Quote:

---

October 10, 2013 Jen Senko is a filmmaker who watched in horror as her father slowly came to believe the extreme right-wing lies of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative media mavens. Now she’s making a documentary about it called The Brainwashing of My Dad.

Senko's first documentary, Road Map Warrior Women, won recognition with several festival awards. Her most recent film, The Vanishing City, won Best Feature Documentary in the Williamsburg International Film Festival, Best Short Documentary in the Harlem International Film Festival, and Honorable Mention in the Los Angeles International Film Festival.

Jen Senko: I remember the first time I really noticed it. My dad picked me up from the bus station when I was visiting from New York. On the way home we passed a Hooters and he started complaining about the "attack" against Hooters by the establishment, and saying how silly it was and how it interfered with our freedom.

He was frighteningly angry—excited, argumentative, belligerent... I didn’t understand why. I tried to change the subject and said something about all the SUVs I was seeing on the road—this was in the '80s, when they first came out. My dad had always been a “non-waster” and tightwad—anytime he got gas he marked it down in a little book to keep track of how much he was spending—so I thought he would agree. I was flabbergasted when he got even angrier and threatened to pull over and let me hitchhike the rest of the way home.

If you said anything that he would disagree with politically, it would trigger an extremely large reaction.

When I was growing up, no one seemed particularly political. Both my parents were Democrats. Republicans were just other people. My father used to get to work in a car pool when we were growing up in West Long Branch, NJ. When he got a promotion, we moved to Maryland and then he had a long-distance solo drive to work. He started listening to talk radio to pass the time.

He didn’t like to waste time so driving and listening to talk radio I’m sure seemed "educational" to him. It was Bob Grant. Bob Grant was a bombastic, rude, openly racist and sexist radio host. And very slowly, my dad began to change.

Then when he started listening to Rush Limbaugh, that was when I started getting worried. He hated Bill Clinton with a passion I thought was bordering on obsessive. As for why it happened, at this point I can only guess. Unlike my mother, he was easily influenced and seemed to respond to anything he thought was not fair or unjust. He was sort of naïve in a way—people would tell him a story and he would be a little gullible, because he had an open personality.

So when Rush Limbaugh told him that poor people and Mexicans and blacks and feminazis were to blame for well, everything, he got mad too and took it up as his cause. He would get super-angry and bite the middle of his tongue and look like he was going to explode.

When I was growing up my dad seemed to love everybody. I never heard any kind of talk against any race or ethnicity. He was funny and goofy and talked to anybody....When I was in college I knew a lot of gays, and he was friendly and even gregarious and even thought them "cultured." He wasn't prejudiced at all. It wasn't until later that he underwent a radical change.

I remember one time in particular when we went to New York to go to Radio City Music Hall. A black homeless man asked him for money. My father called him sir and gave him money. That is imprinted on my memory. When my dad changed, he became obsessive. He got angrier. After he retired, he would sit in the kitchen and eat his lunch and listen to Rush Limbaugh for three full hours a day. God forbid you interrupt Rush. He tried to inject his political views into any conversation he had, with anybody. Around Christmas-time (not just on Christmas Day) he would be sure to shout “Merry Christmas” to anyone and everyone, because he believed that liberals were engaging in a war on Christmas.

He believed it when Rush Limbaugh told him that climate change is a hoax. He called Al Gore an “asshole”—-by then he could not be moved. He also would compliment smokers on smoking. When we would go to a restaurant and people sat outside to smoke, he would take a deep breath and exclaim how good it smelled.

This was because Rush Limbaugh told him that the scientists were lying about the findings about smoking—-oh, and those greedy scientists just wanted funding money and that’s why they were perpetrating this myth about climate change being caused by humans. You couldn’t argue with him. He was one angry, whirling, right-wing dervish.

