 The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you. You sad pathetic humps. Right-wing cable news and conservative talk radio attract older Americans like graying moths to an angry flame. But why would someone who is either a political or a Democrat in their younger days become addicted to conservative talk shows in their twilight years? Joining us is the director of brainwashing. The brainwashing of my dad, director Jen Sanko. Hello Jen Sanko. Hi. Nice to be here. I love your documentary. Oh, thank you so much. We had a little viewing party here last Saturday and it was disturbing, informative. Tell me about your father. He was a World War II veteran, a Kennedy Democrat. And as he grew older in your documentary, which is really the history of the conservative movement through the prism of your father, Kennedy Democrat became a neo-conservative of a Rush Limbaugh fanatic. Yeah, radicalized. A radicalized. Yeah. Tell me about your dad. Well, when I was younger, I kind of thought of my parents almost as like the first hippies even though that wasn't out yet, just because they were so open and so open-minded. And my dad would talk to somebody on the street in a dark alley and you know, whatever like, come on, we got to go. You know, he was just very open. Well, you described coming to New York City and seeing an African-American homeless person and your dad not only gave him money, he called him sir. Yeah. And that really made an impression on me as the kind of person he was. So it was really shocking when he started saying things that were different to that. There's an epidemic now in this country of families being broken apart, not because of intermarriage, not because of religion or race, but because of politics. We see it, everybody sees it at Thanksgiving. Everybody has a crazy uncle at their Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's gotten to the point where I can't forgive certain people because of their politics. One of my sons has a godfather who I won't talk to because he voted for George W. Bush in 2004. I'm just as guilty of this as anybody else. You cover this. That's what I love about this film is you talk about families that have been split apart by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's really quite disturbing. I didn't know that at first when I started this movie, I didn't know how widespread it was. I knew that it was happening to my dad. And once in a while, somebody would say to me, oh, yeah, that happened to me too. But when I had a Kickstarter campaign and we had 947 backers, people started coming out from all over the place just writing to me. It became like the inlanders of this happened to my mom. This happened to my sister. This happened to my dad. And it wasn't just always older people. That's what I found. At first, in the beginning, it was, but it's so widespread, it's almost like an insidious disease that creeps out through your TV set or radio that takes over. And it's just people can't talk about anything. They can't even talk about the weather without global warming. All that stuff is phony baloney. Every topic, it's very hard to find anything to talk about. Why is it called the brainwashing of my dad? That's a really good question. Years ago, that title came to me and I just never changed it. I just liked the title of it. And I said dad instead of father, because if I said the brainwashing of my father, it would sound like it was going to be a scientific movie about brainwashing and how I was going to try and prove it. So at first it was actually tongue-in-cheek, and because I'm an artist, I wanted to see it be a little bit light-hearted and kind of kitschy like throwback to the Red Scare movies and sci-fi and kind of make it appeal to younger people. So the brainwashing of my dad, and I did get a lot of flack. A lot of people asked me to change the title. They were all actually liberals, like, oh, people aren't going to take it seriously. I don't care. This is what it feels like to so many people. So after even talking to all these people, that's what appealed to them was the title. So I became more convinced than ever. Well, I think that the other title, Manufacturing Consent, was already taken. The Noam Chomsky documentary. Right. And it had nothing to do with my dad. He didn't realize that he was consenting to really the corporate status quo. And I want to talk about that. He's been, I think a lot of these people who watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh don't realize that they're being trained or brainwashed to be angry and then motivated into keeping things the way they are. They think they're being revolutionary, but they're really servicing the corporate overlords. And I'm not being overly dramatic and calling them our corporate overlords. So your dad served in World War II? Which theater? The German theater or the Japanese theater? