Noam Chomsky Quotes

I wonder about guys like Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann and Mark Levin. They're on such a mission. I mean, I love Hannity and Levin to death, but on the radio they're insane. How can you keep that up?

There is a paranoid streak in American life. Radio talk show hosts tend to foment that paranoid streak in American life.

So that what you tend to see is someone like a Rush Limbaugh, he's the classic case because he's the most successful, he didn't sort of like come out of his mother's womb with the highest ratings in the country.

I think a lot of the people who feel out of step with contemporary society or feel that they've been left back economically or feel disaffected and are drawn to the Republican Party, they are looking for a news source that will tell them something they would like to hear and then is reassuring, emotionally rewarding, and confirming.

The reason I take Rush Limbaugh seriously is not because he's offensive or right-wing, but because he is one of the few people addressing a large group of disaffected people in this country. And despite his frequent denials, Limbaugh does indeed have a somewhat cult-like effect on his ditto heads.

He'll likely be remembered as a political figure, but I don't recall Andrew Breitbart ever mentioning electoral politics. It bored him.

One of the secrets of Fox News' outsized success - it's the most profitable news organisation in the U.S. and, quite likely, the world - is that it saw the country full of liberal occupiers and Fox News' viewers as the heroic resistance.

The questions I get invariably focus on Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity. It's no secret Hannity is conservative, and O'Reilly certainly is not a liberal. Beck goes well beyond conservatism to some very strange places.

Steve Bannon has quoted as lamenting the fact that he predicts a "Fox News" that will be more centrist in the future. He came after our boss Rupert Murdoch in some unflattering terms.

Fox News seems much more conservative than it is because no other television network over the past half-century has been anything but decidedly liberal. When the media norm is liberal, liberals equate liberalism with objectivity and deviations from it as bias, just as liberals preach tolerance toward all ideas - except conservative ones. Their self-delusion is surreal.

It's easy if you're Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks.

So many red lines have been crossed that people seem to think it is acceptable for politicians and the media to actually incite hatred and violence.

Perhaps inevitably, media stories focus on differences, which exacerbates tensions; yet Islamic radicalization is, in part, an acute expression of broader trends that affect us all.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, and other conservative giants are the voices of the conservative movement's conscience. Every day, millions and millions of Americans - myself included - turn on their radios and televisions to listen to what they have to say, and we are inspired by their words and by their determination.

There are so many families that are divided by Fox and Trump. I think a lot of people have been surprised by just how deep and how corrupt the roots are - how there's been collusion between Fox and Trump right in plain sight the whole time, and yet it's not often recognized.

The real reason President Trump was elected, I think, to the extent I know anything about politics at all - and I know very, very little - is that a lot of people really were relieved to see someone stand up to the thought police of the progressive left wing.

When I saw the rise of the anti-Christ Donald Trump, I was like, 'Hell no.' We can't be in a country where we love celebrities so much that we let the executive producer of 'Celebrity Apprentice' become the GOP nominee.

If you asked a team of expert psychologists and sociological researchers to come up with a design that was sure to infuriate and offend liberals in America, they'd probably come up with what we call the Great Seal.

Don't forget that Rupert Murdoch has always regarded the Op Ed pages of 'The Wall Street Journal' - as he's said to me - as a cup of strong caffeine that gets you going in the morning and tells you what to think.

I think it's clear that Trump is usually in a reactive mode, reacting to what he sees and hears on Fox.

To be sure, conservative radio talk show hosts have a built-in audience unavailable to liberals: People driving cars to some sort of job.

Bernie Sanders are the only person who talks about the kinds of things that might be driving people to support Donald Trump in such large numbers in the Republican Party.

I really am convinced that what is happening in media today is the result of the birth of conservative media and its rapid growth and ascension. It has destroyed the left's monopoly in media. When they had the monopoly, they could pretend that they were not what they are and get away with it. They could pretend to be objective. You know, the power of a monopoly is not just determining what stories you are going to cover, but what you don't cover is just as powerful.

If you listen to the talk shows, which are rabid right-wing, and very interesting, an important fact about the United States, they reach a huge audience. And they're very uniform. So right wing, I don't think you can even find an analog in your, but they reach a mass audience, and their view is that the corporations are liberal. Their appeal to the population is, "the country is run by liberals, they own the corporations, they run the government, they own the media, and they don't care about us ordinary people."

This feels like a Steve Bannon whispering in [Donald Trump's] ear.