I’ve been told that using the word “conspiracy” is not a good idea. But there were specific plans drawn up, some in secret, by members of the Republican elite to create a major change from the political direction the country was moving in (namely more progressive) to one with much more emphasis on business through, in large part, the media. Those forces turned into changes in the media and the language and framing of values and messages like “liberal media” being repeated over and over. They created scapegoats to blame, and produced a hostility within him towards other people that he felt should be making it on their own—no excuses! He became convinced that if they were suffering it was their own fault.

There is an intimate connection between the radio and the listener. As for the effect it has on people, I think any message told repeatedly has an effect on people. It works in advertising and it works in forming one’s political views.

My dad knows that I'm making a film about him. I'm always filming something. He's proud of me. We get along great now. I love him to pieces. And I won't give the film away but he is not the same person he was three years ago. My father has always loved me, but I think had this film been made during the time of his political obsession that love would have been greatly tested.

The right-wing media noise machine has had a profound affect on lives of individuals, whether they listen to it or not. Rush's audience is 72% men and most are white over the age of 65, and with Fox and other outlets, it’s similar stats. You can somewhat understand the draw for white men. In the past, it was almost a guarantee that merely by being a white male one could assume a good job and a certain social status. Their roles in the world were turned upside-down during the civil rights era of the '60s and '70s. Men had very specific roles and suddenly they were being challenged by women and minorities. They either had to adapt or reinvent themselves or find a sympathetic voice that told them it wasn't their fault and there were groups to blame. And that anger, even though it's anger, is still passion. It provides a purpose and I believe anger can be addictive. It can be a rush.

The answer is deprogramming by exposing lies, but part of the problem is how to get them to listen. Perhaps some people think that brainwashing is an exaggeration, but I, and others, have seen profound and frightening changes in people they would never have imagined possible. What is brainwashing? In the '50s and '60s when there were red-scare movies like The Manchurian Candidate—those movies showed how someone could be led to act against their own beliefs and their own interests. My father voted against his own interests as do many of these Fox viewers and right-wing radio listeners. How is that different from the notion of brainwashing?

I think it is impossible not to have a bias in media. But, I also think there is a difference between facts and opinion. Right-wingers I know always challenge me with that question. And I answer it this way: I say MSNBC largely is a "tattletale." They talk about and try to expose the right's lies.

The second thing MSNBC does that Fox doesn't do is correct themselves when they make a mistake. They are, however, decidedly pro-administration and since they have a corporate media structure behind them they can't go too liberal. As Jeff Cohen would say, there's a very narrow debate in the news. You have extreme right, right and left.

Media can be a form of brainwashing depending on the viewer/listener. Most people who choose to ingest one type of media are going to get influenced by that media. Unless people read a lot on their own—and most people don’t have time to—they will listen to and believe whatever is fed them. And that’s easier to do when you have uneducated masses of people.

A less educated mass also serves the corporate purpose. Thus the push for charter schools, by the way. They can teach them what they want to teach them. There are also those who gravitate toward an authoritarian media who blame others for your troubles. If people aren’t doing well in life, it gives them a passion to be angry and have someone else to blame, like poor people and minorities.

Most journalists work for a corporate-owned media. That said, corporations have an agenda and like many corporations they want to keep costs down and provide “gains” for their shareholders. So they don’t pay the journalist what they need to be paid in order to do a thorough job. And most importantly, a “thorough job” wouldn’t serve their corporate interest anyway.

Though there are some great journalists who write for truly independent online publications, documentarians now are also telling the stories in another medium that can possibly reach more people and with less outside influence. There are many books out there but we need film. It’s more accessible to more people. In my wildest dreams I would hope that it becomes one of those "known" things that Fox News is Faux News and convinces people to vote against their own interests and hate anybody who doesn't think like they do. I would like for their jig to be up.

