Jonathan Martin, for Politico, wrote, "Top Democrats believe they have struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party, a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics."
He continued, "The strategy took shape after Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville included Limbaugh’s name in an October poll and learned their longtime tormentor was deeply unpopular with many Americans."
What Jonathan Martin failed to mention was that two Octobers earlier, in 2006, OpEdNews published this article: "Getting Tough on Limbaugh."
The article called for the very strategy that top White House strategists are now receiving credit for. The article ended with this prophetic sentence: "If Democrats...made these pundits [Limbaugh and Hannity] the subject rather than the interpreters of the news, they could neutralize the right wing 'noise machine' and get back control of Congress."
The article also said, "If Democrats continue to let these airwave politicians go unchallenged, then [Democrats] will continue to stay out of power."
On the heels of the success of that article, with thousands of hits, OpEdNews published hundreds of articles focusing on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and attacking them for errors, hypocrisy and general shamelessness.
OpEdNews pounced on the pundits for their barbaric treatment of John Kerry after he issued his infamous, "...you get stuck in Iraq," comment. It gleefully pointed out that Limbaugh and company were suddenly defending Mark Foley's behavior despite their storied attacks on gay people, exposing the partisanship rather than principlism of these corporate spokespeople.
At one point, Hannity read one of the OpEdNews articles on his talk radio program. The article, "Sean Hannity Pulls A 'Michael Richards' on Obama," ran just over a month before Obama announced he was forming an exploratory committee. Hannity read almost the entire article on air after billing it for his entire program. He tried to point out that it was flawed, but it was futile. It was clear OpEdNews was making an impression.
OpEdNews continues to be a source for critical observations of corporate news networks. It is remarkable because it is sustained essentially by an entirely voluntary army of writers and editors. It continues to chronicle trends that are crucial to understand for combating the corporate agenda of divide-and-conquer politics with articles like this one, by Tolu Olorunda, which emphasize that Fox News is on a very real campaign to reignite fears of black people and instigate racism in this country.
So we'll take a bow and leave the shoddy, DC-focused reporting to Politico.