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Well, I mean, you know, they call it the theater. Oh, they do? Yeah. Oh, I do know that. You know, they put on a show. My dad put on a show for the Japanese. Oh, I guess it was the German one. The German theater. But he was all over Europe. Yeah. Yeah. And did he see horrible things during World War II? Well, what happened is he had a rifle and shortly after that they said, oh, our medics just got shot. So here's the bag. This is how you do it. And he became a medic. You know, he unfortunately did see like really horrible things. Were the seeds of conservatism, or I'm going to say fascism, because I think if you listen to Rush Limbaugh and you buy the message that Fox News is giving, it's fascism. Were the seeds of fascism already within your dad at the time when he went off to World War II to fight fascism? Did he come from a family of fascists? No, I don't believe so. They were alt-democrats and they were FDR Democrats. Just nearly everybody was a Democrat, you know, unless you were uber-rich or thought you were going to be uber-rich or didn't understand that you should be uber-rich if you're, you know, the way Republicans became. Now, by the way, uber-rich. Yeah. You don't mean like you've been convinced to use your own car and that you're an independent contractor who's getting ripped off by Travis Kalman. No, I mean like the 1%, you know, as Tom Harmon called it, the economic royalists, you know, the elite, you know, the corporate state. So after World War II, we had Harry Truman and your father was an FDR, a liberal. He voted for Kennedy. But right after World War II, there was in America the Taft-Hartley law pass that was kind of anti-union. There was a bit of a backlash to the New Deal and McCarthyism. Eisenhower came in. Eisenhower was a Republican. Eisenhower was a Republican. He voted for Eisenhower. He's called me. Right. Okay, so Eisenhower was a Republican who said, we're never going to get rid of the New Deal. It would be insane to get rid of the New Deal. He built our highways. They were taxing us at 90%. What was happening to your father during the 50s? There was a conservative strain emerging during the 50s. William F. Buckley began publishing the national review. There was the John Birch Society came into being during the 50s. What was happening to your dad? Because you parallel this in the movie. The two tracks. The track of the conservative party, the conservative ideology and your dad. So where was your dad? He did vote for Eisenhower. So that is more conservative than Adley Stevenson. By today's standards though, Eisenhower would be a far left Democrat. Yes, but Adley Stevenson by today's standards would be to the left of Bernie Sanders. So. Perhaps. In the 50s, looking back, Eisenhower was a liberal, so was Richard Nixon. But that only just speaks volumes to how conservative the conservative has gotten. But your father was more conservative by the 50s. If he voted for Ike, he was a conservative. Yeah, but then he voted for Kennedy and he was registered a Democrat. And my mom was a Democrat. And that's kind of how they thought. But he went to, he got his degree in engineering, his master's, because of the. In engineering. Yeah. Where? At Newark. Newark School of Engineering because he was a vet. And he thought that was just wonderful that he was able, the government paid for him to go to school. And then he was kind of starting a family with my mom. But I think the culture just started changing a little bit then. I mean, if you think of movies back then. And I think that they both thought, yeah, people deserve a second chance in life. Not everybody that commits a crime is awful or they just were open minded. And so I didn't see seeds of fascism in them unless it was me taking the car. So in the 50s we have the beginnings of the John Birch Society. What was the John Birch Society? What is the John Birch Society? Their Connor has an incredible book about the Birch Society and how she grew up in the birds. I didn't know anything about them. And I'm not sure I can do it justice explaining it, but they were very, very radical right. I think they attached themselves to the Republicans, but I don't think most Republicans with them at the time. Basically, they were so afraid of communism that they felt that communism wasn't just over there in Russia or China that it was here. And they even accused Eisenhower of being a communist. And so they were perceived kind of as nutty because Ike was adored by everybody, Democrats and Republicans alike. And they had attached themselves to Goldwater, which is why there was that landslide where Johnson won and beat Goldwater. Right. And so by 64, I believe MF Buckley's National Review, Movement Conservatism had started. Buckley was giving intellectual cover to what I consider stupidity. He used big words to gloss over a pretty ignorant ideology of small government and then being opposed to the Civil Rights Acts of 64 and 65. Was your dad by 64 and 65 when, by then, I believe Buckley had disassociated himself from the John Birch Society, which was smart, was also racist organization. Where was your dad in 64 and 65 in terms of the Civil Rights Movement? No, he was all for it. Okay. I mean, both my parents believed in the Civil Rights Movement, like there was just no question. Right. I mean, we never heard any derogatory remarks, you know, about black people, you know, African-Americans. And he was still a bit of a hippie, right? Well, I mean, you know, he wouldn't think of himself that way. He didn't have long hair. It's just that I remember when the hippie movement started, I remember thinking, huh, my parents are already kind of like that in a way. I mean, you know, I wasn't free love or anything like that. It just was like this open-mindedness. I don't know how else to explain it, but, you know. So you're not seeing any signs of any signs of conservatism? No. Right. Okay. So 64, Johnson gets reelected. We have half a million troops in Vietnam. By 68, the country's divided. The Democratic Party's divided. It's having a crack up similar to what's going on in the Republican Party. Some people want to, some Democrats want to stay in Vietnam. Others want to get