On People Who Believe Everything They Hear On Talk Radio

[rymenhild]

I am a firm believer in free speech. I think everyone should have the right to spout whatever nonsense he or she pleases, on public platforms if they so desire and if the controllers of the public platforms permit it.

This does not prevent me from being, on occasion, quite irritated when the audience to publicly presented material simply accepts it without question, comment or even full comprehension.

Case in point: a few days ago, at a family dinner table, my grandfather began discussing California politics with me. It was all well and good when he suggested that Schwarzenegger's advisors seem to be of higher quality than Davis's. I entered enthusiastic-debate-mode and started talking about how California cannot afford its governor to repeal millions of dollars in taxes just at the moment. I did say that Davis was probably not the best governor of California ever, at which point my grandfather announced, "No, that was Reagan." This assertion rather startled me, but I suppose it could make some sense within a certain matrix of political beliefs.

When I commented that no one I knew voted for Schwarzenegger, and that, in fact, the San Francisco Bay Area went overwhelmingly for Davis, things got much worse.

"So why is it that San Francisco has all those things you're not supposed to have?" my grandfather demanded.

"Like what?" I asked in some confusion.

"Homosexuals... radicals..."

The rest of his sentence, if such existed, was drowned out by a horrified "What?!" from me and a number of rolled eyes and stared-at plates elsewhere at the dinner table.

Quite apart from any other issues (like the personal insult he didn't actually intend to send towards me), I would very much like to know how the presence of homosexuals in the San Francisco Bay Area affects the ability of the denizens of the city and environs to choose the manner in which they would prefer to be governed. I would ask my grandfather, but he simply has no idea. He was never educated, nor was he taught to think critically about incoming information. Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura tell him that Schwarzenegger and Reagan are good, and that gay people are scary and want to destroy his comfortable universe, and he believes them unquestioningly. I find this disturbing, even though I think Rush and Laura and my grandfather should all be free to state their opinions. Should I?

Comments

[scazon.livejournal.com]

Gosh, I know how that is—relatives and friends who just swallow what they're given by crazy people on the radio or television or whatever. What's even more troubling is that it even happens with people who only listen to liberal radio (like Pacifica). People who can't be bothered to make rational and informed decisions about their politics don't deserve to be listened to in my book. And apart from disliking the people who host talk radio, I reserve a stronger dislike for the people who call into talk radio to tell the whole world their unconsidered, uninformed, and uninteresting points of view. Ech.

yayness! (-:

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

You're right - ignorance is not limited to one side of the political spectrum, sadly.

Thanks for joining the discussion. :-)

[a-trick-mind.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, thee are tons of voters in this country just like your grandfather.

[earis.livejournal.com]

Fact: The majority of people are vrey stupid most of the time.

Fact: The rest are stupid all of the time.

Fact: They still get the vote, free speech, and other fun goodies, and they deserve them too.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I've been greatly admiring your icon.

I agree with your points, too. Nevertheless, what is LiveJournal for, if not to whine about things that are ethically right but personally majorly irritating?

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm sorry you had that experience, Andrea... that's always depressing. :-(

Should you find it disturbing that your grandfather believes talk radio unquestioningly? I think the answer is yes, of course... and I wish there was more we could do about it, that those reactionary voices were a tiny, drowned-out minority instead of the trumpets they are.

An interesting thought, though (and I start with the disclaimer that this is a generalization, and may not apply to you and your family) -- I think in the long run, homophobes are more likely to be swayed in their opinions by the words and behavior of their immediate family members, than by talk radio.

Whether a family is very liberal, very rural, very conservative, very urban, it doesn't matter: the likelihood of somebody in the family turning up gay is the same (and it gets more likely all the time). And once your father, sister, son, aunt, cousin or grandchild is revealed to be gay -- and yet still the same person that you knew and loved underneath -- it becomes that much harder to revile them, to dehumanize them, to reject them.

Of course, I know that it still happens, and how horrible it is when something like that tears a family apart -- but still, it makes it that much harder for the homophobe to continue to believe all the propaganda fed to him or her by talk radio, when the reality is right there before their eyes.

Unfortunately, this doesn't solve the eternal conundrum, that when you have free speech it seems like the bad speech drowns out the good. Nor can I deny the fact that in this country, at least right now, having the reality right before their eyes doesn't seem to noticeably affect people's ability to distinguish propaganda from truth. I wish there was some solution. All I can do is keep talking about the truth as I perceive it, and hope that people listen.

Perhaps the key is something you said earlier in the post, that your grandfather was never really taught to think critically. The key is education. But then, we knew that, didn't we? And the news isn't any better on the education front than any other...

Man, I have way too much time on my hands these days!

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and he didn't intend to reject me. "Those homosexuals all the way out there in San Francisco" are hugely different from "your granddaughter, who happens to be gay." I've seen personally, several times, people who were previously homophobic change their opinions once they realized I was one of "those people". I will sit down, someday, and work on changing my grandfather's opinions personally... but that was not the moment.

Yes, yes, I need to get a livejournal

[(Anonymous)]

Erica here. (Of course I am going to immediately weigh in on this one!) I agree that being disturbed is perfectly okay. Natural, even. I remember learning about the case where a bunch of Neo-Nazis successfully protested their right to protest (or something). My opinion about that particular case continues to be ambivalent, because of everything we are all saying.

What Ayelle says about homophobia being counteracted by homosexual friends and relatives makes sense to me, though I don't have too much first-hand experience here to draw on.

I guess, just like it's hard on homophobes when they discover that people they love dearly are homosexual, it's hard on us when we discover that people we love dearly have opinions that we cannot respect in the least. I don't know that "cannot respect in the least" is putting it precisely enough, but you get the point.

It occurs to me that this gives me the perfect excuse to talk about a dilemma I am going to have, given the field I'm going into: I'm going to be therapizing homophobics and racists and other people who have opinions that I find illogical, intolerant, and uneducated. My task is to do all of the following:

1) educate them, strike a blow for the underdog and oppressed everywhere, etc.
2) "start from where the client is": i.e., don't lecture my clients, accept their opinions.

I have vague ideas about how this is done, but nothing concrete or typable. In any case, I've noticed it's a lot harder to do with relatives. With relatives, I get all hot under the collar and I tend to start crying rather easily.

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

Erm, on the plus side he listens to talk radio? Vague stab at self-education about current events, even if talk radio tends to feed one the ideologies one wants to hear. (One chooses which station, whether to change frequencies, etc.) Agreed on the disturbing nature of unconditionally believing things one's fed, at any rate, and the disturbing effects it can have.