05-23-2016, 05:42 PM
Another founder of trash talk was Paul Harvey. He did return to an avuncular style so that he wasn't pure unlistenable rubbish.. but he was reading folksy trivia or trying to make ad copy seem as if news (really, really bad practice; I'd insist that a radio host not use his voice for ad copy on his show) between excoriations of liberals and counterculture types. Maybe that was GI style... go folksy to give the appearance of backing off.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.