Announcement that the summaries are ending
John Switzer
***************************************************
Announcement Concerning the End of the
Unofficial Summaries of the Rush Limbaugh Show
by John Switzer (jswi...@aimnet.com)
August 1, 1996
I have to regretfully announce that I will no longer be doing
summaries of the Rush Limbaugh radio show. I've been thinking
about taking this step for the past several months and while I
had considered continuing the summaries until the end of the 1996
calendar year, I decided for many reasons it would be best to end
them now.
There are two main reasons I am giving up the summaries:
1. I simply no longer have the 30 to 35 hours a week needed to
produce them.
2. I am finding that I am not enjoying doing the summaries as
much as I have in the past, and I fear that is because I am not
enjoying the radio show as much as I did when I started the
summaries on August 15, 1991.
I go into both of these reasons into more detail below, but for
those who aren't into long-winded and possibly self-indulgent
writings, I'll sum up now by saying I have experimented with
other formats and approaches to the summaries and just couldn't
find something that would satisfy me. I thus think it would be
best to stop doing the summaries before the pressures on my time
forced me to put out shoddily written works that do not
accurately reflect what goes on in Rush's show.
I thank everyone for reading the summaries and their feedback.
Hopefully at some point I can produce other works of similar
value, but for the time being I don't expect to be doing much,
except perhaps to transfer the summaries to CDROM in text and
Adobe Acrobat format. If you would be interested in this, please
let me know - if only a few people are interested, I can
duplicate them myself at a cost of about $10 apiece. If enough
people (more than 100) are interested, it's possible I could do
them a bit more professionally for a slightly higher cost.
In any case, thanks again for reading the summaries. If you're
not interested in my extended explanations of why I'm stopping
the summaries, just move on past the following. Thanks again.
I feel a need to post my reasons for ending the summaries in
detail for a couple of reasons. First, given Rush's stature, if I
weren't clear about this, there would be an inevitable series of
rumors ranging from "Rush forced me to do it" to "Rush stopped
paying me to do it," and I'd just as soon nip those idiocies in
the bud.
The decision to stop the summaries is mine alone - I started the
summaries as an unofficial record of the Rush Limbaugh show and
that's how they are ending. There have never been any ties
between Rush and these summaries, and no influence, overt or
otherwise has ever been exerted on me by him, EIB, or anyone else
as to how I should do them.
Second, in the following paragraphs I make some judgments and
evaluations about Rush and his show that may or may not be valid.
Regardless of that, however, these are my perceptions and they
would inevitably color how I write the summaries.
As I explain below, these perceptions about the show make me
doubt whether I could continue doing the summaries in an
objective and accurate manner. Thus, I am writing my thoughts
down in the hope of getting some feedback about whether my
perceptions are at all close to the mark. If it turns out they
are not, then I will have to do some thinking about what's going
on in my life that would color my thinking in this way.
With this in mind, here are my reasons for stopping the summaries
in more detail.
REASON 1: I SIMPLY NO LONGER HAVE THE TIME NEEDED TO DO THE
SUMMARIES
When I started doing the summaries in August, 1991, they were
about a third of the size they are now, about 24KB, compared to
70 to 80KB. Over the next several months I began expanding the
level of detail in the summaries to what it is now, and it's been
taking about 30 to 35 hours each week to produce them.
Typically, it would take me about three to four hours to listen
to Rush's show and do the preliminary summary. Then it would take
another hour and a half to format it, spell-check it, and edit
it. Posting it to the net and CompuServe would take about a half
hour. This had to be repeated five days a week, and then it would
take me about four hours a week to go through past summaries to
produce the "Lest We Forget" section for the next week's
summaries.
This meant spending the early morning and early evening hours of
each weekday on the summaries, along with four to eight hours
each weekend. This has limited my ability to participate in
things ranging from social activities, practicing my music, and
taking classes at the local colleges.
I finally decided this year to do some things I've long been
wanting to do: learning violin, learning percussion, and starting
to earn a second degree in history (not to mention reading the
two dozen or so books on my shelves that have been sitting there
unread for months or years). Barring a drastic change in the way
I do the summaries, this meant the summaries had to go.
However, despite all that, I would still be willing to compromise
on some of these activities so as to keep doing the summaries,
assuming that I enjoyed doing them as much as I have in the past.
This is not the case, though, as I explain in the next section.
REASON 2: I AM NOT ENJOYING DOING THE SUMMARIES AS MUCH AS BEFORE
Before going into this, I should make a full disclosure in a
couple of areas. First, I have no special knowledge of Rush
whatsoever. I have never met him and certainly have no insider's
knowledge of him.
