Posted 4:47 PM by Scoobie Davis

Take The Limbaugh Challenge
(Updated below)
The Manhattan Institute's Andrew Klavan throws down the gauntlet:

Therefore, I am throwing down my gauntlet at your quivering liberal feet. I hereby issue my challenge -- the Limbaugh Challenge: Listen to the show. Not for five minutes but for several hours: an hour a day for several days. Consider what he has to say -- the real policy material under the jokes and teasing bluster. Do what your intellectual keepers do not want you to do and keep an open mind. Ask yourself: What's he getting at? Why does he say the things he says? Why do so many people of goodwill -- like that nice Mr. Klavan -- agree with him?

Media Matters for America picks it up.

Also, you can read the links at the end of the transcript of my hilarious conversation with El Rushbo.

UPDATE I: FAIR's Steve Rendall has much more.


UPDATE II: April 5, 2009. Today, The LA Times editorial page gave space to four prominent LA area progressives to respond to Klavan's challenge: Marc Cooper Director of Annenberg Digital News at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, Laurie Ochoa Editor in chief, LA Weekly, Norman Lear Writer, producer and founder of People for the American Way, and Constance L. Rice Civil rights attorney in Los Angeles. All have incisive insights about Limbaugh. I think Cooper had Limbaugh correctly pegged:

Call Limbaugh's rants offensive, racist, extremist or just plain intellectually insulting, if it makes you feel better. I think it's more useful to understand him instead as a form of religious experience, one of the more dogmatic strain. He's a completely reliable inspiration and reinforcement for those who are embittered and battered and who confuse their natural allies for their enemies. He's an electronic opiate for the masses. For Limbaugh's audience is not a happy lot. They are completely convinced that an unholy coalition of liberals, homos, feminazis and overly entitled minorities are responsible for the mess of their own tiny, dead-end lives.

But I will grant Limbaugh one slim glimmer of genius. Unlike similar demagogues (I'm thinking of Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity), Limbaugh makes no claim to be a little-guy populist. Instead, he's a perfect mouthpiece for the most elite portions of our society. He's a virile defender of wealth, privilege and greed. The rather fabulous trick he pulls off is to attract millions of little-guy listeners and make them believe that their interests are somehow the same as those of the jillionaires Limbaugh idolizes and celebrates.