The wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time

Conservative host talks to liberal writer.  Might not be what you expect.  But might be what you need.

Well worth a listen

Who knew?

Very interesting.

“I was driving through the region and noticed the same campaign was using a different font on signs in rural areas than on the signs in town,” said Haenschen, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication. “I thought, why would this candidate be using multiple fonts?”

[...]

Haenschen and Tamul reached the following key conclusions through the study:

Individuals perceive fonts to have liberal or conservative leanings.

The more people view a font as aligned with their ideology, the more they favor it.

Fonts that fall under the serif category — ones festooned with a small line or stroke — are viewed as more conservative than fonts in the sans serif group, though differences exist within font families.

[...]

“When you’re choosing a candidate’s visual identity, you need to consider how people perceive that font.”

  Neuroscience News

I would have never imagined that fonts carry political bias. The only thing I can say after being told that people perceive them that way is that sans serif fonts are more recent, newer fonts in print.

A total of 987 survey participants read the phrase “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” presented in each typeface style, and two typefaces representing the serif and sans serif categories: Times New Roman and Gill Sans.

The respondents then rated the typeface as liberal or conservative, and answered several demographic measures related to their political ideology, party affiliation, age, gender, and race.

During the second experiment, Haenschen and Tamul used a wider range of typefaces, including multiple typefaces within the same font family.

[...]

Furthermore, partisanship moderates subjects’ perceptions of typefaces: Republicans generally view typefaces as more conservative than Independents and Democrats.

I suppose that makes sense in that Republicans tend to be more tight-laced and restrictive, seeing everything in the world as defined, black or white. It might follow that they have a lens through which they see everything, and that lens is whether it fits their view of the world or not.

Results broaden our understanding of how meaning is conveyed in political communication, laying the groundwork for future research into the functions of typography and graphic design in contemporary political campaigns.

Original Research: Open access
“What’s in a Font?: Ideological Perceptions of Typograph”.
Katherine Haenschen and Daniel J. Tamul.
Communication Studies doi:10.1080/10510974.2019.1692884.

NPR is leftist!

Noah is so right.  I can remember some years back when NPR was leftist.  Not any more.  Not for a long time.

What NPR is, is serious and educational.  I'm guessing that seems leftist to some conservatives.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Speaking of Pete Buttigieg

Blair Garner, whose self-titled Nash FM radio show is syndicated nationally across more than 150 radio stations, interviewed [presidential candidate Pete] Buttigieg on Wednesday while the Democratic candidate visited Nashville, Tennessee, as part of his campaign tour.

[...]

Cumulus Media, one of the largest broadcasting companies in the country, blocked [Blair] from airing his interview.

[...]

“[Blair] has a big audience,” [said Buttigieg campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith]. “And it’s an audience that doesn’t typically hear directly from Democratic candidates for president.”

[...]

In his roughly 20-minute interview, Buttigieg discussed meeting country music icons Brad Paisley and Tim McGraw and called on the Democratic Party to reach out to more communities traditionally viewed as right-leaning.

“I think that our base tends to be more conservative,” Garner told Buttigieg of his program’s listeners. “And the fact that you, from the Democratic ticket, are the singular candidate to reach out and to say, ‘May I please be on your show?’ That you are reaching out to our listeners ― I think we all have to embrace that and be appreciative of that.”

  HuffPo

But not Cumulus Media.

“My employer decided I couldn’t air it,” he tweeted with a link to the interview published on his personal Soundcloud account.

[...]

“It is not, in any way shape or form, my intention for our show to become political,” the host of “The Blair Garner Show” wrote in the email. “But because someone clearly saw the value of our listeners, I felt secure in affording him this opportunity.”

[...]

“I’ve been told that the interview cannot air,” he wrote in the second email, also obtained by HuffPost. “I was very proud that a presidential candidate of any party valued our show to the degree that they would ask to be a guest.”

[...]

A spokesperson for Cumulus Media told HuffPost that programming managers decided not to air the interview “because of the large number of political candidates currently in this race.”

“The decision was made by local programming management based solely on concerns related to the application of the FCC’s Equal Time Rule,” the spokesperson said in a statement on Sunday."

I guess that works. But if they air any Trump campaigning, that reason won't hold.

Kurt Bardella, creator and publisher of the country music newsletter “The Morning Hangover,” said he was in the studio during Garner’s interview with Buttigieg. He slammed Cumulus Media for pulling the plug on it.