I listen to the radio show, have read his books, and read his
newsletter, and all of what I know and think I know comes from
that. Any perceptions I might have on what motivates him are
educated guesses at best but in reality are probably far more
likely to be SWAGs (Silly Wild-Assed Guesses).
Also, my observations should probably be suspect because for the
past couple of months I have been getting more and more resentful
of the time that the summaries have required of me. This
resentment could easily be transferred onto Rush and his show,
and it could be that all of the following reasons are the product
of my subconscious trying to find "excuses" that would justify
ending the summaries.
This is what I referred to earlier when I talked about being
unable to be certain that I was writing objective and accurate
summaries. I found myself tending to be more and more negative in
writing them, and it sometimes became difficult to discern
whether this negativity was the result of what Rush was actually
doing on his show or the product of my resentment over the time
the summaries were taking from me.
Thus, if any of the following is widely off the mark, it's due to
such subconscious conflicts. It's definitely not due to any
resentment toward Rush himself, though - I have no axe to grind
and no complaints to make about him personally. I have not tried
to cash in on these summaries and have never thought Rush owed me
anything for doing them. They have always been a hobby, first and
last.
And that is the problem - in the past when people asked how I
found the time to do the summaries, I would reply saying "it
takes a lot of time, but it's a fun hobby." This is no longer the
case - from about mid-May on, I have been noticing that I just do
not enjoy doing the summaries as much as I did in the previous
four years.
I tried to figure out why, and certainly my desire to be doing
other things, such as learning the violin, is one reason.
However, I also noticed that I was also not enjoying the radio
show as much as I used to.
One main reason for this was that Rush was not simply covering
all the news that I was interested in. A major reason that I
started the summaries in 1991 was that I was trying to figure out
a way to catalog the news of the day so that I could recall it
easily. Far too many times I had noticed politicians and others
saying things that directly conflicted with what they had said
before, and I was trying to create a system that would allow me
to discover such things.
At the time I had been listening to Rush for more than a year,
and I was struck by how what he talked about was exactly what I
was interested in. From the Gulf War to the 1990 Budget Battle to
the beginning 1992 Presidential primaries, Rush presented the
very material I thought was most important.
Thus, I began the summaries as a sort of notes of what was said
on Rush's show, and from there they became a record of Rush's
show, one that captured the flavor of the show as well as the
news that he reported. Today, though, I find that more and more,
the news I think should be mentioned is ignored on Rush's show.
For just a few examples, on last Monday's (7/29) show Rush didn't
even mention what Bob Dole had to say over the weekend. He also
has ignored much of what the Republican Congress has been doing,
from the bill that would declare English as the official language
to the health care bill that was just passed.
In the past, Rush would have provided updates on a bill's status,
but I can no longer depend on him for this information. Nor could
I depend on him either Thursday or Friday for any information
about the not guilty verdicts in the second Whitewater trial -
perhaps I missed it, but I don't remember him saying anything
about this or what it might portend for the future of Whitewater
investigations. I find I have to surf the net and listen to other
radio hosts for the information I want.
Another thing Rush has ignored recently is the Bob Dole campaign.
One of the few times Bob Dole was mentioned this past week was
when Rush referred to his decision to cancel an Arkansas
appearance and fly on straight to Texas; a lot of points could
have been made about this, but Rush seemed interested in
mentioning it only so he could draw some inferences about the
alleged incompetency of the Dole campaign (or more specifically,
Bob Dole himself).
Rush has, in fact, been showing a fair amount of disdain toward
Bob Dole for a couple of weeks, almost as if he's given up any
hope on the man. When one caller on 7/24 asked whether Bob Dole
should be calling Bill Clinton a liar, Rush snidely said
candidates usually take the high road in this, but in Dole's case
any road would be nice.
It's been my impression that since the second week of July, when
Rush met with Dole and heard him talk about how Reagan shouldn't
get the "blame" for $80 billion of tax cuts, Rush seems to have
lost faith in Dole and no longer holds him in high regard.
Whatever the reason for this, the fact remains that I do want to
know what Dole is doing and saying, and this is not information I
am getting from Rush's show.
This leads to something else that has made the show a bit less
enjoyable for me, and that is Rush's growing impatience with
certain types of caller, such as those who criticize what he does
on his show or how he does it. One thing I've noticed in the past
few months that the quickest way to rile Rush and to get him to
cut you off at the knees is to question some aspect of his show.
