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Does C2C cater to the right-wing to stay alive?

Started by mst3kpimp, March 04, 2012, 01:59:05 PM

mst3kpimp

I used to listen alot during the Art years but it seems when I listen now the show is appointed by individuals with a particular political arch.  My C2C affiliate is usually a 24 hour right wing talk-a-thon but I noticed that C2C seems to be increasingly slanted that way.  Years ago I recall a whole show discussing if Obama was the anti-christ which I found more amusing than anything but last night the Alex Jones interview seemed particularly ugly with even the host John Wells making his views known.  I'm all for transparency but it made me think that the show is almost forced to please a right-wing agenda in order to continue the affiliation.  I don't recall Art getting too political but then again that was'nt what his show was about to me anyway.

Morgus

Actually when Art Bell was host in the early to mid 1990s the show was all open lines and mostly political callers like Doc Democrat, Charlie Liberal, etc while Art was the conservative voice.
Art eventually got tired of a mostly political topics and gradually moved the show to more paranormal and other topics he was interested in.
When he retired and sold the show to the network that carries mostly conservative talk shows, it was expected they would want c2c to fit in with the other shows they carry...

Eddie Coyle


        It's a "whatever will make us money" operation. Is it "right wing" to have Howard Bloom on? It's a corporate program that has no core or conviction other than the bottom line.

Seamus Capone

It likely tips to the right if you list all political shows and divide them into ideological categories. That said, a lot depends on one's outlook and viewpoint. Extreme leftists will see Coast as rightist. Extreme rightists will see it as leftist. I've heard guests from all points on the political compass. They definitely weren't all conservative. Baker comes to mind, with his conspiracy theories about the Bushes and others. He made a career out of bashing them.

I think that religion plays more of a role than politics does. Coast plays to both Protestant Fundamentalist and New Age listeners, as the selection of calls and guests demonstrate. Noory will sound like Hal Lindsey one night and Shirley Maclaine the next. The EOTWAWKI (think REM) theme links the two.

Seamus Capone

Quote from: Eddie Coyle on March 04, 2012, 09:41:17 PM
        It's a "whatever will make us money" operation. Is it "right wing" to have Howard Bloom on? It's a corporate program that has no core or conviction other than the bottom line.

Maybe that's why Noory sounds like either a chameleon or an empty vessel. Evidently, even the suits asked him what he *really* believes. You're right, though. Coast would sound like Air America if it was profitable.

Eddie Coyle

Quote from: Jethro Capone on March 04, 2012, 10:50:03 PM
Maybe that's why Noory sounds like either a chameleon or an empty vessel. Evidently, even the suits asked him what he *really* believes. You're right, though. Coast would sound like Air America if it was profitable.
I don't think there is anyone on the C2C roster who could be truly labeled an "ideologue". Wells, maybe, but he strikes me as more of a reactionary than a true believer.

         If Noory had his druthers, his nightly topics would be along the lines of "what's your favorite color?" or "what's your favorite ice cream?" "How 'bout those Cardinals?'

Quote from: Eddie Coyle on March 04, 2012, 11:10:44 PM
If Noory had his druthers, his nightly topics would be along the lines of "what's your favorite color?" or "what's your favorite ice cream?" "How 'bout those Cardinals?'

Too funny!  And exactly right.

Morgus

Anyone else notice in the last week or two in every ad segment on c2c its ads for Newt Gingrich? ;)

morphiaflow

I've said for a while that Coast has been increasingly fringe right, birther/young earther/climate denier. No, you can't say that it depends on your point of view. They've dispensed with any pretense of objectivity. I suspect it has something to do with Clear Channel pandering to the neocon/tea party/fringe right dollars. And Wells is an absolute shill for the fringe right. He doesn't even attempt to hide his agenda. When Art says "the show has changed which from my point of view is a shame", I think this is what he's referring to more than anything else. He may have been a conservative at one time, but I think the years have changed his outlook. He supported Obama, he believes in Peak Oil and climate change, and in his last years on Coast as a fill in he had to deal increasingly with hostile and usually ill-informed Nooryites challenging his views on these things. I feel very bad for him, and for the show, and for those of us who miss what it once was. And yes, I'm a broken record, I've said these same things the same way on this forum and elsewhere many times, but I sincerely believe it bears repeating.