out. Who's your dad in 68? I think kind of oblivious. I mean, they listen to Walter Cronkite every night, so they just kind of follow the news neutrally. I don't think he had any really great opinions at that point. I mean, you know, we'd say, you know, now my brother, older brother would be demonstrating. Just didn't. Well, was your father against the war? I mean, was he? Did he go to protest? I mean, I know my dad took me to peace demonstrations because he wanted me to get beaten up by construction workers. No, my dad, they were really, he wasn't so political as to even think about it. I think he was struggling through trying to be an engineer and raising his family at that time. And this is what your movie's about. This conversation is germane to your movie because it gets down to where he was getting his information from and his not so gradual evolution into right wing fanaticism. What was going on when Nixon got elected in 68? You had these radicals. You had Ralph Nader. You had all these anti-corporate kids and young people who didn't trust capitalism. The Chamber of Commerce felt they were under threat. So what did they do? Tell me about the Powell memo. It's very interesting. In 1971, Lewis Powell was a corporate lawyer. I think he was the head of CEO, don't quote me on that, on the board at least of 11 corporations. He was concerned about the image in a way that business had at that time. And a lot of the business community was concerned at the time too. Specifically about Ralph Nader who's on this radio station. Ralph Nader pissed off a lot of people. Yes, still does. But I remember my parents were really for him. They just loved, everybody loved Ralph Nader. So Lewis Powell wrote this memo advising conservatives to do what? Well it was called the attack of the American free enterprise system. And he sent it to the Chamber of Commerce and different corporate activists. And it was basically a call to arms for corporations to defend its interest against any kind of criticism of capitalism. And to sort of promote capitalism and to sort of promote free market ideology. And to do that through college campuses, the courts, you know, they felt like it was being under attack even from the pulpit. So the idea about think tanks came out of that, I mean they all. The American heritage think tank didn't exist until the Powell memo. In 19, a year later, Powell memo, 71 Heritage Foundation, 72. And then after that it exploded. They would set up chairs at universities, so it was an all out attack to get free market tier thought pro corporate ideology into schools and into the mainstream media. You'd have think tanks that would write op-ed pages, pieces for the op-ed page. They would give out talking points to right wing politicians. It was all well funded, very well funded because the business people were like all for it. So that's why these think tanks just exploded. Right. And how was Powell rewarded for this matter? Well, two months later he was appointed to the Supreme Court by Nixon. Right. And we're leading up to, because this is really important to, our listeners, some of them already know this, but it's good to remind them how we got to this ideological chasm in the 21st century where there are alternative truths. And we've gone from moral relativism to factual relativism where everybody now has their own set of facts, which brings us to Roger Ailes, who helped get Richard Nixon elected president in 1968. He's now the face of Fox News. The heart and the soul. The heart and the soul. Who is Roger Ailes? What influence did he have? Did he write a memo before the Powell memo? Well, Roger Ailes was just really interesting. I mean, he was like a television genius, you know, at the age of 27, he was producing shows. He was producing the Mike Douglas show. And he met Richard Nixon. And he met Richard Nixon, and he saw how crappy he did when he was debating JFK, you know, his sweaty upper lip, you know, shifty-eyed, you know, which is really why they said Kennedy won. I mean, a lot of people who heard it on the radio apparently thought Nixon won, but you know, when you're looking at Kennedy, it was smooth and handsome and well and composed and not nervous. You know, it was like hands down, oh, this guy, you know, so he, you know, kind of took Nixon aside and said, and this is all in Gabriel Sherman's book, by the way, which is great. It's fascinating. You know, hey, you're going to, you know, get yourself together for TV here, you know. And Nixon didn't believe him like, oh, TV, you know, scoffed. But you know, he taught him how to speak in sound bites, taught him like the proper use of makeup, you know, how to appeal to the little people, you know, how to speak simply. And so he helped Nixon become... Master the medium. Master the media. Yeah. Right. So you have the pal memo, you have Roger Ailes under the Nixon administration, then you have... Well, then there's the memo, when Roger Ailes was more entrenched in the White House, they were seeing, like, how the media was portraying the Vietnam War and portraying Nixon. And they were like, uh-oh. So there's this memo called How to Get the GOP on TV News. So you read through this memo and Roger Ailes' handwriting is all over it, like, 59% of people get their news from television. People are lazy. They want the thinking done for them. You know, we can get pro-GOP news. We have to create our own station. This was, if you read by it, the blueprint for Fox News. I'm sure he didn't think Fox News back then, but they did call it fair and balanced. Right. Right. So the Nixon administration starts throwing dirt in the umpire's eyes. They start saying the New York Times is biased, the Washington Post is biased. And it's really the first time that Americans were asked to question the ideology of mainstream media, that they question the objectivity of trusted sources of news. But that actually started even earlier, like, after Goldwater lost to Johnson, there was accuracy, no, no, no, AIM, accuracy in media. They said, you know what? We have to start chanting the media as biased and media as liberal. We have to strive for balance. So it started before then, you know, hence, what's his face, Buckley. And I can't remember the other guy's name, but anyway, he started to read, yeah, read. But they were crackpots and fringe. Yeah, but nevertheless, they started that. They were the seeds of that. The seeds of it. But it really came to fruition under really Sparrow Agnew, the vice president who went out and attacked. We almost used his quote in the movie. Yeah, the nattering Nabobs of Negativism and the afeat intellectual snobs on the east coast, which is all penned by William Sapphire, who became a columnist for the New York Times. No journalism background. He was a speechwriter, a pure ideologue who then became a columnist. So your dad, 72, McGovern, did he vote for McGovern? He did vote for McGovern. Yeah. Wow. Both my parents. He's immune to the conservative indoctrination still, right? Yeah. That's pretty big that he voted. I'm pretty sure of that, like 99 percent sure. I'll double check with my mom, but I think they were both on the same page. Okay, so now Carter and now Reagan comes into office and they get rid of the fairness doctrine. What is the fairness doctrine? How did that set the stage for Rush Limbaugh? The fairness doctrine, I think, started back in 49. It was set up basically because the notion was that the airwaves should belong to the public and the people. Well, they do belong to the public, not should they do. It should serve the public who it belongs to. And that basically they were thinking local also at that time. So let's say you hear an issue being discussed, but you don't hear another side to that issue and you could call your local radio station and say, hey, why don't you get this guy on because I think he could contribute to the notion of the other. And then also, the thing about local radio then was if you had a fire in your town, the local station could find out about it and talk about it. Anyway, but that's the telecommunications act, sorry. So about the fairness doctrine. So Reagan got rid of the fairness doctrine and so it set the stage for somebody like Rush Limbaugh. A year later. Because he could spew all this right-wing claptrap and the local station wasn't obligated to bring somebody in to counter his ideology. Yeah, basically, yeah. And yeah, it was a year later, 1987, Reagan squashed the fairness doctrine, 1988, Rush Limbaugh goes national. And so what happened with the, because of getting rid of the fairness doctrine, AM radio became a hotbed for conservatism. There are really very few liberal voices on the radio, because why? Well, for one thing, they're not funded, like Rush Limbaugh gets. Yes, that was fascinating in the movie. Go ahead, tell me about that. I mean, you know, they get their money from think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation paid him something like, I forget exactly, two million a year. And in the movie, they say it's in the budget. It's in the budget, yeah. So he doesn't have to have advertisers, I mean, advertisers are dropping them now like hotcakes because of Stop Rush and Flush Rush. But you know, and these stations are, the program's already done, they're a lot cheaper. Like if you have another person who is a liberal locally, it's just cheaper for them to buy, you know, the prepackaged right wing. But 97% of talk radio is quote unquote conservative. I don't consider it conservative. OK, that's really important and aggravating. 97% of all talk radio is conservative. Now, during our screening party of The Brainwashing of My Dad, there was a young Harvard Law School student who said it's the free market of ideas. If there was a marketplace for liberal talk radio, we would have it. Obviously, people who listen to talk radio only want to hear conservative. But it's not the free market. Why isn't it the free market? Because it's not being propped up by think tanks and by this whole structure behind it. I mean, you know, this goes back to the Lewis Powell memo. You know, everything is holding it up. So it may appear to be the free market, but it's not. But we're being told that there's this insatiable thirst to hear Michael Savage and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and that their ratings are through the roof. Well, there was an insatiable thirst for Stephanie Miller and Randy Rhodes. And yeah, you know, it's it's like whoever you become close to or bond with you want to hear. You know, people are listening to him every day. He's their buddy. Right. But there's no question that he's great at what he does. Absolutely. Absolutely. Jen Senko is the director of the brainwashing of my dad. I cannot stress the importance of this movie and it might save your family. So go see it nationwide or download it on Amazon and iTunes. The brainwashing of my dad dot com. Plus, we have a Facebook page, Twitter's brainwashing dad. And don't fight. Ask questions. Read and support independent media. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you. You sad pathetic comps.