This strange addiction to hatred

[burythehatchet]

Maybe some psychologists here can help out with this. The Coulter/Malkin/Hanniy/O'Reilly phenomenon is worthy of some analysis. I'm not so much interested in why conservatives listen to them as much as why liberals become obsessed by them. The media loves them because they sell and they sell because people want to see them.

Let's be clear about one thing: No one really cares about what their opinions are, they just like the spectacle. But why?

The answer seems a bit clearer when you look at some of the other media personalities, outside pf politics, who enjoy a relative amount of success and popularity. We already know that reasonable people don't sell. If they did, Amy Goodman would be anchoring the CBS News.

I just saw an ad for Hell's Kitchen. It's apparently a TV show about a restaurant run by a demonic chef. A chef you can easily hate merely by watching the commercial. There's another program about some designer who also is a raging lunatic who denigrates her employees. In every reality show there is a horrible person who gets to stick around until the end. Why? What is it about the public psyche that hungers for the opportunity to hate. Its almost like an addiction - you know its not good for you but you can't help but take a hit. How many among you frequently turn on Fox News and watch for the 3 minutes it takes to become infuriated. After you get your fix, you move on.

Why are we addicted to fury?

[Swamp Rat]

1. We're addicted to oil...

I wonder if there is a significant correlation?

[burythehatchet]

2. I do get a nice buzz when I fill up on a hot day

:)

[Chipper Chat]

3. Add Rush Limbaugh to your list.

He's the grand-daddy of Stir 'em up hatred.

[burythehatchet]

4. If I listed 'em al, it would an awfully long list

but you get the point.

[0007]

5. Haven't turn on FAUX for years. In fact CNN & MSNBC

match up to FAUX news in the strictest sense. Except for Keith Olbermann.

[Kutjara]

6. We're a predatory species that organizes itself into packs.

A major measure of reproductive fitness among such species is aggression. The more aggressive an individual is, the more it is respected by the rest of the pack and the more opportunities it has to mate. This is why bastards seem to be irresistible to many women, why warmongers are more appealing leaders than peacemakers and why everyone loves a villian.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[burythehatchet]

8. Difficult to know how to respond

that was fast!

[kevinbgoode]

9. And what was your experience of reasonable debate

over at Free Republic? It has been my experience that rightwing sites are very quick to ban any discouraging word in a discussion - in fact often the remarks never get posted. I don't believe most of us on this board started this "culture war" in which the rhetoric is all military-oriented with the object to "destroy liberals" and/or Democrats completely. That all came from the RIGHT. When you launch campaigns with that kind of crap, you aren't interested in meaningful discussion - you are interested in warfare and obliteration. That's why we have Coulter, Malkin, Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc. . .have they ever preached a "discussion" of anything? Do they even let someone finish a sentence?

[Demeter]

10. I Object to the Well-Poisoning That These NeoCon GOP Fascist

pundits commit every day. They pollute the minds and hearts of simple people, distort all processes of society, and propagate crime throughout the world. It is a feedback loop that grows larger and stronger with every news cycle. If Jesus were alive and preaching today, he'd be drowned out as well as crucified.

[Warpy]

11. A lot of people are only too happy to hate anyone

they have been given permission to hate by people in authority. It's what happened to Germany in the 30s, Bosnia in the 80s, Rwanda and Kosovo in the 90s. Unanswered hate is dangerous and it kills.

Hate must give people a rush, especially when that hate is explained in righteous terms, in terms of defending one's home, family, lifestyle and belief system against people who might have been friends for decades but who the authorities now say pose a terrible threat.

Hate is a drug, but like meth, it's a bad drug that ultimately destroys the users, leaving them empty. It just tends to destroy a whole lot of other people first.

[Eric J in MN]

12. A new cartoon about Ann Coulter...

...from "Current TV:"
http://www.current.tv/pods/supernews/PD03830

[H2O Man]

13. Bitterness

contaminates the vessel which contains it. Avoid hateful people -- they are a drag.

14. I think some people really don't feel it when it is

someone else getting humiliated (unless it is their child or spouse). And they are not really tuned in to what is going on in the world, not very deeply. I feel like even that dance show is designed to humiliate the poor dancers, so I just barely watch the show (So You Can Dance).

[rubberducky]

15. Personally, I think the hatred that`s being generated

is unbeivable. When the r-wingers are calling for murder, where do they go from there? If someone doesn`t agree with you, just kill them. that seems to be thier answer.

