isn't automatically any better or more valid simply because it's different. I'd also suggest that Limbaugh doesn't form people's opinions anymore than Maher or Stewart or folks on Air America or bloggers do. I just found it interesting that you seem to assume that your opinions are your own and you agree with some expressions and disagree with others based on those personal opinions, but for some reason assume that those who disagree with you couldn't have arrived at their conclusions via the same methodology.

My question about where Liberals get their opinions from was intended to get some of you to maybe grasp this. Maybe I was being too subtle...



Yeah. I'm a lot deeper and more devious than you probably think.

Personally, I base that assumption off the number of times I'm listening to Rush while driving around over lunch and, within a couple of hours, hear his talking points for the day repeated verbatim on the forums. I'll admit it's been a while since I've caught you in this but I suspect that's largely because you don't keep the same posting hours that you used to.

Even when I posted earlier in the day and on weekends, I rarely if ever listened to Rush Limbaugh's show. I honestly think that in the last 2 or 3 years, I've maybe caught 10 minutes of him on the air maybe a half dozen times while driving. Prior to about 2 or 3 years ago, I *never* listened to conservative radio or Fox News. As I stated at the time, after having been accused of parroting people I'd never heard of much less listened to, I figured I'd start actually tuning in to see why this assumption was being made. If you recall, when I started this experiment I spent the first 6 months listening only to Air America. I wanted to get a baseline to compare to first. Let's just say it was eyeopening (or earopening I suppose).

Only after having gotten a good grasp of what folks were saying on the left side of the dial did I start viewing Fox News and tuning into conservative talk radio. It's funny that you've observed that I parrot talking points less often today than I used to. It's quite possible that the reason is the exact opposite to what you think. As I've paid more attention to what conservatives are saying on the radio and TV, it's likely that I'm subconsciously avoiding talking about the same points in order to avoid the appearance of "parroting".


Regardless, I do find it amusing that when I wasn't listening to *any* conservative media sources at all was when I was most accused of parroting talking points. Which leads me to conclude that it's not conservative talking points leading conservative opinion, but conservative opinion (based on current events) leading the talking points. If I look at what's going on and come up with the same viewpoint and argument as O'Reilly or Limbaugh, then maybe that's because conservatives naturally arrive at similar opinions based on similar situations. Which certainly seems to support my earlier assertion that folks like Limbaugh are not making people think a certain way, but are rather speaking to things they already know.

I'm sure part of that has to do with your own imagination. Or perhaps that someone would make a thread about a topic they heard on said radio, and to which any conservative would give similar answers to those they heard on the radio.

I recall specifically being told many times years ago by Smash that something I said was just a parrot of something O'Reilly had said. At that time, I had never heard of O'Reilly, much less ever heard or seen him. Literally didn't have a clue who he was talking about. So yeah. Whether you believe it or not, I didn't then, nor do I now obtain my positions on issues by just repeating what I've heard from right wing pundits.



Lol. Maybe this is a statement about the influence right wing talk has on *you*, but when I do this, the usual response is "But gbaji, you're the only one making that argument".

I was talking about how the NSA wiretapping program most likely worked (and why it wasn't a violation of the 4th amendment) long before any of the pundits were making similar points.

I picked up on the fact that "unlawful combatants" were distinguished from "lawful combatants" (and therefore POW status) based on whether one was considered a "soldier" and covered by the 3rd Geneva Convention, or a "civilian" and covered by the 4th Geneva Convention a year or so before the military commissions act just happened to use exactly the same criteria to make the same distinction. Certainly, no one in right wing pundit-land had ever made the whole "They don't get POW status because they're civilians taking up arms, not soldiers" argument before I did.

In a related topic, I've made quite different arguments about the legitimacy of allegations of torture at Guantanamo than most of those pundits do. They tend to try to convince people that these guys are so bad that torture is ok, while I approach the topic from the point of view that what's going on isn't torture in the first place.

There have been several cases in which I've made a particular argument about a topic before the pundits did. You just tend to not notice them, or have forgotten about them by the time they come up. I guess what's interesting about that is it seems to point to *you* placing more weight on things if they're said on TV than I do. I look at what's going on, apply my own brainpower, and come up with a position. quite often it happens to match what the pundits say. Which isn't surprising. Sometimes, it doesn't.



Honestly Joph. Most of the times, I come into work and see a new topic on a subject and this is the first time I've heard of it. Someone else hears something on the radio and makes a thread about it. I haven't heard anything, but express my own opinion in that thread. If it just happens to be very similar to something you or another liberal heard on the radio, it's not because I'm repeating it, but because my opinion just happens to match theirs.


I don't follow much news Joph. I occasionally catch a tiny bit during my 10 minute commute into work. I rarely watch news television at home, preferring to relax instead. There are a few shows I'll pick up occasionally on various networks. To be honest, most of the time when I watch any news TV, it's for reasons similar to those I mentioned earlier. It's more of an experiment to see what different people are saying about different issues. I certainly don't sit down and turn on Fox News to learn what's going on in the world. I suspect I listen to less conservative talk radio than you do as well...

It's just an example to illustrate the point Joph. People (like yourself) constantly insist that my opinions must have been the result of hearing someone else express them and just repeating them here, yet I was being accused of this long before I ever started listening to any conservative radio or Fox News.

You're free to assume I'm lying, but then the whole conversation is kinda pointless, isn't it?



I didn't say I *never* listened to them, or heard about what they were saying. I said that I don't listen to them frequently enough to have picked up my opinions from them. Or did you miss the whole section where I explained that I pick up most topics from this site and respond to them with my own opinions *before* I hear what the pundits are saying about said topic? Amazing that you avoided quoting the one section of my post which explained away exactly the response you made. Well. Not that amazing actually. It's like you willfully decide to be ignorant about any information which might not allow you to come to the conclusions you want to have.

It's not hard to notice when a topic comes up, and I express an opinion, and then sometime in the next few days or weeks I'll happen to hear or see some pundits talking about the subject and compare my opinion to theirs. It's also particularly apparent when I state my opinion and someone responds with "well, you're in the minority, cause here's what all the right wing folks are saying...". Equally apparent is when I state my opinion and someone says "Well, you're just parroting what <right wing pundit> said...".

You see how that works, right?



You might want to check your own irrational assumptions at the door.

Ah. So we're back to you assuming that while you and everyone who thinks like you do all arrived at your opinions as a result of well thought intellectual examination, all the people who think differently do so because they just blindly repeat what a handful of people on the radio and TV say.

Really? That's your grand understanding of the issue? Lol!

I can't believe gbaji is trying to pretend he doesn't parrot talking points.

Remember that one thread we had recently on Obama's birthplace that got rather long (I know, that narrows it right down)? I do believe that we kept saying "Prove it." and you linked... wait for it... a site that was basically what your posts were saying word for word as "proof."

I'm really glad you're smart enough to think on your own there. You're just a regular genius, always two steps ahead of the MSM.