Boortz is no racist
The subject line said: “RE: Did you know white racist Boortz is a former Lester Maddox speechwriter?”
It was a group e-mail string on radio talk-show host Neal Boortz, and the latest salvo came from the side that was defending him.
“Dude, you are making assumptions about the content of the Boortz show with no first hand experience,” the defender wrote to the guy who had accused Atlanta’s most powerful talk jock of being a racist.
I’ve listened to Boortz off and on since I was a kid in the 1970s, and I agree: He isn’t a racist. But he is a demagogue in the classic sense of the word. He’s a leader who preys on his followers’ ignorance and who stirs up hatred and by pitting “us” (“producers,” “achievers,” et al) against “them” (“socialists,” “Democrats,” teachers, poor people, etc.). Usually, it seems, “them” is anyone who isn’t in Boortz’ tax bracket, which is kind of funny because that would make about 99 percent of his listeners “them” — even while they cheer him on with such loyalty that you’d swear they must be part of the “us” gang.
A masterful demagogue not only must separate his followers from any propensity for independent thought; he also must instill in them an instinct to fiercely and unthinkingly defend him. He must get them to act as if their interests were precisely his interests, even when the precise opposite is true.
I’m not sure Boortz should be classified as “masterful.” Rush Limbaugh appears to have attained that level. But Boortz would at least have to be called an “clever” demagogue. After years of training them in “the church of the painful truth,” he manages to strike such an uncanny chord with his followers that they really do start to sound like an “us” — in the sense that they act as if they are merely extensions of him. From the salvo in defense of him:
The reason he is on the air is good ratings, ad revenue. It’s simple free enterprise.
Lester Maddox was a democrat.
Current democratic celeb Robert Byrd is former kkk , he gets a pass I guess…
Undereducated ? Got a college degree, went to law school , passed the bar 1st try. Highly experienced pilot.
The fair tax was the work of numerous economics experts. Boortz and congressman Lender simply wrote the book. I agree with the consumption tax idea. I am an engineer, I make my living using logic. Clearly you have not read the book.
So your free to hate him all you want. But most of this is emotional rhetoric. I don’t like the guy in person, I’ve met him several times.
But I am a regular listener, guess I’m a simple minded bigot gay christian or something….
Boortz is nothing more than an entertainer, I laugh throughout the show.
If you’ve listened to Boortz much, you’ll notice that the follower’s words could have been taken from a transcript of his show. And just as when Boortz uses them, the litany is recited with bristling self-righteousness, which makes it difficult for the writer to see that he is regurgitating rather than thinking. Certainly, rather than seeking Truth.
On the other hand, the reflexive claim that Boortz’ provocations and political incorrectness make him a racist doesn’t quite get to the truth about him either. Boortz’ career start as a Maddox speech writer doesn’t make him a racist. But it does offer a hint of who he was and is: an unprincipled opportunist. Why else would a young man trying to get a break take a job with a race-baiting, violent segregationist?
Given who Boortz is now (and his oft-boasted personal philosophy), it’s pretty consistent that back then he simply was out for No. 1 — then and now, at the expense of such principles as, say, Truth, Justice or Love of Country.
The paradox of Machiavellism always has been that the egoist can’t be looked to as a fair or honest player. If someone says his highest principle is Love of Self, he should be taken at his word that he doesn’t really stand for anybody else’s interests, or for the integrity of any debate he enters into.
Put another way: One shouldn’t take seriously anything said by a man who passionately peddles a political idea in one breath, and an ad for sleazy gold scam in the next. He’s already told you that he’s just trying to further his own interests, so why should the listener even entertain the thought that his message was intended as anything other than the exploitation of the listener? Even when he doesn’t admit or highlight that he’s merely saying things to exploit you, he should be assumed to be doing so — because that is his very stated philosophy.
The Boortz Tax is a case in point. It isn’t a serious proposal. President Bush’s own tax commission disregarded it very quickly, because — among other things — it doesn’t add up to be revenue neutral. But the facts don’t matter to the followers: It all adds up, by God! And if you disagree, you just don’t get it! What’s more, if you disagree, I shouldn’t listen to you because the mere fact that you’re disagreeing means that you’re a socialist … and an idiot.
Though it never will come close to becoming law, the Boortz Tax (he calls it the “Fair Tax”) has already produced a couple of winners. Some politicians give the Boortz Tax lip service to curry favor with the economic right-wingers in the same way that President Reagan used abortion to keep the support of religious right-wingers but never did anything to slow abortions.
U.S. Rep. John Linder of Gwinnett County — who co-wrote the Boortz Tax book with Boortz — is ensured of staying in office for life (hey, didn’t he actually sign a term-limit pledge?) simply because Boortz and his minions — many of whom live in Linder’s district — have undying loyalty to him for pushing for the Boortz Tax.
Boortz is as big a winner. He gets to to be the leader of a genuine cause (even if it’s fraudulent) associated with his name, which has elevated him to a upper-tier talk-radio host. And, of course, he make lots of money on book sales and speeches.
The only suckers are the people who actually spent money on the book and who invested all that emotion and political will into an “economics” treatise written by a self-declared radio “entertainer” and C-plus student.
When Boortz is caught in a mistake or a lie, he has an easy answer. He simply claims to be just an “entertainer” who’s facts should be checked. That of course is just a game of bait and switch: He wants you take him seriously … until he doesn’t want you to. Like any snake-oil salesman, he needs to make sure he doesn’t talk his way into a rhetorical dead-end. It’s the perfect escape route. Boortz was wrong? Hey, he never told you to take him seriously anyway.
But his listeners do take him seriously — so seriously that they parade about on the clogged roads of Atlanta, nodding in agreement and self-congratulation as he tells them how much smarter they are than the students and teachers in “government schools.” He tells them one moment how “stupid” Democrats and liberals are, but in the next moment, he reaches deep down into the McCarthyite style anti-intellectualism by dismissing the science behind global warming. To a man on a mission to accumulate money and power, facts and fairness do not matter. Lies and the accumulation of power will suffice.
Boortz is a demagogue, not a racist. But those who parrot anything he says — those who act as if he should be taken seriously even when he himself says he shouldn’t be taken seriously — they are complicit: They have yielded their duties as citizens in favor of ignorance, emotion, prejudice and easy answers.
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Comments
One Comment on Boortz is no racist
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Bill Wheaton on
Sun, 11th Jul 2010 5:28 pm
Great article. I have been listening (usually accidentally) to Boortz since his days at WRNG radio. Everyone of your “salos of defense of him” is so dead nuts on its uncanny. This is a very good article that I am bookmarking for later.
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