Talk Radio’s America
How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Grove
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By:
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Brian Rosenwald
About this listen
The cocreator of the Washington Post's Made by History blog reveals how the rise of conservative talk radio gave us a Republican Party incapable of governing and paved the way for Donald Trump.
Radio hosts form a deep bond with their audience, which gives them enormous political power. Unlike elected representatives, however, they must entertain their audience or watch their ratings fall. Talk radio boosted the Republican agenda in the 1990s, but two decades later, escalation in the battle for the airwaves pushed hosts toward ever more conservative, outrageous, and hyperbolic content.
Donald Trump borrowed conservative radio hosts' playbook and gave Republican base voters the kind of pugnacious candidate they had been demanding for decades. By 2016, a political force no one intended to create had completely transformed American politics.
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The Impostors
- How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics
- By: Steve Benen
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The award-winning producer of The Rachel Maddow Show exposes the Republican Party as a gang of impostors, meticulously documenting how they have abandoned their duty to govern and are gravely endangering America.
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Three Card Monte Politics
- By J.B. on 06-19-20
By: Steve Benen
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The Red and the Blue
- The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism
- By: Steve Kornacki
- Narrated by: Steve Kornacki, Ron Butler
- Length: 17 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Red and the Blue, cable news star and acclaimed journalist Steve Kornacki follows the twin paths of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two larger-than-life politicians who exploited the weakened structure of their respective parties to attain the highest offices. For Clinton, that meant contorting himself around the various factions of the Democratic party to win the presidency. Gingrich employed a scorched-earth strategy to upend the permanent Republican minority in the House, making him speaker.
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Simply marvelous
- By Hector Gonzalez on 10-04-18
By: Steve Kornacki
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Pivotal Tuesdays
- Four Elections That Shaped the Twentieth Century
- By: Margaret O'Mara
- Narrated by: James Killavey
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Pivotal Tuesdays looks back at four pivotal presidential elections of the past 100 years to show how they shaped the 20th century. During the rowdy, four-way race in 1912 between Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Eugene Debs, and Woodrow Wilson, the candidates grappled with the tremendous changes of industrial capitalism and how best to respond to them. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt's promises to give Americans a "New Deal" to combat the Great Depression helped him beat the beleaguered incumbent, Herbert Hoover.
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Important book...especially this year.
- By Jim on 07-31-16
By: Margaret O'Mara
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Unmasked
- Big Media's War Against Trump
- By: L. Brent Bozell, Tim Graham
- Narrated by: Phil Paonessa
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Lecturer, syndicated columnist, television commentator, debater, marketer, businessman, best-selling author, publisher, and activist L. Brent Bozell III is one of the most outspoken and effective national leaders in the conservative movement today. As the founder and president of the Media Research Center, Mr. Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America and is uniquely positioned to offer this blazing critique of the bias in the national media and how they undermine American democracy.
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Good stuff but could have been better!
- By Mommywithsix on 06-05-19
By: L. Brent Bozell, and others
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Reaganland
- America's Right Turn 1976-1980
- By: Rick Perlstein
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz, Jonathan Todd Ross, Jacques Roy, and others
- Length: 45 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Over two decades, Rick Perlstein has published three definitive works about the emerging dominance of conservatism in modern American politics. With the saga's final installment, he has delivered yet another stunning literary and historical achievement. In late 1976, Ronald Reagan was dismissed as a man without a political future: defeated in his nomination bid against a sitting president of his own party, blamed for President Gerald Ford's defeat, too old to make another run.
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This Book is Censored by Audible
- By Nathan D. Backlund on 09-07-20
By: Rick Perlstein
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Fault Lines
- A History of the United States Since 1974
- By: Kevin M. Kruse, Julian E. Zelizer
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: You might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, or the “Reagan Revolution” and the the rise of the New Right. How did the US become so divided? Fault Lines offers a richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer.
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Good overview of the past 45 years
- By Adam Shields on 02-26-19
By: Kevin M. Kruse, and others
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Confirmation Bias
- Inside Washington's War Over the Supreme Court, from Scalia's Death to Justice Kavanaugh
- By: Carl Hulse
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times presents a richly detailed, news-breaking, and conversation-changing look at the unprecedented political fight to fill the Supreme Court seat made vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death - using it to explain the paralyzing and all but irreversible dysfunction across all three branches in the nation’s capital.
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Bias is right
- By Shelle Houser on 07-07-19
By: Carl Hulse
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Donald J. Trump
- A President like No Other
- By: Conrad Black, Victor Davis Hanson - foreword
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Conrad Black, bestselling author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, turns his attention to his "friend" President Donald J. Trump and provides the most intriguing and significant analysis yet of Trump's political rise. Ambitious in intellectual scope, contrarian in many of its opinions, and admirably concise, this is surely set to be one of the most provocative political books you are likely to listen to this year.
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45th President of the United States of America
- By JEYCEE on 05-16-18
By: Conrad Black, and others
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Sinking in the Swamp
- How Trump's Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington
- By: Lachlan Markay, Asawin Suebsaeng
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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An eyewitness account of Donald Trump's clown car of lieutenants and lackeys who have polluted the corridors of power with their unprecedented awfulness. Two of Washington's most meddlesome reporters take listeners on a deep dive into the murky underworld of President Trump's Washington, dishing the hilarious and frightening dirt on the charlatans, conspiracy theorists, ideologues, and run-of-the-mill con artists who have infected the highest echelons of American political power.
