Sykes v. Shelley: An Afterthought

I was reminded of the tempest by re-reading the Shelley article published in a Milwaukee Magazine found in the MD's waiting room.

After all is said and done, the most telling criticism of Sykes' program was Shelley's contention that 'Charlie played the victim card' for his listeners. What that means is that Sykes portrayed his listeners as 'victims.'

The rest of Shelley's rant is picayune hysterics having more to do with personality conflicts than substance.

Sykes' method, however, turned the Left's most useful weapon, victimhood, on its head--and explains why Sykes (and Limbaugh, to some extent) are so popular.

Shelley would have it that Sykes, et al., are contradicting themselves by making victims out of the non-victim class: middle and upper-middle class folks, largely suburban, who have most of the toys, nice lawns, crime-free neighborhoods, etc., etc., etc. Shelley is not too sympathetic to this group of "victims," and doesn't like what he thinks is Sykes' manipulation of these folks.

To get there, though, Shelley ignores the larger picture; specifically, he ignores certain victims and favors others, for his own purposes.

To take only a couple of examples, Sykes has mentioned the albuterol controversy and the "cap-and-trade" brouhaha. In both these cases, the class of people whom Sykes stokes is, in fact, composed of victims.

They are victims because they do not own and/or hire lobbyists, nor publicity machines which include highly-visible politicians, celebrities, and a supine (one could say worse) Press. And they are going to pay, dearly, for these schemes; in the case of asthma inhalants, about $30.00/prescription (and less medical effectiveness in some cases), and in the case of "cap-and-trade," an up-to-forty percent increase in heat/electricity costs.

In fact, the groups affected by these decisions ARE victims. They will pay more--a LOT more--for health-and-life-sustaining goods and services. That's "victim" in anyone's book, except, perhaps, Shelley's.

What Sykes has accomplished, and what makes Lefties like Shelley hair-on-fire angry, is that he has become a "lobbyist-without-briefcase", simply by using the airwaves. He's doing exactly what the ACLU, Big Green, and the Aggrievement Opportunists have been doing for years (since FDR, anyway): presenting the opposing view.

Lobbyists ensure that their clientele will suffer as little as possible. Sykes does what he can to ensure the same result, but by different means; he merely enables and informs opposition to crushing financial burdens, instead of literally carrying a bag into Madistan or DC offices.

It comes as a shock to Shelley and his cohort that some victims are not what they, (in their cramped and limited worldview), think they are; that some victims are in the upper/middle class; that some victims are religious; that some victims have white-collar jobs; that some victims are apparently comfortable.

In other words, they are victims of Government, not victims of the "white power structure."

Imagine that!

Once you understand the binary theory employed by some Community Activists, Labor Leaders, and Tree-Huggers, you understand Shelley's rant very well. He doesn't like effective counter-lobbying, no matter how it is done--especially on airwaves that he thinks shoud belong to real 'victims,' that is, those approved by Shelley & Co.

Shelley just never thought that there could be victims outside his definition of "victim."

And he's wrong.