To Fight Or Not To Fight?

Bob Cesca explores the debate over taking on the Right Wing Noise Machine.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson posted an item tonight about how we should just ignore Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the others.

The Beck bashers have learned nothing from attacking Limbaugh and the Fox Network. The thing was that the more you bash, savage, pick at and ridicule a media outlet or a gimmicky talk show host you do what ad people, P.R. flacks, agencies, and sponsors drool over, and sink a mini-king's ransom into. That is to inflate, hype, and pump up a product. The product is Beck.

Obviously, I very strongly disagree with the liberal "ignore them and they'll go away" isolationist attitude. I hear it all the time: stop giving publicity to Beck and the others. While it's true that any publicity is good publicity, we ignore these people at our own peril. 

I can see both sides of the debate.  On one hand, going after Glennsanity and El Rushbo does carry the risk of "staring into the abyss long enough" about it all, just ask Keith Olbermann.  A large component of the credibility Beck and Limbaugh have among the right wing is precisely because of the fact that liberals go after them whenever humanly possible.  Media Matters, for instance, has a large chunk of its resources dedicated just to debunk Rush Limbaugh's radio excrement on a daily basis.  Hutchinson has a real point that people listen to Rush and Beck just because they piss liberals off.

Cesca's counterargument goes like this:

Beck and Limbaugh don't need us to give them publicity -- they do just fine on their own. So to give them an extra slice of publicity is totally negligible if it means exposing the nonsense to the light of day and whittling away at the their credibility (such as it is). It's a long-term cumulative effort, and if there's one thing we can learn from these guys is that we need to remain aggressive and unrelenting. Conceding these fights for the sake of not wanting to give Beck's website a few more hits or Limbaugh's radio show a few more listeners is dangerous and weak.

This is also true, plus it's the right thing to do.  Of course, Limbaugh's been around now for nearly twenty years, and Beck a good decade.  There's plenty of other right-wing radio loudmouths to go after these days too.  There seems to be no shortage in listeners for them, either.

I come down on Cesca's side of the argument simply because Limbaugh's lies are so pernicious.  But it's a necessary step.