corrente

Tim Rutton of the LA Times writes:

An unnamed "senior advisor" to Schwarzenegger's campaign conceded to the New York Times on Tuesday that "Arnold's" reliance on friendly talk show hosts has alienated many women.

That doesn't surprise media scholar Martin Kaplan, who directs the Norman Lear Center at USC's Annenberg School of Communications. He suggests that "the anthropology of talk radio explains its predominately male audience. After all, when you listen to one of these shows, it's all about screaming and chest thumping — sort of like what you see in those studies of the great apes. Think of the host as the silverback: He screams and thumps his chest, and the listeners call in to emulate him.

"That's not a mating call," Kaplan says wryly, "it's a macho dominance game."

The Rush mating call... Eeeeew... Let's just leave things as they are, OK?