For example, on Thursday, 8/1, a caller almost seemed to be
reading my mind when he courteously and deferentially expressed
many of these same points about Rush's treatment of Dole and his
campaign. Rush was quite perfunctory with these criticisms, and
he ended the call with a rather imperious "you're the caller and
I'm the host," as if this ended all possible debate on the
matter.
Of course, this is correct - Rush is the host and can run his
show any way he wants, but it would be courteous, if not prudent
for someone whose livelihood depends on his listeners sticking
around, to at least politely tolerate those who disagree on such
matters. As it is, Rush's habit of shutting such callers down,
usually by implying they are from some DNC-inspired seminar,
serves no purpose but to stifle debate.
At least twice in the past few months I've heard callers express
opinions that I agreed with in whole or in part, only to have
Rush dismiss them as "seminar" callers. As a listener who agreed
with the callers, I thus had to conclude that Rush was telling me
that anyone who disagrees with him on certain topics "must" be a
Democratic plant.
This tends to tick me off - if anyone has established credentials
as a dittohead, it's a summary writer who has spent approximately
7,000 hours over five years chronicling the show, yet I know if I
were to call in under a different name and express certain views,
such as some of the ones I express above, I fear I would be
dismissed as a "seminar caller." I might certainly be wrong about
my opinions, but I do object to the notion that just because I
disagree with Rush on some specific things I must be a programmed
Democratic robot.
Another thing that has lessened my enjoyment of the radio show is
an increasing impreciseness on Rush's part. Of course, I realize
that speaking extemporaneously, as Rush does, is not real
conducive to having specific facts at your fingertips, but there
are still basic things being missed.
For example, in a discussion with a caller about the Clipper chip
and how the FBI is using the latest bombings to push for its use,
Rush made the very valid point that the FBI has to be able to
keep up with technology so it can continue to do its job, which
is why it needs devices such as the Clipper chip; otherwise it
wouldn't be able to catch the John Gotti's of the future.
The caller then pointed out that Gotti was caught by bugs, which
capture human speech not electronic data, so the Clipper chip was
irrelevant. Rush dismissed this point out of hand, saying that if
the FBI didn't have the capability to "wiretap the internet" and
similar things, criminals who use high-tech could not be caught.
This is simply wrong. First, the caller's point about the
difference between a bug and a wiretap was an important one.
Second, "wiretapping the internet" is done all the time - in
fact, it's the major security flaw of the system. Anyone who has
root privileges at any gateway machine between two other ISPs can
monitor the traffic that goes between them with impunity.
The problem faced by the FBI is far more serious than this and
the Clipper chip would do nothing to solve it, unless the U.S.
government outlaws all other forms of encryption. And even then,
crooks would still have the capability to set up a T1 link site
to site, requiring the FBI to tap it at the telephone company
switch level or satellite level. This is not a trivial matter,
with or without the Clipper chip, as the T1 signal could use any
of a dozen different combinations of framing, encoding, and
compression.
Also, the NSA must have the capability to break virtually any
encryption method available to the general public today. Looking
at what the U.S. intelligence community was able to do forty
years ago, this is an obvious conclusion, which means the problem
is a political, not technical, one.
The NSA, of course, does not want to let the world know of its
full capabilities, for obvious reasons - this would just
encourage the bad guys to switch methods. But for them to make
that technology available to the FBI would require doing exactly
this, whether the NSA provides this service directly to the FBI
or allows the FBI to copy its technology.
The NSA, after all, decrypts messages for the sake of national
security and intelligence agencies' use, while the FBI does so to
get evidence that will stand up in court. If the FBI had the NSA
decrypt some communications, they would have to demonstrate in
court that the methods used for this do indeed work, and that the
clear text message provided by the NSA is in fact the same thing
as the coded message taken from the suspects.
In short, this matter surrounding the Clipper chip is incredibly
convoluted and complex, yet Rush dismissed out of hand the
caller's attempts to make this point. This seems to be because
Rush gets his information from the "experts," which leads to
something else that has severely lessened my enjoyment of Rush's
show, especially when it comes to writing summaries of it, and
that's Rush's increasing "wonkish" behavior.
This will take some explanation, too - the term "wonk" came to
the attention of the general public with the Clinton
administration, when it was used as a sort of synonym for "nerd."
In conventional discourse, a "policy wonk" was someone who lived
and breathed public policy matters, and an "economics wonk" was
someone who thought all of life could be solved using economics-
based approaches.
Yet wonk really means more than this - I have been a wonk myself
several times in my life, back when I was studying mathematics,
computers, music, and a couple of other fields. The "wonk" stage
comes when you have been studying something and are finally
starting to understand it; before this point you have been only
learning the subject matter but now you are starting to actually
understand what happens and why.
