Talk Radio Will Co-opt The Walker/Feingold Milwaukee Newspaper Endorsements

Sykes and Belling and Wagner,  et al, have made careers out of bashing the daily paper and foisting on listeners the fiction that there is a liberal Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that is hostile to Republicans and conservatives.

That story-telling works to stir up an audience (and advertising dollars) and push the victimized listener to cast a ballot for conservative candidates and against the newspaper - -the talkers mock this fake enemy as The Lame Stream media, The Dead Tree media - - so how will these radio programs come Monday deal with the newspaper's endorsement of Republican Scott Walker, the talk shows' darling, as well as the paper's endorsement of Democrat Russ Feingold for US Senate?

By shuffling the pages in their basic scripts this way:

1. They'll put the US Senate endorsement aside for a minute or two and take credit for the Walker endorsement. So perhaps some faint praise for the paper - - but nothing laudatory, as that would upset their regular, Monday-Friday anti-newspaper narrative.

Taking credit is standard ego-driven talk radio fare - - the talkers will boast that they are defining the public discussion, that the Walker endorsement would never have happened if they hadn't been pounding away on the right's agenda.

Which is load of you-know-what, but personality-based righty radio is all about the host first, so the talkers will rewrite the endorsements with a heavy dose of "I."

2.They will then pivot and claim the paper is still a liberal publication because it failed to endorse GOP Senate candidate Ron Johnson.

Nowhere will they point out that since the merger of the Journal and Sentinel in 1995, the moderate Journal Sentinel editorial board routinely endorses conservative or Republican candidates - - J.B. Van Hollen and David Clarke in just the last few days, for example - -  and also holds to a steady line of conservative positions on business issues.

Which made the Walker endorsement a gimme that has nothing to do with talk radio.

3. The talkers will return to form, clubbing the editorial board with its Feingold endorsement as a way to push conservatives to vote for Johnson.

And before you know it, the talkers will be in lock-step for Johnson as priority #1 through Nov. 2 - - claiming through their media - - without an iota of contradiction - - that Johnson and their listeners are victims of media bias.



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