How Right-Wing Media Profits From Paranoid, Right-Wing Cranks Like Cliven Bundy

http://www.alternet.org/belief/how-right-wing-media-profits-paranoid-right-wing-cranks-cliven-bundy

In hindsight, it’s easy to see that the odds were extremely high that Cliven Bundy was going to embarrass the various conservative pundits and politicians who supported him in his stand-off against the federal government over his desire to continue stealing federal grazing lands from taxpayers without paying the fees for using them.

Bundy already had a well-established record of saying nutty things, such as, “But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing,” as if that somehow magically spares you from having to follow its laws. Even the central claim he is making—that he shouldn’t have to pay the taxpayers their proper fees for using their lands—is so self-evidently ridiculous that many of his supporters had to tacitly admit he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. That such a nutty crank would have nutty crank opinions on the topic of race relations was entirely predictable and no one, not even his most ardent supporters, seems particularly surprised to hear that he thinks black people were better off under slavery.

Now, of course, the vast majority of Bundy’s supporters in the media and in politics are running as fast as they can away from him. Does this mean that conservatives have learned a valuable lesson about the dangers of cravenly and opportunistically pouncing on every angry white guy with a grievance? Not hardly. Conservative pundits and politicians are addicted to exploiting all manner of right-wing cranks and loonies, and an embarrassing setback like this is not nearly enough to dissuade them from doing it in the future.

Part of the reason is that right-wing loons are their bread and butter. Ranting conservatives with half-baked ideas they seem to think were handed to them directly by God are the core demographic of Fox News and right-wing talk radio. Conservative media knows it’s just good business to flatter its audience repeatedly by taking right-wing cranks and elevating them to the status of “heroes” and “patriots.” Doing so keeps the audience tuning in, which leads directly to making more money.