As I see Fox News being played in more and more doctors' offices, airports, lobbies of any sort, ask your doctor or whomever why they would choose to show such a divisive program, and ask them to please stop. My mom has done it. I have done it. It doesn’t take that much time to do. Just politely complain and suggest they show something more neutral. That’s just one among many things. http://www.alternet.org/media/how-talk-radio-and-fox-news-brainwashed-
my-dad?page=0%2C0

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Geezer:
I understand now.

Ms. Senko's father ended up hating and demeaning anyone who disagreed with his right-wing views; whereas you, and Signym, and Kiki1, and Storymark, etc. end up hating and demeaning anyone who disagrees with your left-wing views.

Quite a difference.


"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

---

Quote:

---

He believed it when Rush Limbaugh told him that climate change is a hoax. He called Al Gore an “asshole”—-by then he could not be moved. He also would compliment smokers on smoking. When we would go to a restaurant and people sat outside to smoke, he would take a deep breath and exclaim how good it smelled.

---

Quote:

---

I understand now.
Ms. Senko's father ended up hating and demeaning anyone who disagreed with his right-wing views; whereas you, and Signym, and Kiki1, and Storymark, etc. end up hating and demeaning anyone who disagrees with your left-wing views.
Quite a difference.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
If you've been paying attention (and I'm pretty sure you haven't been) you may have noticed that I don't dismiss rappy because he's "right wing", I dimiss him because nothing he says has been borne out by observation. He's been so wrong on so many things, there's nothing there to glean. Arguing facts with him... sigh. Pearls before swine. Also, he's an asshole, which doesn't help.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Geezer will get it, rappy won't.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The thing I can't get is how you can be so adamant that not only is your position on anything you post 100% correct, but you're also so adamant that you aren't suffering from the tiniest bit of brainwashing yourself.....?
...
I'd like to hear the story about how you came to believe in what you believe in today and how your opinion, among nearly 7 billions of other opinions is the one that is right.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's not about being "left-wing" or "right-wing", it's about being sane and with an eye on reality.

---

Quote:

---

Says it's not "accidental" that the villain in the Batman movie is named Bane. (Pants on Fire: "The villainous Bane first appeared in Batman comic books in 1993, long before Romney entered presidential politics. Even the character’s creator called a suggested link "ridiculous.""

---

Quote:

---

"Obamacare is . . . the largest tax increase in the history of the world." (Pants on Fire: "Not even biggest in U.S. history. Limbaugh's inflated rhetoric takes a wrong claim and puts it into the realm of the ridiculous. ")

---

Quote:

---

People "can't go fishing anymore because of Obama." (Pants on Fire: "In fact, the draft framework says nothing about banning fishing. Limbaugh has taken an early discussion about the use of waterways and twisted it to make it sound like Obama is outlawing a popular pastime. Limbaugh is grossly distorting the truth.")

---

Quote:

---

There are "high administrative costs" when you donate to Haiti relief through the White House Web site. (Pants on Fire: "There's no evidence the White House is using any of these donations for administrative costs, and the charities aren't sharing donors' e-mail addresses with the White House. Limbaugh is making a ridiculously false claim that the Obama administration is capitalizing on a tragedy. That's enough to set the meter ablaze.")

---

Quote:

---

"President Obama . . . wants to mandate circumcision." (Pants on Fire: "no connection between Obama and the new guidance, which would be voluntary, not mandatory, anyway. In fact, the recommendations were under discussion long before Obama took office. This one is ridiculous enough to set the meter ablaze")

---

Quote:

---

"You can't read a speech by George Washington . . . without hearing him reference God, the Almighty." (False: "Washington wasn't nearly the devout Christian that Limbaugh suggested he was and he did not refer to God in all his speeches as the talk show host claimed.")

---

Quote:

---

A recent drop in the unemployment rate is questionable because it was calculated "over two days of the Thanksgiving week." (False: "this statistic uses data about what was happening two weeks before Thanksgiving -- and both measures are seasonally adjusted to eliminate factors such as holidays.") http://www.politifact.com/personalities/rush-limbaugh/statements/]

---