Pretty much the last straw for me was finding out about Jerome Corsi's ties to white supremecist groups. That tears it for me.

Sleepwalker

I've always thought Coast to Coast is basically a carnival sideshow.  Lots of doom and gloom scenarios and nutball conspiracy theories. It definitely goes hard-right when Alex Jones is on.  A couple of nights ago Jones suggested Andrew Breitbart's death might be part of some conspiracy and suggested we keep a close eye on Limbaugh, Beck, Drudge and others.   Right.  Some vast left-wing conspiracy is out to knock off radio talk show hosts?  Breitbart died.  People of all ages do this.  What evidence did Jones have that Breitbart died of anything but natural causes?  If he had any, he didn't mention it.  This show has been a lunatic fringe sideshow for years.  I would really hate to be in the same room with the people who actually believe the nonsense they hear on this show.

There is a lot more fringe and a lot more politics... The success of the show was that it was not politics.. Maybe we are all too political anymore.. The question I often wonder is if the 1990s version of coast would make it in the new era of right wing radio..

11angeleyes11

Quote from: Sleepwalker on March 05, 2012, 07:51:35 AM
I've always thought Coast to Coast is basically a carnival sideshow.  Lots of doom and gloom scenarios and nutball conspiracy theories. It definitely goes hard-right when Alex Jones is on.  A couple of nights ago Jones suggested Andrew Breitbart's death might be part of some conspiracy and suggested we keep a close eye on Limbaugh, Beck, Drudge and others.   Right.  Some vast left-wing conspiracy is out to knock off radio talk show hosts?  Breitbart died.  People of all ages do this.  What evidence did Jones have that Breitbart died of anything but natural causes?  If he had any, he didn't mention it.  This show has been a lunatic fringe sideshow for years.  I would really hate to be in the same room with the people who actually believe the nonsense they hear on this show.
You are on the same forum.  I believe!!!!!  Now, do you believe that I believe?

Sleepwalker

Quote from: 11angeleyes11 on March 05, 2012, 08:01:49 AM
You are on the same forum.  I believe!!!!!  Now, do you believe that I believe?

I do not believe that you believe.  Do you believe I do not believe that you believe?

Test4echo

Quote from: Morgus on March 05, 2012, 03:39:28 AM
Anyone else notice in the last week or two in every ad segment on c2c its ads for Newt Gingrich? ;)


Actually, By law, Stations MUST play political adverts for ANY candidate that pays for them.
Stations cannot deny any politically based ad's no matter what affiliation.


I listen to a station called WMUZ "the light" with Bob Dutko. Bob himself likes Santorum yet during his 4 hour show, only Romney ads are played....lol


If Obama decided to buy air time on C2C, they would have to air that as well. Its fair.


LLAB,


Test,




Frys Girl

Quote from: Morgus on March 05, 2012, 03:39:28 AM
Anyone else notice in the last week or two in every ad segment on c2c its ads for Newt Gingrich? ;)
Yes! LOL! I love the people/extras he hired for those ads. They have such hilarious voices and statements:


"Newt is our guy. Newt can get the job done. Newt can beat Obama. People in Washington don't like Newt; that's a good thing, right? Newt gets us. Newt loves America. Newt newt newt newt newt! Newt eats pasta and meatballs. Newt doesn't mess around." Tell that to his ex-wife!


I kinda want Newt to get the nomination just to hear his ads.

MV/Liberace!

Quote from: Frys Girl on March 05, 2012, 04:29:12 PM

I kinda want Newt to get the nomination just to hear his ads.


i think he and ron paul are the only candidates who can beat obama.

Ben Shockley

Quote from: Sleepwalker on March 05, 2012, 07:51:35 AM
...I would really hate to be in the same room with the people who actually believe the nonsense they hear on this show.
Which is why Noory has, and publicizes, a concealed-carry gun permit.  He is JUST smart enough to know what you just wrote.

