Shut down the motherfuk**er's base

Media like MSNBC have mentioned talk radio and Limbaugh more in the last week than in the last 30 years. The “It’s the economy, stupid” template is overused but “It’s the talk radio, dumbass”, is true.

The Trump base depends on talk radio and artificial intelligence will force the advertising industry to drop Republican talk radio as soon as Americans lets it know it’s going to have to start asking its clients whether they actually want to support the hate and lies.

The media and politicians live in cities mostly and have no time for talk radio so they’ve been believing the crap about Trump’s rabid base, basically studying fish without water. It’s really a lot smaller than it’s made out to be but it’s well coordinated, motivated by the same oft repeated lies, and puffed up by a few hundred ignorant racist liars on 1500 radio stations. Like when media covered 20 Tea Party protestors protesting “death panels” while ignoring tens of thousands calling for single payer.

Republican politicians don’t have to respect protestors because a few hundred blowhards reaching tens of millions every day across the country will attack them and distort their aims long after the protestors go home.

Republican politicians will be much more likely to vote for impeachment and prosecution and many other progressive objectives if they see talk radio under attack and the advertising industry making adjustments in response to talk radio boycotts and protests at the 88 universities that broadcast sports on 260 Limbaugh stations.

For 30 years the Right has used those coordinated radio stations to attack Democrats and liberals and lie about their motives and ideas. And to intimidate and weed out moderate Republicans. It has allowed them to short circuit democratic feedback mechanisms with made-to-order malinformed constituencies, set the stage for democratic obstruction and dysfunction, and helped Putin put a puppet in the White house. It has been invisible to those it attacked because they couldn’t stand to listen to it. As a 20-1 monopoly with no significant political counterpart it is unique among major media and it should not be considered part of the free speech spectrum. Talk radio is Trump’s only real advantage and it is significant that the Trump team studied it in 2014.

The 20-1 talk radio propaganda operation needs to be shut down.

Shutting down the liars and the Trump base’s exaggerated power is a must for democracy. And easier than you think.

Everything that can be digitized will eventually be digitized and artificial intelligence recently made digitizing talk radio easier, faster, and cheaper by an order of magnitude.

Now it can finally be read, searched, monitored, and studied for content, repetition, and patterns.

The advertising industry needs to realize that its customers can be listed and associated directly with the hate and lies they are sponsoring, with little or no listening required.

It is inevitable that artificial intelligence will politicize radio advertising. And there is no way that 95% of the 50 million Americans who listen to the 1000 - 1500 political talk radio stations every week like what Trump and the spineless Republicans are doing to America. When the true ‘market demand’ for Republican talk radio shakes out it won’t be anywhere near the dominating partisan Republican messaging machine it is now.

The sooner the adversing industry gets the message the better.

The advertising industry doesn’t wan’t to politicize talk radio advertising because RW talk radio includes many of the loudest stations in the country and they reach a lot of ears. They want their clients to keep believing Republican talk radio is an expression of market demand and the talkers are entertainers who attract listeners by saying controversial things.

The radio advertising industry wants to place advertisers based on apolitical factors, especially numbers of listeners. It wants to ignore broadcasting content. They want to be able to use the hundreds of very loud stations that also broadcast sports from local universities (like these 88) and professional teams. They want to associate their customers with those institutions and teams and all the associated community credibility and history.

Artificial intelligence-enhanced transcription makes it inevitable advertisers on Republican talk radio stations will be yelled at and vilified and boycotted. It will take very little activism to convince the advertising industry that they’re going to have to start asking their clients if they actually want to advertise on those stations or not. That can happen this year.

The StopRush and FlushRush actions that sprung up after Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke were hard work by a few dedicated activists and it did a lot of damage to Limbaugh in particular. The effort could have been expanded to ALL Republican talk radio stations and their advertisers but progressive organizations that could have jumped in with resources and ended Republican radio once and for all dropped the ball. Now we have Trump essentially taking orders from Limbaugh and 1500 radio stations following his lead, announcing to 50 million a week that a government shutdown is no big deal.

Soon they’ll get back to attacking Mueller and progressive Democrats like Pelosi, Warren, Ocasio-Cortez, Castro and forcing compromise on holding Trump accountable.

Why would ad agencies or their customers wait until a serious boycott starts up? The smarter ad agencies and advertisers would get ahead of this and not wait for real activism. They just need to get the message.

They don’t want to start asking customers if they think global warming is a hoax. Or if they like separating immigrant families and putting kids in cages. Or want to shut government down to build a wall. Or if the Mueller is a ‘deep state’ tool and the investigation is a witch hunt.

The advertising industry is going to force many Republican radio stations to change their programming and that’s good for democracy and free speech.

The sooner the better.