Conservative media outlets are in the news—again—as mainstream news organizations roll out their familiar talking points: from Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin to Charlie Kirk’s 2024 voter registration drives or Sean Hannity’s televised town halls, the debates rage over whether “right-wing” media figures are heroes or goats.
Exhibit A: for decades, the Left’s rap on conservative talk radio has been that it only exists as a forum where angry and ill-informed men and women regularly gather around AM radios to subtract from the sum total of human knowledge. Why, they query, are there no “liberal” talk radio hosts on most networks or local radio stations…ignoring such failed experiments as 2004’s AIR AMERICA network featuring hosts like the pre-U.S. Senate Al Franken, Rachel Maddow, Janeane Garafalo, and Cenk Uygur. (AIR AMERICA went belly-up in about five years because of anemic listenership, a/k/a the dogs didn’t like the food.)
Exhibit B: Democratic politicians love to use talk radio as their whipping boy, trying to reintroduce the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which would muzzle the popular medium. For example, Bill Clinton 1995 issued a thinly veiled broadside at talk radio as “purveyors of hate” following the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City; Clinton added, “It is time we all stood up and spoke against that type of reckless speech” while offering zero proof that bomber Timothy McVeigh had ever even tuned into Rush Limbaugh or any other talk host.
Barack Obama—during a town hall in Elhart, Indiana, in February 2009, suggested to Republicans in Congress that “you can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done” in Washington.
As Limbaugh himself responded after Clinton’s post-Oklahoma City smear of talk radio: “Make no mistake about it. Liberals intend to use this tragedy for their own political gain.” He blamed “many in the mainstream media” for “irresponsible attempts to categorize and demonize those who had nothing to do with this. … There is absolutely no connection between these nuts and mainstream conservatism in America today.”
With all that as a backdrop, it was more than a little amusing that following the U.S. House’s failure to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, CNN and MSNBC hyped Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) as the “deciding vote,” which scuttled the GOP’s effort. (There were actually three Republicans who voted down the measure, but Gallagher was prominently featured on most networks and on news websites.)
As the Mayorkas vote was taking place in D.C., nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host Mike Gallagher (no relation) was sitting at home enjoying a quiet evening when “suddenly my phone began blowing up. My production team said we were being flooded with angry and threatening texts and emails about me being the person who sank the Mayorkas impeachment.”
Gallagher—who bills himself as the Happy Conservative Warrior—says he’s never received as many obscenity-laden texts and e-mails (600+ by the next morning) in his decades as a local and national talk host. He eventually felt compelled to post a video on his show’s website explaining that he wasn’t that Mike Gallagher from Congress.
If “Talk Radio Mike'' received that many outraged responses to the Mayorkas vote, one can only imagine how large the email avalanche “Congressman Mike” received must have been. Likely far more than 600…and therein lies the enduring magic of talk radio.
Rather than mainstream media outlets like “The View” and political hacks in D.C. regularly using it as a punching bag, it might be wiser to view talk radio as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Suppose people are venting to Sean Hannity, Dan Bongino, or Mike Gallagher. In that case, it probably means they are passionate about the topics at hand…whether the Biden border crisis, a Supreme Court hearing over barring Donald J. Trump from the November ballot or colleges failing to rein in scary pro-Hamas marchers creating hostile educational environments for Jewish students on campuses.
Pundits often suggest that throughout 2024, “democracy” is going to be front and center…from primaries and caucuses to celebrity rants at the Academy Awards and every late-night show in between. Might be better if “Truth” was the headliner, and the national dialogue included not only the perspectives of George Stephanopoulos and Chuck Schumer…but also Donald Trump and Mike Gallagher.
Just be sure if you’re offended at any point, you complain to the right Mike Gallagher.