We've all heard or read stories about people facing severe hardship as jobs are lost, homes foreclosed upon and health care claims denied. From coast to coast, people are suffering, from auto workers in Detroit to peanut farmers in Georgia.
And it isn't just individuals who are hurting. Wall Street Bankers, insurance company executives and leading industrial firms are rushing to Washington with their hands extended, begging for trillions of dollars in bailouts to save their companies from total collapse.
Even Larry Flynt and his colleagues in the pornography business have sought taxpayers' help as porn revenues decline and thousands of actors and models face a future in the unemployment line or the indignity of using food stamps in the grocery checkout lanes.
But there's one group of Americans whose suffering is being ignored - whose hardships are growing more severe by the day.
Conservative Talk Radio On The Wane In California
By Michael Finnegan
Tune in to conservative talk radio in California, and the insults quickly fly. Capturing the angry mood of listeners the other day, a popular host in Los Angeles called Republican lawmakers who voted to raise state taxes "a bunch of weak slobs."
With their trademark ferocity, radio stars who helped engineer Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's rise in the 2003 recall have turned on him over the new tax increases. On stations up and down the state, they are chattering away in hopes of igniting a taxpayers' revolt to kill his budget measures on the May 19 ballot.
But for all the anti-tax swagger and the occasional stunts by personalities like KFI's John and Ken, the reality is that conservative talk radio in California is on the wane. The economy's downturn has depressed ad revenue at stations across the state, thinning the ranks of conservative broadcasters.........
That's right! Conservative pundits are facing a crisis never before imagined. Their voices and ideas are being silenced, or at least ignored.
One need look no further than Friday's disastrous turnout for Glen Beck's heralded 'We Surround Them' initiative. All across the country the millions waiting to be surrounded were disappointed, as was evidenced by lifeblogging and continual updates right here on the Daily Kos.
Even the Grand Dame of Demagoguery, Anne Coulter, is suffering an unprecedented decline.
Ann Coulter's Book Sales Head South
Though never exactly shy, Ann Coulter has been especially noisy in her self-promotion lately, inventing a beef with NBC News, arguing with Keith Olbermann over the meaning of a Cornell degree and taking her act on the road with Bill Maher as foil. Could it be because she's worried she's losing our attention?.........
What does this mean for the future of political discourse in this great nation? Can we afford to lose the voices of unreason, the passionate dissemination of lies and hatred? Can America survive without the vitriol of wingnuts - absent the guidance and leadership of Melanie Morgan, Laura Ingraham, Michael Weiner (Savage), Bill Cunningham, Peter Boyles, or Howie Carr?
In these tough economic times my inclination is to reach out and lend a helping hand. But I'm also of the belief that we can't help everyone - that some folks are just going to have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. I know that may seem insensitive, but if ever there was a group uniquely qualified to re-invent itself - to create something out of nothing - it's conservative pundits.
So while I can sympathize with their plight, I'm convinced that this is one of those instances where we're much better off teaching them how to fish rather than offering them a plate of lobster. Now, I might be willing to provide a boat to haul them to the middle of the Great Salt Lake to facilitate their fishing excursion, but really, there must be limits.
Feel free to disagree. I know that we're a sympathetic, humane group here on dKos, and some may feel a bailout of the conservative pundits is warranted. But then, some people believe this is all good for John McCain. Go figure!