Imagine doing a job which you think that, if done as your corporate masters tell you to do, will get you killed -- AND, by the very people you are supposedly selling products to.   Enough so that you have to tell about your gun-carrying along with your granny-soothing schmooze.
No wonder Noory sucks.

Seamus Capone

Quote from: Eddie Coyle on March 04, 2012, 11:10:44 PM
If Noory had his druthers, his nightly topics would be along the lines of "what's your favorite color?" or "what's your favorite ice cream?" "How 'bout those Cardinals?'

It's almost like that now. One of Noory's topics, for open lines, was nail stories. The callers talked about things like clippers and hangnails! BTW, the SPLC (hee) claimed that Corsi was linked to a "hate group".

mst3kpimp

Quote from: Frys Girl on March 05, 2012, 04:29:12 PM
Yes! LOL! I love the people/extras he hired for those ads. They have such hilarious voices and statements:

The best one is when the lady sez gas prices are out of control, Mitt Romney does'nt look like he pumps his own gas.  brilliant

Quote from: Test4echo on March 05, 2012, 03:36:34 PM
Actually, By law, Stations MUST play political adverts for ANY candidate that pays for them.
Stations cannot deny any politically based ad's no matter what affiliation.
...
If Obama decided to buy air time on C2C, they would have to air that as well. Its fair.


This is very true, but most candidates don't have the funds to buy this much air time.  Here, Newt has ads on the 3 stations I regularly listen to, and no doubt has many ads elsewhere too.   And it's all day and all night, not just on c2c.

This is due to Sheldon Adelson's "Winning Our Future."  Adelson says he may give $100 million to this super PAC.  And he can as he is one of the 10 wealthiest people in America.  Another person he is a huge supporter of is Benjamin Netanyahu.

So personally I would never vote for Gingrich; I think WWIII is a very bad idea.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/us/politics/sheldon-adelson-a-billionaire-gives-gingrich-a-big-lift.html?pagewanted=all

Quote from: Seamus Capone on March 06, 2012, 12:49:39 AM
BTW, the SPLC (hee) claimed that Corsi was linked to a "hate group".
Thank you for explaining that!  I was wondering what “White Supremacist group” Corsi might be associated with -- according to the SPLC, anyone who is anti-immigration is "pro-hate".

Sorry for the font in my last post, I was just trying different fonts out and then couldn’t edit my post any more.


Test4echo

Quote from: DangerousBlossom on March 06, 2012, 03:10:04 AM

This is very true, but most candidates don't have the funds to buy this much air time. 




Yes thats true as well. I was only pointing out that if Romney (or whomever) wanted to counter Newts ads on a particular station he could do it.
I do believe Romney has the funds easily.


LLAB


Test,




Seamus Capone

Quote from: DangerousBlossom on March 06, 2012, 03:35:55 AM

Thank you for explaining that!  I was wondering what “White Supremacist group” Corsi might be associated with -- according to the SPLC, anyone who is anti-immigration is "pro-hate".

Sorry for the font in my last post, I was just trying different fonts out and then couldn’t edit my post any more.

Dees and Potok went after Lou Dobbs for the same reason. They must never have met his wife. She's....wait for it....Mexican. Dobbs certainly has a strange way of expressing his bigotry. ;-)

rangers1919

C2C has always been somewhat conservative, but the show is almost entirely a mouthpiece for the dumbest ideas from the right now.

Noory constantly has hyperinflation scare-mongers on, and c2c has been having these people on constantly for years. This is a phenomenon associated completely in the right wing.

