Oh, and this...

"Maybe that talk show mentality was with us before talk shows, but it sure seems to me that talk shows were where the new gladiatorial games first started gaining popularity"

You may be right but from my perspective it started with the fact that the left had a wonderful, powerful, built-in one-two-three punch that the right seemed to have no answer for.

Punch number one -- the national newscast possessed the mantle of objectivity while embracing a left-leaning stand.

Punch number two -- the left totally dominated academia, and in such a manner that trained a generation that there was only one dogma -- the left. And it became highly unlikely that the right could themselves appear "scholarly" in their positions as all "studies" pouring out of academia proved what academia already believed to be true -- the unassailable "rightness" of the left (see thread about scholarship).

Punch number three -- and to my mind perhaps simultaneously the least appreciated but the most effective -- the left has a total stranglehold on the entertainment industry. I think this wore on the psyche of the right more than either of the other two punches because, though the left's presentation from this front was the least logical, it was the most visceral. It told the right that they were STUPID, moronic sheepfucking rednecks who sit on their asses in their easy chairs when they weren't molesting their children. Not to mention the right dressed unhip, and had no sense of humor. Neither were we loving.

Well, I wish we could have risen above it in an homorable manner, but when push came to shove, the bloody battered right rose from the matt in the form of talk radio -- and it combined it's own one-two-three punch in one rabid, desparate......but very hurt attempt to be significant again.

It's first punch was finally not giving a damn about whether being humorous would compromise credibility. The left always got away with this because their humor wing was handled by the entertainment punch while the news media carried the credibility water.

Their second punch was in finding an alternative to accepted new media to gain credibility. This came in the form of the internet in which the standard news sources were daily scooped and their point of view was being unmasked by a news source that second by second could show an interested readership what news was being spiked, as well as a glaringly opposite perspective on events -- and they were covered more completely. Now the left has caught up and that "source" has become a burden for both sides as each and every kookburger conspiracy theory gained unassailible sources for every plot now threating to take over the (world/government/mudcat/you-name-it).

The third punch is in a self-collapsing academia. From elementary all the way up, the religion of how education is to be done and what is to be believed is crumbling -- whether talking about how incredibly well homeschoolers have done (despite all dire predictions otherwise) or how market forces drove simple, pragmatic education techniques back into schools out of necessity (like phonetic reading) or how technical schools are supplanting colleges in practical job training, and helping drastically change the face of the college campus such that women now significantly outnumber men.

Unfortunately, it is the first -- the unholy marriage of entertainment with news that has had the greatest ill effect on civil discourse.