This story originally ran at Examiner.com
This is an open letter, asking that my favorite radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, untie the ‘other half of his brain’ and let it loose upon America and the world.
Limbaugh, at once the most loved and reviled radio personality in the world, is also unquestionably the most listened to commentator – be it on radio, television or in print. Since last January when he openly expressed his wish that President Barack Hussein Obama fail in his effort to remake America as a socialist-leaning government, Limbaugh’s already huge audience has overrun its banks with fresh listeners.
For three hours each weekday, unless he is off golfing, the self-proclaimed founder of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, brings reason, logic and a wicked sense of humor to some of the most heated political topics of our day.
Rush is a master at tweaking the political elite – especially liberals, and doubly especially Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank and President Obama. Rush revels at goading Democratic Party members into hate-filled rants against him and his beliefs. Often, in fact, I cringe, at how literally his critics take his comments, when they should be wise enough to understand he is just baiting them.
But bash Rush they do and with each taunt, like the old children’s ditty, it bounces off of Rush and sticks to them.
One constant tune uttered by Rush over the years has been about the poor state of journalism in our nation. Rush coined the phrase “Drive-By Media,” to describe agenda-driven journalists who, like drive-by shooters, only visit and investigate a story long enough to do prodigious damage.
Of late, Rush has come to describe the national news media, especially CNN, The New York Times, The Associated Press and Reuters, as the ‘State Run’ media, because rather than bring objectivity to their news dispatches, the preponderance of national news organizations are behaving like extensions of the Obama administration’s public relations/propaganda ministries.
As a life-long journalist and journalism junkie, I was not predisposed to accept Rush’s vitriol against my profession and my colleagues. I went into journalism idealistically, hoping in the post-Watergate era that I might expose government and corporate malfeasance in the style of The Washington Post’s Woodward and Bernstein.
But as much as I fought Rush’s branding most journalism in our country as defective, I’ve come begrudgingly to acknowledge that he is fundamentally correct. Our nation’s news media, when it comes to reporting on many of the most important topics of our times, are derelict in their duties.
Rather than serving as the Fourth Estate, as our founding founders envisioned, a preponderance of news outlets have left the dog house – where they are supposed to remain vigilant and unwelcome critics of entrenched power – and have moved into the cozy confines of the White House. Oh, but to have President Obama bestow upon you the favor of asking a question at a Presidential news conference or giving you a pat on the back for your coverage!
For anyone who doesn’t listen to Rush (even if you hide in the closet while doing so), he always remarks that he ties half his brain behind his back just to keep fair his battles with those political leftists who aren’t as intellectually gifted. His talent, after all, is “on loan from God.”
I write this today hoping that Rush will at last let loose his brain’s other half. Specifically, I want him – as the true patriot that he is – to see that without an independent, potent, news media our nation and freedom cannot flourish. His three hours a day, paired with powerful allies in the likes of Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Monica Crowley, Mike Gallagher, and in Denver, Mike Rosen, aren’t enough to offset the hundreds of weekly broadcast hours and giga-tons of newsprint dedicated to espousing the shallow, march-along reporting of the liberal drive-by, state-run media.
So I plead with Rush, who is anything but an ‘organization’ man by nature, to help me and other like-minded conservatives fund, build and operate The Rush Limbaugh School of Journalism, an actual, online-based journalism school where a fresh generation of American patriots can train to engage the liberal media with all its biases.
This is not a joke. I really would like to build such a school and I have the credentials to make it so. Our nation's well being demands this.
By offering courses online, the Limbaugh School would not be geographically constrained. Indeed, non-Americans who love liberty, self-reliance, capitalism and truth would be welcome to enroll as well. With no bricks-and-mortar campus to maintain, tuition would be quite reasonable, a necessity due to the Obama Recession.
Like any good capitalistic enterprise, the Limbaugh School will be for-profit and for the public good simultaneously. It will draw upon conservative thought leaders and the tiny minority of clear-thinking reporters and opinon writers at news organizations such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times and Fox News to serve as adjunct faculty. We will offer accredited graduate degrees in journalism and most students should be able to complete their studies in under two years.
This is an idea whose time is here. I am willing to be the catalyst to move this from a concept to reality. But I’ll need lots of help and Rush is just the man to lend his voice and his connections to this project.
So Maha Rushie, I’m appealing to you publicly to help give birth to a new kind of news media, i.e. the old kind of news media.
In addition to your own prodigious radio legacy, the Limbaugh School of Journalism will be a fitting testament to your life’s higher beliefs and best efforts. Please call!
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