House of Eratosthenes

Neal Boortz is bragging that he kicked Randi Rhodes’ ass on Larry King. I really wish I could watch the interview for myself, or at least part of it, so I can make up my own mind.

My “Googling” has proven futile…as has my You-Tube-ing. What I’m left with, isn’t much.

I see on the web pages, Neal is bragging about it, and Rhodes is silent about it. That’s a clue, although admittedly, far from sufficient. Boortz has chosen to share a sampling of his e-mail about the debate, both friendly and hostile. The friendly e-mail congratulates him on “she’s going to need an ambulance, stat” and “I could not find the slightest bit of reason in any argument she made.” The hate-mail, on the other hand, says things like “I think you should leave USA because you and people like you doing harm to this great country.”

When Bush debated Kerry three times, The Left liked to intone that Kerry won the debates. Now granted, the residual doubts about Sen. Kerry’s victory, are most persuasively expressed with the observation that there is a great sense of urgency, even today, in repeating over and over that the Senator won…if it was a true ass kicking in favor of the Massachusetts Senator, wouldn’t it be better to let people make up their own minds? Wouldn’t that, at least, be an option? But, it wasn’t an option, and it isn’t an option. A liberal is not allowed to talk about the debates between Bush and Kerry, without announcing that Kerry won — allowing people to decide for themselves, is unacceptable. So in the same situation, we have the question of whether Rhodes’ silence about the Larry King face-off is an exercise in allowing people to make up their own minds. Hmmm. You know, I gotta think if that was the case, she would at least be mentioning that it happened. To the best of my knowledge, she isn’t even doing that. She is known to me as a performer who likes to tell the audience what it’s supposed to be looking at.

The only other thing I have, is my experience in listening to them both. I’m out of Boortz’s area, but being a Boortz Blast subscriber I’ve caught clips of him maybe three or four times, compared to just one stint of listening to Rhodes. I was highly impressed with Rhodes’ ability to advance effusive, improbable ideas, and to follow them up with creative prose about the ideas — carefully avoiding any discussion about what might possibly convince me to accept them. Things ranging from…President Bush is a liar, to, The War In Iraq Is All About Oil.

I haven’t mentioned my one listening adventure with Rhodes, for the simple reason that it isn’t a fair sample. It’s worth mentioning now, however, because the findings from my one experience are perfectly compatible with Neal Boortz’s characterization of the debate I missed. Rhodes, from what little I know about her, seems to be Yang; she explains herself, and her words are selected for those already inclined to agree with her before she utters the first word explaining herself. Persuading a hostile mindset to cross over, or simply tossing out some facts to place the hostile mindset in a state of unease, is outside of her intended scope. From what I can see. To sum it up, what I heard on Air America, appeared to be a pep rally. I quickly gathered the impression I had about as much business being there, as in the ladies’ room. Her words weren’t for me.

Nor is her name. It’s a stage name, intended to honor some dead rock ‘n roll guy. I’m not a rock ‘n roll fan.

So I’m left with little doubt that Boortz won, since he’s been refining his schtick to address, with varying degrees of diplomacy, ideological compatriots as well as opponents whereas Rhodes is just a cheerleader. I have trouble seeing it as a fair match.

One other comment on something I learned this morning: Is it a left-wing talking point, now, that terrorism is to be treated as a “law enforcement problem”? I thought people on the right wanted to use that to define what was wrong with the liberal solution to terrorism, whereupon it was popular for The Left to protest — with righteous indignation, as usual — that their opponents were characterizing the leftist position unfairly, using a simple catch-phrase to address a complicated situation with lots of shades of gray. I thought it was loaded with meaning and interpretation, meant to support the conservative argument and to derogate the liberal one. I thought as far as loaded terms go, it was one notch shy of “appeasement.”

Is The Left actually proud of viewing terrorism as a law enforcement problem? That’s a new one on me. I had thought they had confined themselves to simply trying to get people to stop thinking about terrorism. Subtle distinction to make, but I can’t think of a more important one.

Admittedly I know very little about this woman, but it would seem if she speaks for the liberal movement right now, the 2006 elections have already been decided.

Update: Andrew Olmstead, two years ago, gave a great reason (assuming it’s really needed by anybody, something with which I still have some trouble) why the “law enforcement problem” paradigm isn’t such a swell idea. He did this by pointing to a Washington Post story. You know how some folks like to remind us over and over again that Europe is older than America, more experienced in the ways of the world, much wiser, and how we should learn things from them? Well, Europe has had experience treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem. And we can certainly learn from what’s happened.

Assuming that really is how the debate is being framed. I hope it is. The idea of Democrats losing fifty seats in the House, appeals to me a lot; a hundred-and-fifty, would be better. Hello, Republicans, wouldn’t you like to be campaigning on that this year?

Update 8/12/06: The link to Neal’s website (first one in this post) has been replaced with a permalink. Video here.

Ms. Rhodes says there is material on Media Matters that will prove Neal Boortz called Muslims “ragheads,” which in the context of the interview would mean Neal has to make a $5,000 contribution to Air America. Media Matters itself has this to say.

Although Media Matters for America has not documented Boortz using the specific term “raghead,” on the July 19 edition of his radio program, he called the prophet Muhammad “a phony rag-picker” and stated that Islam is “a religion of vicious, violent, bloodthirsty cretins.”

Obviously, this fails to financially indebt Mr. Boortz toward anything or anyone. But is that a moot point? Does this in fact cross some sort of finish line?

Well, that would depend on what exactly Rhodes was trying to prove. And if you check the transcript, that was left entirely unstated.

Well, she’s a left-winger, so just speaking for myself I think we should use the same logic on this that left-wingers have been using against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It dooooooeeeeeessssssnnnnnn’t ccccoooooooouuuuuuuuunnnnnnnttttt… nyah nyah, neener neener neener.

I mean, that’s a fair process, right?

Get your free no hassle debt consolidation quote today Student loan consolidation home loans, Mortgage refinancing, and Home equity line of credit
Lower your monthly payments and get out of debt in less than half the timePay less monthly and get rid off all your high interest bills today, get your free quote and regain control over your finances.
- Debt Help | 10/14/2006 @ 03:01

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Boortz and Rhodes on Larry KingThursday, August 10th, 2006

Boortz and Rhodes on Larry King
Thursday, August 10th, 2006