I'm really, really starting to like Mark Levin's radio show. Not because he's informed, insightful, and displays any semblance of intelligence, but because he's so over the top that I find myself laughing out loud while listening to his analysis of some issues.
He has all the required characteristics for today's "conservative" talker: overt blood lust, adherence to the blame-the-liberals-at-all-costs doctrine, willingness to play paddy-cake with traditional conservative values such as low taxes and responsible government spending, and of course bowing at the alter of Rush Limbaugh and his most famous barnacle, Sean Hannity.
One of Levin's favorite things to do (usually near the end of his show) is to go into his familiar refrain wherein he "salutes the men and women of the armed forces, our police, fire, and emergency personnel." Like the other talking giants Limbaugh and Hannity, he believes any criticism of our armed forces to be tantamount to treason, and anyone critical of our war effort to be any combination of the following adjectives: leftist, Stalinist, unpatriotic, and/or liberal. Of course, like his big talking brethren Rush and Sean, Levin is missing military service on his resume. But never mind that...
I started listening to Levin's radio show this past summer when I moved to Baltimore. Listening to conservative radio has long been a hobby of mine (if you can call it that), and I thought I'd heard it all. Boy was I wrong. Listening to Levin is like being transported into an altogether different universe, but it took me a while to reach that conclusion. Once I worked through the usual anger associated with closed-minded blowhards like Levin (whose arguments, despite being a lawyer by trade, consist of "You jerrrkk" and "Get off the phone ya big dope!" when he disagrees with callers) I started to appreciate his firebrand sense of humor...sort of.
Until tonight, I couldn't place my finger on why I am enjoying this intellectual caveman's show so much lately. And then it hit me: Levin's uncanny ability to transport me back in time generated my new found affection for him. It's as if Levin is broadcasting from within a bunker (eerily enough, his top of the hour lead ins hype the show as Levin broadcasting from the "underground command post, deep in the bowels of some hidden bunker, underneath the brick and steel of a non-descript building...) in late 1930's Europe. Pick your country, they all heavily inundated their populations with propaganda wherein the [insert enemy country] were coming to get them if they didn't conform!
Tonight was the tipping point for me. Every once in a while--and usually during the last hour on Friday's show, where he plays "America" by Ray Charles--Levin will play a patriotic song to remind his listeners that, yup, he's still rooting for America, and no, his support for her has not waned during the commercial break. Tonight Levin broke with tradition and decided to play the fight songs of our five branches of national service: Navy, Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard. It's a pity fire departments, police, and emergency personnel do not have patriotic songs...I'm sure Levin would have played them as well.
From now on, while listening to Levin's play list and rhetoric, I'm going to try and substitute various words from the 1930's and 40's for his usual targets, the leftists, liberals, Stalinists, Maoists, socialists, etc. Words like Nazis, Fascists, Jews, Gypsies, race mongrels, etc. are a good place to start, I think. I don't think the conclusion I'm going to draw here will shock anybody: Levin--as well as his big talking compatriots--are repeating history in targeting specific groups of people, and using fervent nationalism to buttress their cause.
Regardless, Levin's show is entertaining. Of course, I couldn't disagree with him more on a wide range of issues, but I still appreciate his dog-and-pony show that gets played out for two hours every day. That people call in to voice their support for this maniac, and even form fan sites dedicated to "The Great One" should serve as a reminder that, no matter the extremities of your views, there's always a fan base eager to accept vehement nationalism.
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