COLUMN: ‘Liberal’ not always a four-letter word

By John Cox

Last weekend on my drive back to Logan I figured I would listen to the radio. Bad idea.

After about 10 minutes of very painful talk-radio abuse, I quickly put in my “Newsies” CD and resumed my peaceful drive.

Why is talk radio so annoying?

The particular lady I was listening to enjoyed cursing the federal government for its excessive spending in New Orleans, claiming they had no responsibility to help them in the first place. Yes, poor people must make due on their own, hurricane or no hurricane. Only then will they learn. The compassion brought a tear to my eye.

You see we need to balance the budget – forget the fact that with recent tax cuts, the wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers received 53 percent of the benefits from such a cut. With good, old, trickle-down economics, the money will get to the poor eventually, right? Well, it hasn’t. So, I suppose the only people we can blame are the poor themselves.

And then came the kicker. She claimed that if anyone was to blame in the government, Bill Clinton’s administration was personally responsible for all of the poverty and problems in New Orleans.

Huh? I’m not sure how she managed to draw such a conclusion, though I’m sure it had something to do with Monica Lewinsky.When in doubt, it’s always safe to run back to the arms of a familiar scapegoat – the liberal.

Never mind the fact that Republicans are in control of both houses of Congress and the presidency and have been for the last several years. Never mind that a Republican appointee headed the unprepared Federal Emergency Management Agency. And never mind how, to his credit, President Bush already accepted the blame for the federal government’s shortcomings in response to Hurricane Katrina.

No. We have to keep going after the liberal.

I really enjoy the title of Sean Hannity’s new book. It’s called “Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism.” Okay, I really don’t like that title. And I really don’t like Sean Hannity while we’re on the subject.

Anyone who listens to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly for reliable political information may just find out one day their information is not at all reliable. They are as biased as that Amway salesman in your front room, yet, people keep on listening -especially here in Utah (liberal biases can be found as well, but in Utah you have to look a lot harder). And whom do they target?

Remember all the ruckus Michael Moore brought to the state last year? And this year, it’s hard to go a day without Rocky Anderson’s crazy antics dominating the day’s headlines.

To say that Michael Moore or Rocky Anderson is a fair ambassador of the Democratic Party would be like saying Cindy Sheehan is a fair representative of all parents of soldiers serving in Iraq. They have a point from time to time, but other than that, they’re just plain nuts. They only make the groups they claim to represent look like a bunch of quacks.

But of course, the Rocky Andersons, Michael Moores and Cindy Sheehans get all of the attention from the conservative pundits. Why? Because it’s easy to see the fallacies in their arguments. It’s easy to feel comfortable with your own political ideology if someone you despise supports the other end.

Same goes for hot-button issues. Just attach the word “abortion” to any liberal policy, and it’s easy to be a conservative. We don’t need to research any further. As a result, our political ideologies are shallow at best.

So if you’re a Republican, I challenge you to explain why you are without using the word “abortion.”

And if you’re a Democrat, I challenge you to explain your party affiliation without using the phrase, “I hate George Bush.”

If you find yourself having a difficult time answering the above questions, maybe it’s time you turned off the talk-radio and picked up a newspaper. You might just learn something.