Jerome Corsi is a right wing hack, having published everything from a Swift Boat book against Kerry to Where's the Birth Certificate, which of course was a disaster. Corsi has called Muslims "Ragheads," and said Islam is a cancer while calling for the killing of Muslims by saying that no cancer would hesitate to eliminate cancer from the body, criticized Kerry for being Jewish-he isn't--which he thought was a smear because he's an anti-Semite, he said he wished that a plane that crashed in LA had crashed into filming of the West Wing and killed Martin Sheen b/c he's on the left,  and he's been tied to White Supremacist groups and said white women sleeping with non-whites is  "white genocide." C2C has had him on constantly. People can bash the SPLC without ever looking at the work they've done, but looking at the comments the group Corsi is associated with and coming to the conclusion that they are against immigrants based on anything other than race is almost impossible. Corsi has also been on a white supremacist talk radio show.

Noory constantly pushes the anti-climate change position which is accepted almost exclusively in the world by the right wing in the U.S., the same goes for peak oil, which could be listed as bipartisan because it is believed by so few people, but is mostly pushed on right wing conspiracy shows.

C2C was completely in favor of the Iraq War under Bell, and joined in on the liberal bashing with much of the other media; Bell repeatedly cited Rush who was "right on" when he bashed the left. Of course now they act like it was conventional wisdom that the war would be a disaster and wondered how we got there.

Alex Jones is a far right wing nutjob which has been discussed over and over, but he seems to have an open invitation to the show, and in my knowledge has never had a single line questioned critically.

The main swing to the right wing has been the complete acceptance and movement towards the evangelical community, and even beyond that into a complete acceptance of insane fringe Christian ideals. Almost every subject gets interjected with the Christian viewpoint no matter the topic.



Ben Shockley

Quote from: rangers1919 on March 19, 2012, 01:50:01 AM
C2C was completely in favor of the Iraq War under Bell, and joined in on the liberal bashing with much of the other media;
I think some people whitewash a little when they downplay how political Bell really was, even into the "paranormal" years of "Coast."
But Fineartstream is such a valuable tool of longitudinal host- and topic analysis.

It's fascinating and revealing to note how Art Bell was prophesying total gloom and doom about the U.S. troop commitment to Bosnia back in '95.  The U.S. Army was being sent to certain ruin, and was going to be bled white in mountain- and urban warfare in Bosnia; it was going to be "the new Vietnam."   Bell seemed particularly incensed that it was Bill Clinton ordering that deployment; I'll dare say that that was the only reason Bell objected-- because Bell otherwise defined/s "jingoism."

Bell hated Bill Clinton pretty generally for whatever reason and wasn't shy about it.   Back in '95, Bell took the trouble to read on-air the full text of some old letter from Clinton, from the mid- 1960s and regarding Clinton avoiding the military draft, as "proof positive" that Clinton was thus unquestionably unqualified to commit any troops to anything.  Bell clearly then believed/s that only military veterans should be qualified to be President, or at least should be the only ones to be able to commit troops. 
So, no doubt, Bell was happy when that godless bastard Clinton left office, replaced by those stalwart combat vets Bush and Cheney.  No service-dodging there!!  No more Democrats to send U.S. troops to war on questionable premises, right?  No good Republican would EVER do that.  Yet when they inevitably DID, well, Art sure got in line for the Iraq invasion; you're exactly right.

Bell is smart enough to know when the U.S. military really has been wrongly committed and is being ground up-- and yet the fact that he never came out and ripped Bush and Cheney on the basis of reality like he did Clinton on the basis of pure fantastical speculation is (further) proof of Bell's blinding ideology.
Or-- in keeping with this thread's premise, and to give Art a big benefit of the doubt: if he wanted to say anything seriously derogatory about Bush-Cheney and/or their foreign policy, he might have been (or felt) constrained somehow or by something.

Quote from: rangers1919 on March 19, 2012, 01:50:01 AM
Bell repeatedly cited Rush who was "right on" when he bashed the left.
Art almost made me sick back around 2003 when Limbaugh's drug-induced deafness hit the news; on air lamenting the poor fat dirtbag's condition and asking people to pray for him, etc.
Hey, ol' Rush is just an affable entertainer, right?  He doesn't really influence, much less harm, anything in society, right?  That's Art's version of it.