[UTUSN]

16. LIMBOsevic is the original demon seed

When he burst on the scene, wingnutism was a laughed-at, discredited, old fogey, Birch Society wacko, marginalized philosophy. Just the hot rocking music was a statement that it was not for old fogeys. Then LIMBOsevic screened out callers that were Birchers, OVERT racists (as opposed to their HIDDEN true racists), conspiracy tinfoilers, and the rest of their TRUE followers-------to make it seem that wingnutism was a MAINSTREAM, respectable outlook. And the core message was that all the HATEFUL, despicable CRAP he spews was "just a joke, only joking, folks." It is amazing when he and HANNITY launch into their self pity about "being hated" and yap about "the climate of hate" when LIMBOsevic, singlehandedly, DID "start the fire" of political scorched earth polarization.

As to what is the psychological cause, LIMBOsevic & HANNITY refer fairly often to being outsiders. The extreme vitriol just HAS to come from some severe rejection. For wingnuts in general, the humiliation of Tricky Dick seems to be the seminal moment, although wingnuts have been fascist and extreme back to FDR days when they literally were attempting to stage a coup. Their resentment has something to do with feelings of being condescended to and looked down on, on the grounds of less education. Hence, LIMBOsevic turns all the definitions on their heads, appropriating the noble language that Liberals used for his own nefariousness, makes it a virtue that he dropped out of college.

But this has happened before. The priest, Father COUGHLIN, in the '20s probably had a higher percentage of listeners according to the smaller national population than LIMBOsevic has had, and his hatred for FDR was equal to today's wingnut hatred.

[burythehatchet]

19. one thing we sometimes forget

nothing happening today hasn't happened before. I had never heard of Coughlin.

[UTUSN]

20. There are some audio bytes here, fever pitch like LIMBOsevic

*******QUOTE*******

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcoughlinE.htm

.... Coughlin was highly critical of the government in the Soviet Union. He argued that the communist government had made divorce very easy and claimed these anti-family ideas were spreading to the United States. Coughlin called this process the "Bolshevism of America". He pointed out that more than two million men and women had obtained divorces in the last ten years and people had therefore "scorned the basic family and national doctrine of Jesus Christ."

Coughlin warned of the dangers of "socialism, communism, and kindred fallacious social and economic theories". Like Pope Leo XIII, Coughlin believed the best way of combating the appeal of these ideologies was the introduction of reforms that would make America a more equal society. This included industrialists paying their workers a "just and living wage" and "providing old age compensation insurance." He also denounced the greed and corruption of America's industrialists and warned about the dangers of the "concentration of wealth in the hands of the few." ....

Coughlin gradually grew disillusioned with Roosevelt and on 11th November, 1934, he announced the formation of the National Union of Social Justice. At this time some observers claimed that Father Coughlin was the second most important political figure in the United States. It was estimated that Coughlin's radio broadcasts were getting an audience of 30 million people. He was also having to employ twenty-six secretaries to deal with the 400,000 letters a week he was receiving from his listeners. ....

In the late 1930s Coughlin moved sharply to the right and accused Franklin D. Roosevelt of "leaning toward international socialism or sovietism". He also praised the actions of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in the fight against communism in Europe. On 20th November 1938, Coughlin defended the activities of the Nazi Government as a necessary defence against the Soviet Union.

Like Joseph Goebbels, Coughlin claimed that Marxist atheism in Europe was a Jewish plot. Coughlin also attacked the influence of Jews in America and this resulted in him being described as a fascist. In April 1941, Coughlin endorsed the America First Committee. However, his now open Anti-Semitism made this endorsement a mixed blessing for the organization. ....

http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=43&category=people

.... ...served as a priest in Waco, Tex., and Kalamazoo before moving to Royal Oak in 1926 to establish a new parish.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=14716870109031

Donald Warren. Charles Coughlin: The Father of Hate Radio. New York: The Free Press, 1996. ix + 376 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $27.50 (cloth), ISBN 0-684-82403-5.
Reviewed by: Leslie Woodcock Tentler , University of Michigan-Dearborn.

.... Coughlin is alleged to have informed on fellow clergy to ecclesiastical superiors and to have been deeply disliked and distrusted by many priests as a result. Subsequent chapters allege that Coughlin was an inveterate womanizer. ....

Warren finds no credible evidence for Coughlin's famous claim that the Klan burned a cross at his Royal Oak church in 1926. ....

http://www.ssa.gov/history/cough.html

Father Coughlin first took to the airwaves in 1926, broadcasting weekly sermons over the radio. By the early 1930s the content of his broadcasts had shifted from theology to economics and politics. Just as the rest of the nation was obsessed by matters economic and political in the aftermath of the Depression, so too was Father Coughlin. Coughlin had a well-developed theory of what he termed "social justice," predicated on monetary "reforms." He began as an early Roosevelt supporter, coining a famous expression, that the nation's choice was between "Roosevelt or ruin." Later in the 1930s he turned against FDR and became one of the president's harshest critics. His program of "social justice" was a very radical challenge to capitalism and to many of the political institutions of his day. ....