“It is an incredible act of cowardice for a company who’s slogan is ‘Where Every Voice Matters’ to censor an interview with someone who, for the first time ever, thought it was worthwhile to engage the country music audience in a conversation about the future of our country,” Bardella said in a statement to HuffPost.

[...]

“Country radio should be on the frontlines of breaking stereotypes and promoting diversity of thought.”

That doesn't sound like Country radio to me, but it sounds good.

Yikes.  Blair has teeth.

Want to know what a conservative host asks a Democratic candidate?  Check it out.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Do NRA woes translate into GOP woes?

The National Rifle Association aired an avalanche of TV ads and pushed its 5 million-plus members to the polls for Donald Trump in 2016, propelling him in the Rust Belt states that delivered him the presidency.

Now, the gun rights group is in total meltdown — and senior Republicans and Trump 2020 officials are alarmed.

  Politico

Sad!

In recent weeks, the NRA has seen everything from a failed coup attempt to the departure of its longtime political architect to embarrassing tales of self-dealing by top leaders.

[...]

With the Chamber of Commerce and Koch political network withdrawing from their once-dominant roles in electing conservatives, Republicans worry that three organizations that have long formed the core of their electoral infrastructure will be effectively on the sidelines.

[...]

What makes the NRA such a potent force for Republicans, party officials said, are its reach into battlegrounds — such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio — and the sway it holds with its members.

[...]

“Infighting and accusations playing out almost daily in the national media regarding the NRA have not been helpful. Clearly it will have an impact in the NRA's ability to raise money, which would be used in elections to turn out its membership,” [Chris LaCivita, a national GOP strategist] said.

With the organization mired in palace intrigue and confronting a daily barrage of negative publicity, some NRA officials are skeptical a 2020 plan will emerge. Many Republicans are convinced the job of turning out Second Amendment supporters will fall to the cash-flush Republican National Committee, which is constructing a massive get-out-the-vote and data machine devoted to turning out conservatives.

[...]

The organization's troubles are hard to overstate. The most serious threat is an investigation by New York state attorney general's office into its tax-exempt status. In April, NRA President Oliver North was ousted in an ugly public spectacle in which he declared the group was in a "clear crisis." News organizations have also reported that NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre used $275,000 of the group's money to buy luxury clothes at Zegna in Beverly Hills, Calif., and that the organization logged tens of thousands of dollars in other expenses that benefited its officials.

Trump weighed in on the NRA's problems Tuesday morning, tweeting that the group is a "victim" of "political harassment by New York State and Governor Cuomo."

Any investigation into Trump support is harassment in his mind.

Issues surrounding the Republican Party's outside infrastructure go beyond the NRA. The Chamber of Commerce, a key player in Republican politics over the past decade, spent just $10 million during the 2018 cycle, about a third of what it spent during the previous election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The scale back has led many to believe the organization, a staple of the business community, is preparing to play a diminished role in 2020.

[...]

In April, Chamber leaders told The Washington Post they were seeking to rebrand the organization as a bipartisan outfit.

Are they seeing some handwriting on the wall?

Scott Reed, the group’s chief political strategist, denied the group is retrenching. This fall, he said, the Chamber would launch a multimillion-dollar effort to defend the Republican Senate majority.

“We will be spending money earlier this cycle on the Senate than we’ve ever spent in the 100-year history of the Chamber,” he said.

[...]

Meanwhile, the Koch network is gradually shifting away from partisanship and toward policy issues like addressing poverty and drug addiction.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

The network, which like the Chamber has at times found itself at odds with the president, plans to sit out the 2020 presidential race and is recasting itself in a nonpartisan fashion.

[...]

The new approach has rankled some longtime Koch donors, who complain the powerful network — which played a pivotal role in helping Republicans capture the Senate majority — is abandoning the GOP.

I wonder if anyone in the GOP is paying attention.

David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth and a former Republican congressman, said he was particularly troubled by the Koch network's decision to refocus its efforts. After Barack Obama's 2008 election, he noted, the network filled a vacuum by providing the devastated party with much-needed infrastructure.

“Right now, the party is functioning," McIntosh said. "But if you see another collapse or if we lose the White House, I think you’re going to see Republicans frankly in a world of hurt without a major funding group like that.”

Sad!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: