Why are major media outlets ignoring bestselling writer Mark R.
Levin?
By KYLE SMITH
Last Updated: 11:32 AM, September 1, 2013
To read the book reviews in The New York Times, the Los Angeles
Times, The Washington Post or The Boston Globe, you might be unaware of the
existence of the work of Mark Levin.
Unless you skip to the page with the bestseller lists.
Levin’s new book “The Liberty Amendments: Restoring
the American Republic,” last week hit No. 1 on all three New York Times bestseller
lists for which it qualified — hardcover nonfiction, e-book nonfiction and the
combination of the two. Yet the paper, like the others mentioned and their
counterparts on the magazine rack, continues to ignore Levin, whose book
signing at Book Revue in Huntington, Long Island led to huge lines on Aug. 17.
So, who is this man of mystery considered unfit for mention
despite selling millions of books?
Levin is one of the most successful nonfiction writers working and
the host of a popular Tea Party-friendly conservative talk radio program that
airs nationwide, weekdays at 6 p.m. on WABC here in New York. It claims 5
million listeners.
Levin is a polemicist. On the radio show, he comes across as Rush Limbaugh
with a law degree. He calls for the impeachment of “Barack Milhous Nobama,”
denouncing “French Republicans” (they give up too easily, and possibly eat
fancy cheeses) and declares, in response to a threat to shut him down that, he
said, came from a Republican congressman he wouldn’t identify, “I’m not going
to put up with fascism on my watch.”
In a typical broadcast, he’ll start with the mellow tone of voice
of a soporific late-night jazz deejay, then build into a full-on shout about,
say, the perfidy of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for accepting an expansion
of Medicaid in his state: “Screw Chris Christie!” he screamed last March.
Actually, there’s a bipartisan aspect to ”The Mark Levin Show.” If
you like the sound of Republicans being provided with new bodily apertures
without anesthesia, you can expect plenty to delight you.
Levin once said, “Who the hell died and made Karl Rove queen for
the day?” Of John Boehner, “Get the hell off the stage, Boehner, you’re a
screwup!” Of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, co-hosted by Republican Joe
Scarborough, he said, “This is a program that has as its mission the
destruction of conservatism.” He called John McCain “John McLame,” slammed Ann
Coulter for being too nice to Mitt Romney and thwocked Glenn Beck for “acting
like a clown” and “dividing us.”
His books carry a different tone: Here Levin is a bit more the
professor than the bomb-thrower.
Levin’s new one, which is informed by Thomas Jefferson, James
Madison and the Federalist papers — a favorite phrase, “soft tyranny,” comes
straight from Alexis de Tocqueville — isn’t just a collection of radio-ready
zingers.
It’s thoroughly reasoned and ably backed up with quotations such
as this one (from Jefferson): “It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we
were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and is by
the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.”
“The Liberty Amendments” are 11 theoretical new constitutional
amendments designed to re-emphasize a healthy suspicion of centralized
authority. Levin suggests term limits of 12 years for senators and members of
Congress, a balanced-budget amendment, term limits for Supreme Court justices,
a voter-ID amendment and a sunset provision for federal agencies to
automatically expire after three years unless renewed.
Some of his ideas might command bipartisan support (now might be a
particularly good time to renew the term-limits fight, with Congress polling at
about the same approval rating as Lyme disease), but given that two-thirds --
of Congress and three-quarters of states would have to approve any
constitutional updates, most of the Levin amendments stand almost no chance of
being passed. Especially the wittiest one: moving tax day to the day before
Election Day.
That doesn’t mean the proposals are unworthy of discussion.
The likes of the Times may prefer to ignore Levin as a fringe
figure, but that isn’t likely if he’s at the top of the bestseller list. His
liberal equivalent, Michael Moore, enjoys saturation coverage in every paper
and magazine every time he has a new product to promote.
Levin is speaking for millions when he says that DC is guilty of
overreach, of stretching the Constitution’s boundaries until it becomes
meaningless, and of sending us the bill.
Levin taps into the disgust with a system that isn’t able to pass
budgets on time, consistently spends far more than it takes in and is beholden
to lobbyists gaming the system who Obama falsely said would be unwelcome in his
administration.
It isn’t just tinfoil-hat birthers who mistrust ObamaCare, which
recently hit a disapproval rating of 54% and was seemingly designed to embody
the Levin view of the government as capricious, unfair and whiplashed by
unintended (but predictable) consequences such as companies cutting back
workers to 29-hour weeks.
Levin reader-listeners feel left out of the national debate, and
mostly the national media has responded by . . . trying to pretend he doesn’t
exist.
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