Quote from: rangers1919 on March 19, 2012, 01:50:01 AM
Of course now they act like it was conventional wisdom that the war would be a disaster and wondered how we got there.
To hear the Republican party now in 2012, none of them have ever heard of George W. Bush.

BobGrau

Wise words Ben, but you're forgetting one thing -

9/11 Changed Everything!!!

you communist .
;)


mst3kpimp

hmmm, this Dr.Surprise on monday night discussing the current "rage epidemic" sure has a neat way of connecting everything to the current administration.  I gotta think these guests are either engineered or are simply coached to work in the politics or else.

Ben Shockley

Quote from: BobGrau on March 19, 2012, 05:18:39 PM
Wise words Ben, but you're forgetting one thing -

9/11 Changed Everything!!!
you communist .
;)

It sure changed some people, including radio types.   I used to love Phil Hendrie's show; a lot of his humor and sarcasm used to be directed at socially-conservative types, though the show was almost totally non-overtly-political.   But post- 9/11, his nose found a permanent home in G.W. Bush's rectum, and he made a decided and overall swing to the Right.   His "humor" and presumably-honest rants took on a notable militaristic tone and now frequently focus on ridiculing and attacking "progressives."   He's on record as saying (and not in a character voice) that he believes that Bush II will go down in history as one of the best Presidents!

And not that I ever particularly liked him, but who would have guessed that Dennis Miller was a right-winger?    I mean, back during his 15 minutes of quasi fame...?
Related to that--
Mike Malloy tells a revealing story of how some people find their niche in talk radio.   Short version: Malloy relates how Sean Hannity once admitted to him how he (Hannity) considered talk radio to be just a big "work," essentially the audio version of pro wrestling.   Hannity believed that you go wherever the money is in radio, and, in political talk radio, promote whatever ideology yields the best pay.
As for whether or how that might apply to NoorCoast is open for speculation.

Quote from: mst3kpimp on March 20, 2012, 12:00:50 AM
hmmm, this Dr.Surprise on monday night discussing the current "rage epidemic" sure has a neat way of connecting everything to the current administration.  I gotta think these guests are either engineered or are simply coached to work in the politics or else.
Dr. "Kirby Surprise?"  That name is right up there with "Starfire Tor."   I took a quick look at his book's website, and since it looked like an airy-fairy non-empirical mess,  I'm guessing that Noory was loving that segment.
I haven't heard the show, but it sounds like the very topic might be "engineered."   If there is a "rage epidemic," well, gosh ~ I wonder where Americans would get any such angry and gloomy mindset....

rangers1919

Quote from: Ben Shockley on March 20, 2012, 02:13:59 AM

Related to that--
Mike Malloy tells a revealing story of how some people find their niche in talk radio.   Short version: Malloy relates how Sean Hannity once admitted to him how he (Hannity) considered talk radio to be just a big "work," essentially the audio version of pro wrestling.   Hannity believed that you go wherever the money is in radio, and, in political talk radio, promote whatever ideology yields the best pay.
As for whether or how that might apply to NoorCoast is open for speculation.


I think that was a huge factor in the destruction of the show and the direction it went in. They completely embraced the fundamentalist Christian crowd and started having a lot of topics about stupid ass guardian angels. They also saw a market in the paranoid fringe of the right wing which fit nicely with the paranoid part of their audience and moved into almost exclusively right wing conspiracy theories. Most of them were directly repeated from Beck or sometimes Rush. It was probably a smart move because it is far easier to get advertising for this demographic than others, the gold ads alone can sustain you for a while I would guess.

Sardondi

Alex Jones is more an apocalyptic Cassandra. He's certainly no conservative. Politically he's far more populist, with a good bit of libertarian thrown in.

As for those who warm themselves in the glow of memories of a golden age in which progressive Art Bell let freedom ring with political righteousness of the left, they're remembering something that never happened. Art's politics have always been idiosyncratic, even unformed. They've been all over the political spectrum. They're more of an issue-by-issue reaction rather than the result of beliefs in particular underlying principles. But one thing is for certain: he rues the day he plumped for Obama. 

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