Father Coughlin's influence on Depression-era America was enormous. Millions of Americans listened to his weekly radio broadcast. At the height of his popularity, one-third of the nation was tuned into his weekly broadcasts. In the early 1930s, Coughlin was, arguably, one of the most influential men in America. Although his core message was one of economic populism, his sermons also included attacks on prominent Jewish figures--attacks that many people considered evidence of anti-Semitism. His broadcasts became increasingly controversial for this reason, and in 1940 his superiors in the Catholic Church forced him to stop his broadcasts and return to his work as a parish priest.

********UNQUOTE*******

[creeksneakers2]

17. I've noticed a cycle

You see a bad guy. You'd really like for the bad guy to get his and some justice to be done. On the TV shows you mentioned, that's hoping the bad person will be the one to be fired/kicked off/etc. So people keep watching for that to happen and meanwhile, they see the bad person doing more bad things and frustration builds that the bad guy isn't punished, so the desire to watch and hope for the worst for the bad guy just grows.

Its sort of the same way with politics. Only instead of getting kicked off the island, in politics punishment is getting indicted or thrown out of office or at least something less like a political embarrassment. Failing that, partisans at least love to see something wicked unearthed about their political foes. Its also nice to hear a foe being verbally trashed.

Wanting to see that keeps partisans in the market for information that feeds the desire for justice. But the more often a partisan looks for that information, the more he hears bad things about somebody he already doesn't like. So the information consumer ends up hating his foe worse, and consumes even more anti-foe information.

This is all heightened when the possibility of the big score lurks in the future. Will Karl Rove be indicted? Will Bill Clinton be impeached? These stories attract the most interest of all by adding suspense to the anger. Scumbags like Faux News and Rash Limpballs see the market and even make up stories to feed the demand. Those stories also create even more anger. I think its much worse on the right.

The last time Rash was on, he opined: "Therefore, it's not a stretch to assume that these terrorists in their caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan might have seen Al Gore's movie in which he shows in his slide show Manhattan being flooded, not by a bomb going off in a tunnel but rather by global warming. So it's not a stretch to suggest that this whole plot -- and you know Gore's slide show has been around for a number of years, long before the movie came out, and then we've had this scene depicted in The Day After Tomorrow, which is an environmental destruction movie. So it could well be that either Al Gore or Hollywood provided the inspiration for these terrorists whose plot to flood southern Manhattan was thwarted."

Anybody who believes this kind of trash must be insane. I think righties, who have heard a deluge of RW radio for 18 years, have gone nuts with rage. They might not be insane enough to believe it, but angry enough to like hearing Gore bashed. And worse yet, the partisans have the chance to repeat these lies. That makes them part of a movement. They belong. They are special because they are on the side of good. And when Al Gore gets a bashing, they are part of the victory. Getting a victory is as easy as turning on the radio.

So, I think all of these emotions put together do amount to an addiction. You asked for a psychologist and I'm not a psychologist. I don't hate Ann Coulter and I kind of like Bill O'Reilly. I hate Hannity though and I hate Limbaugh even more. I'd like to see all four of them go to prison. I don't think I hate all the righties though. I think whatever anger there is is only part of it.

Mostly I'm afraid of what their kind will do to America. I like to be on the side of good. I watch Coulter and the others because I want US to win, and good to win out over evil. Do you think they'll get Coulter with the plagiarism thing? I know I'll be watching. I guess I'm addicted.

[burythehatchet]

18. thanks for your thoughtful response

you bring out some interesting ideas. Food for thought.

[shance]

21. The "we" is not relative. People like Coulter and O'Reilly are mentally

disturbed.

We have a media owned and operated by an over-indulged, over-testosteroned white male media that force feeds the American public shows like the ones like the ones you mentioned, and other shows with women as expendable, blow up dolls essentially and they attempt to pass it off as entertainment.

[rosesaylavee]

22. You become who you hate.

I try not to watch Faux News or any of the GOP talking heads unless I am in a mood where their trash talking will not effect me. If I do choose to tune them in and I start to sputter and talk back to the TV or radio, I change the channel.

Freepers are fed by hatred, folks. If we ignored them, they would have 1/2 as much to say.