In this stage, you are comfortable with all the lingo specific to
the field you are studying and can converse easily with experts
on it, but you are not yet an expert yourself. You have not
internalized the information, which is necessary so that you can
start talking about it in simpler terms to those who aren't
experts.
Thus, when I was a "computer wonk," I understood things like
"IRQs" and "maskable interrupts," but I would have been hard-
pressed to explain them to computer neophytes. Similarly, when I
was a "musician wonk," I understood the polyphonically-derived
chord progressions in Schoenberg's "Verklate Nacht" and could
relate them to what Mozart did in his Great Fugue in the final
movement of the "Jupiter Symphony," but I could talk only to
other musicians, not members of the general public.
If a wonk's studies continue, eventually they begin to be able to
internalize what they know, understanding it on a more
fundamental level, and then they can relate it to what other
people might know. Thus, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams are
able to explain economic principles to average newspaper readers,
and if you're lucky and get a good teacher, your music
appreciation professor in college can explain why the great
masters are really great.
Over the past year, though, Rush seems to have gotten stuck in
wonk mode on a number of things, especially economics and
politics. Since Rush was able to explain these things very
incisively when I started doing the summaries in 1991, I have to
wonder if he's fallen prey to "wonkism," which is what happens
when you go to supposed experts, get their pronouncements on
something, and repeat them verbatim later.
The problem with this is two-fold. First, your supposed experts
might not be really first-hand experts, but rather second-hand or
third-hand experts, such as the type you find in think-tanks and
news organizations. These people get their information from other
"experts," leading to the question of where did those experts get
their information. The media in general has been plagued with
wonkism like this for some time, especially in political analysis
(or whenever it does "in depth" discussions of complex issues,
such as airline safety).
The second problem with getting your information from the
supposed experts is that you're left without a response when
someone questions it. All you can do is either dismiss the
questioner or simply say your expert is better than their expert.
It's far better to use original sources, your instincts, and
knowledge that is yours than to depend on experts. This gives
your arguments passion and fire, and thought I hate to say it, I
haven't seen that same fire in Rush lately.
And while it could be my imagination, I get the strong impression
that Rush has been dealing with a growing frustration over the
past couple of years. Part of this must have been the
frustrations he's had with his TV show, and those frustrations
certainly are understandable - TV land is full of fools, and
Rush, like I, do not suffer fools well, so I can understand that.
Also, though, while doing summaries for the past two years I have
gotten the impression that Rush has been trying to change the
focus of his radio show, shifting the emphasis from the
"entertainment" side of what he does to the
"information/commentary" side. I sense that Rush has been trying
to get himself taken more seriously, especially in politics.
And although I have absolutely no evidence of this except a gut
feeling, I would bet that he's gotten tired of how so many
politicians, including and especially Republicans, are interested
not in what he has to say but only in using him to proselytize to
the 20 million voters in his audience. This can have a wearing-
down effect and although I cannot put my finger on anything
particular, I have gotten a strong sense of this sort of
frustration from Rush recently.
This, of course, could just be my imagination, and I could be so
far off-base on all of this that it's laughable. This is not
beyond the bounds of reason in any case, particularly since I'm
expounding about a man that I have never met and have no
knowledge of except from what I get over the radio.
However, I do know that I have not enjoyed Rush's show as much as
I used to, and these seem to be the reasons. In any case, while
my passion for Rush's show is not enough to push me to continue
doing the summaries, I do plan to continue listening to Rush and
can only hope that he'll be on the radio for at least another
eight years, repeating his stint as the "majority maker" for
Republicans every two years.
And should I be able to find a way to summarize Rush's show in a
time-effective, accurate, and objective way, I hope to be able to
start the summaries again, too. Thanks again for reading the
summaries.
--
John Switzer | Some people say the rainforests must be saved because
| the cure for cancer might be there. Why aren't these
jswi...@limbaugh.com | same people worried that the scientist who would have
| found that cure might be aborted?
Clell A. Harmon
John Switzer (jswi...@limbaugh.com) wrote:
: This leads to something else that has made the show a bit less
: enjoyable for me, and that is Rush's growing impatience with
: certain types of caller, such as those who criticize what he does
: on his show or how he does it. One thing I've noticed in the past
: few months that the quickest way to rile Rush and to get him to
: cut you off at the knees is to question some aspect of his show.
It's unfortunate that you just noticed this. Limbaugh has been
doing it since his days in Sacramento....