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Fascinating writing!
- By CBesserman on 02-28-20
By: Lachlan Markay, and others
What listeners say about Talk Radio’s America
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ronald
- 07-06-21
great book
This book gave me a great insight into right wing radio but still Show that this country have a long way to go
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- Randy Fowler
- 08-07-21
informative and fair
informative and fair, but unlike the talk radio hosts being discussed, the narrator was very monotone and boring. still with the listen.
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- Peter Kelly
- 09-24-20
Important background for our polarized times
Before Facebook memes and InfoWars, Breitbart and Fox News, Talk Radio was the King of conservative media.
In “Talk Radio’s America”, Brian Rosenwald offers a well-researched and enlightening account of how conservative talk radio rose to power and led a growing segment of voters ever further to the right, demonstrably changing how our government functions, bucking traditions and ideals of bipartisanship and frankly scientific rationalization along the way.
In fairness, I do believe that all media (mainstream & otherwise) had its biases back in the late 80s and has its biases now. I do believe that there was an echo chamber created by leading journalists in newspapers and the nightly news and their coverage was slanted in some way. They are not blameless as media shifted away from covering and providing the various perspectives of a large swath of Americans throughout the country. Causes for Polarization: Exhibit A. Over time, of course these frustrated Americans were in the market for new voices to share their ideology.
However, the very real mainstream media biases became amped up and exaggerated so much by talk radio hosts over 30 years that the result is a complete delegitimization of all fact-based media that wasn’t in line with an individual’s political philosophy. It’s now all just “Fake News” to many and I don’t know how they will be convinced otherwise, despite it being in their best interests for their health and livelihood as COVID makes quite clear.
Titan hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, and more are culpable for their audience’s complete distrust of journalism. I believe they are also responsible for defeating pragmatic governance. These same held the vice that squeezed out any compromising moderate Republicans (RINOs as they call them: “Republicans In Name Only”), and amplified further right-leaning, extreme, and hyperbolic voices.
Time and again these voices on the AM dial threw the influence they had over their avid listeners onto the candidate that passed their conservative purity test, even if it cost them the seat to a Democrat. As a result, we are left with far right-leaning Republican legislators who would never make a deal with a far left-leaning Democrat legislator (and vice versa). Of course, the body politic suffers for this as legislation becomes more and more difficult to enact.
“Governance typically requires compromise and nuance, especially during divided government (which existed for twenty of twenty-eight years in the talk radio era). Deal cutting, however, is tantamount to surrender in the black and white world of talk radio. “ (Rosenwald)
Even among Republicans, talk radio and related conservative media stymied any governance because no consensus could be found between the House and Senate caucuses as republican legislators were too afraid that if they compromised, they’d be called ‘weak’ by their local hosts (with no actual skin in the game) and face a primary challenge from an even more radical partisan.
Frankly, all of this makes sense now anyway since the Republican Party pays its bills these days on being the grievance opposition party, not the party that knows how to govern. For an example, look at Trump focusing on the civil unrest, while trying to make people forget about the COVID pandemic that we haven’t overcome. Trump is running to “Make America Great Again Again” even though it’s Donald Trump’s America right now and he’s the president “whether he knows it or not”.
Every day for the last 32 years, Americans tune in to hosts like Rush Limbaugh as he states and justifies their own thoughts out loud, while often mischaracterizing the opposing idea or policy. People think of these entertainers as journalists even though Limbaugh repeatedly amplifies conspiracy theories to this day. Just because someone says “Folks, here’s the thing” to you as you’re driving in your car and you agree with him politically, doesn’t mean he’s telling you the truth.
One example of the Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient’s irresponsibility is when Rush said in February that the coronavirus is “the common cold, folks”. I have been told that Rush tells his listeners not to listen to the news since it’s too depressing… “just listen to Rush!”. Causes for Polarization: here’s exhibit B.
Naturally, now we have the Talk Radio President in Donald Trump. A populist brand-name individual with more of a “style” than ideology who cares more about ratings than the rule of law and who traffics conspiracy theories as long as the propagators like him (such as the those who buy into QAnon, a theory that includes such ramblings as: Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and of course, Tom Hanks {and more!} are in a satan-worshipping, cannibalistic child sex-trafficking ring that only Donald Trump can stop). Trump won’t discourage any of these conspiracy theories, but if there is news out there that he doesn’t like, he will decry it is a lie of the mainstream media, an industry that has had its credibility tarnished over the years by most of those same voices on talk radio.
Anyway, this book is fascinating. I highly encourage you give it a listen!
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- CommentDante
- 02-20-22
Excellent history of our national demise
It’s a sad story how corporate profit harnessed the latent racism and fascism within country to a major political party into a pack of slavering confederate nazi American goonoisie which now seeks the violent destruction of the Republic led by their Orange Pustule Putin chattel Crook Rapist overlord. And they still call themselves ‘conservative’
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