"West Wing" vs. Limbaugh

There"s no liberal Rush Limbaugh. In a recent column, conservative pundit Cal Thomas suggested that the reason liberals have been unable to score a hit in the loud-mouthed world of TV and radio talk shows is because liberalism is boring. "Conservatism is optimistic and fun," Thomas crowed. "Liberalism is pessimistic and dour."

Thomas isn"t the first one to note liberals" seeming inability to find the anti-Rush. Some frustrated Democrats have gone so far as to speculate that right-wing talk show dominance accounts for recent Republican success at the polls. But that theory sounds more like denial than analysis. Whether you"re Cal Thomas or Thomas Daschle, it"s a mistake to look at liberal failure to gain talk show traction and see a larger loss of cultural relevance for liberal principles.

What Thomas won"t admit - and what liberals find hard to swallow - is that certain media, like talk radio and babble-on TV, appear to provide particularly congenial platforms for the aggressively embattled style of right-wing American politics. The success of right-wing talk really isn"t about the strength of the ideas being presented. If Limbaugh and his ilk were really concerned about ideas, their shows would be indistinguishable from those whose hosts are on the left. William F. Buckley, the grandaddy of conservative talking heads, ran a thoughtful TV show, Firing Line, for years. It didn"t make him a pop star. No, the key to right-wing talk is permission.

What talk jocks discovered in the 1980s was that they could attract large and vocal audiences by giving people permission to be their own worst selves. These jocks traded on the entertainment value of giving voice to prejudices, resentments and fears. It became OK to knock people because of their ethnicity, gender, sexual preferences and religions. That was just being "honest," cutting through the clutter of political correctness. If the targets of these slanders objected, they were brushed aside for being humorless. In Cal Thomas" parlance, they lacked optimism and fun.

It"s fun, after all, to be given permission to blame other people for your problems. Damn those big-government, tax-and-spend liberals and their rainbow coalition of fellow travelers - for everything from potholes to that creeping sense that America just isn"t what it used to be. That is, in the good old days, when being rude wasn"t considered politically incorrect entertainment, but was just, well, rude.

It"s fun to take an issue like taxation and puree it down to a simple us-against-them equation - it"s your money, for instance, not the government"s. Forget that we live in a representative democracy; that we are, in fact, the government and are implicated in everything the government does. But that would entail actually embracing what talk jocks and their fans would rather vent about: personal responsibility.

Portraying themselves as rebels who have somehow infiltrated the kingdom of liberal media, unencumbered by anything so dour as doubt or ambiguity, conservative talkers thrive by turning conversation into conflict. They"ve taken a static format - voices talking on the radio, heads talking on TV - and energized it. It"s the equivalent of making movies in color instead of black and white.

But if liberals are taking it on the chin in the talk formats, liberal characters are the protagonists of choice in television and motion picture depictions of politics and power. Conservatives, predictably, complain that this reflects liberal media bias, conveniently overlooking the popular appeal of shows like The West Wing, not to mention movies, from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to The American President. No matter how hard they try, conservative ideologues make lousy heroes. This has nothing to do with the politics of the people who write stories; it"s all about dramatic necessity.

Let"s face it: It"s as tough to make a great story revolving around characters who live to roll back regulations on big corporations, create tax loopholes for the richest Americans and slash support for single mothers as it is to find an outrageous liberal talk show host. Though audiences may love the vengeful permission afforded by talk formats, they prefer stories featuring liberal populists who stand up for the dignity of plain folks. One of the few times Hollywood tried to break this formula, with the adaptation of Ayn Rand"s The Fountainhead starring, of all people, uber-everyman Gary Cooper, the result was less a movie than a two-hour scolding.

Yes, there"s something about conservatism that, given a boy named Romeo and a girl named Juliet, can"t resist turning their story into a high school hygiene film. But the impulse to stereotype and pass judgement, so effective on talk shows, makes for lousy theater, where even larger-than-life characters are made more compelling by a shadow side. Character flaws drive tragedy and enliven comedy. Their depiction conveys humanity - and can make being an audience member a touching, communal experience.

Americans may dig bear-baiting style of right-wing talk show hosts, but when it comes to presidential melodrama, we want Jed Bartlett. These off-setting tastes describe and could even help explain the cumbersome congressional parity between Republican and Democratic parties that"s obtained since the 2000 election. It might also reassure those of us who feel mugged every time we venture into those virtual neighborhoods where Limbaugh and O"Reilly rule. It does not, however, indicate that the discovery of a left-wing attack dog will reinvigorate liberalism at the polls. Only liberal candidates, unashamed, articulate and eager to speak truth about power, can do that.