Here we go again: the Left’s cargo cult obsession with the Tea Party.

Reading this Salon article on how progressives :rolling eyes: ‘need their own Tea Party‘ would make me feel sad, if only I was a better person.  I admit it: I enjoyed watching the author poke and prod at the silent engine of populism like a Twelfth Century Yorkshire poacher might poke at a parked spaceship.  The fellow knows that the thing is supposed to go zoom. He may have seen it go zoom.  The poacher even has an explanation of how it goes zoom that makes sense to him. But… no zoom.

But I am magnanimous: I will deign to explain.  You cannot ‘make’ a Tea Party; it makes itself. If people were as upset about ‘income inequality’ (as the Left defines it) as the Left thinks that people are, there’d be no need whatsoever for orgs or groups or coalitions or professional agitators to coax a movement into existence. The movement would spring up without them, and develop its own goals and causes.  …Which is really the last thing that the Left wants – look how quickly they turned that pathetic slave’s flattery known as Occupy Wall Street into the usual laundry list of bad policy life choices – so I suppose that there’s actually no point in explaining, after all.

Never mind?

Ah, yes, the Cargo Cult that is Left Wing Talk Radio.

This is an evergreen observation:

I have always wondered why liberals thought they could succeed in talk radio. It seems to me obvious that the main problem they would have to face is one of market saturation. Conservative talk radio has successfully branded itself as ‘the other voice’. I remember the early days of Rush Limbaugh where he’d get callers thanking him profusely just for airing views that they long held but never heard voiced on any of the big media outlets. Some restaurants even set up ‘Rush rooms’ were they would pipe in Rush’s show to customers who wanted to hear it.

But with liberal talk radio, none of this is necessary. If you want to hear liberal and progressive views, all you have to do is turn on your TV or pick up a newspaper. The problem is not hearing liberal views, the problem is, where can you go to hear something else?

Continue reading Ah, yes, the Cargo Cult that is Left Wing Talk Radio.