: And while it could be my imagination, I get the strong impression
: that Rush has been dealing with a growing frustration over the
: past couple of years. Part of this must have been the
: frustrations he's had with his TV show, and those frustrations
: certainly are understandable - TV land is full of fools, and
: Rush, like I, do not suffer fools well, so I can understand that.
Yet you suffer him, and he himself....
: And although I have absolutely no evidence of this except a gut
: feeling, I would bet that he's gotten tired of how so many
: politicians, including and especially Republicans, are interested
: not in what he has to say but only in using him to proselytize to
: the 20 million voters in his audience. This can have a wearing-
: down effect and although I cannot put my finger on anything
: particular, I have gotten a strong sense of this sort of
: frustration from Rush recently.
And you fall claim to a Wonkism yourself. Limbaugh doesn't HAVE
20 million voters in his audience. At most he has 7 million. His 20-25
million audience is a WEEKLY number promulgated by arbitron. If you
listen 5 days a week, you count as 5. Unless you live in Chicago, you're
only allowed to vote once.
: eight years, repeating his stint as the "majority maker" for
: Republicans every two years.
Oh yeah, with all 7 million in his audience.
BluLu 2
Announcement Concerning the End of the
Unofficial Summaries of the Rush Limbaugh Show
John Switzer (jswi...@aimnet.com) wrote:
>August 1, 1996
>
>I have to regretfully announce that I will no longer be doing
>summaries of the Rush Limbaugh radio show. I've been thinking
>about taking this step for the past several months and while I
>had considered continuing the summaries until the end of the 1996
>calendar year, I decided for many reasons it would be best to end
>them now.
Well, I want to thank you for posting them as you did, for even
though I am no Limbaugh fan per se, and even though I noticed
a very *slight* bias in favor of Limbaugh in your summaries, I have
used them at times for cannon fodder argument.
The writing style was easy to read, but I think you were going
a bit far with the "Lest we forget" sections, as I felt they had little
use, simply because they were mostly unrelated with the current
summary.
You mentioned you noticed a change in Limbaugh, and you site
possibilities for cause, such as republicans wanting to use Limbaugh
as a "wonk", but this goes against what Limbaugh said not to long
ago regarding whether he would appear at the GOP convention in
August: "Are you kidding? The last thing they want there is me!"
Yes, he did say that.
When it comes right down to it, even die-hard fans tire of Limbaugh.
BluLu 2 ;)
Well, maybe, but what if, and if so, why not?
Then, if so, what now, for whom, and where?
Unknown
jswi...@limbaugh.com (John Switzer) wrote:
)
>August 1, 1996
>I have to regretfully announce that I will no longer be doing
>summaries of the Rush Limbaugh radio show. I've been thinking
>about taking this step for the past several months and while I
>had considered continuing the summaries until the end of the 1996
>calendar year, I decided for many reasons it would be best to end
>them now.
........
>And should I be able to find a way to summarize Rush's show in a
>time-effective, accurate, and objective way, I hope to be able to
>start the summaries again, too. Thanks again for reading the
>summaries.
>--
>John Switzer | Some people say the rainforests must be saved because
> | the cure for cancer might be there. Why aren't these
>jswi...@limbaugh.com | same people worried that the scientist who would have
> | found that cure might be aborted?
John, you will be missed. good luck with everything.
Mark
Larry Mulcahy
John Switzer (jswi...@limbaugh.com) wrote:
: I have to regretfully announce that I will no longer be doing
: summaries of the Rush Limbaugh radio show. I've been thinking
: about taking this step for the past several months and while I
: had considered continuing the summaries until the end of the 1996
: calendar year, I decided for many reasons it would be best to end
: them now.
Many thanks for all the hard work you have done over the last few
years.
--
Larry Mulcahy la...@ambient.uucp lmul...@nyx.net
http://www.nyx.net/~lmulcahy/
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The Failed Clinton Presidency: day 1295, 167 days to go
131G40000-J.BECKMAN(MT4084)1023MT
In article <Dvqxz...@bigtop.dr.att.com>,
Larry Mulcahy <la...@ambient.uucp> wrote:
>John Switzer (jswi...@limbaugh.com) wrote:
>: I have to regretfully announce that I will no longer be doing
>: summaries of the Rush Limbaugh radio show. I've been thinking
>: about taking this step for the past several months and while I
>: had considered continuing the summaries until the end of the 1996
>: calendar year, I decided for many reasons it would be best to end
>: them now.
>
>years.
>
And congratulations on your decision to finally get a life.
Jim Beckman jamesb...@lucent.com