The project grew out of my unusual passion for consuming huge amounts of right-wing media. I was raised in a conservative Texas family, where road trips meant listening to Rush Limbaugh’s talk radio show and Ayn Rand audiobooks. I cried over Ronald Reagan’s funeral, and pored over a Bill O’Reilly book for teenagers for advice on how to handle dilemmas like smoking and premarital sex. But even after I left the party behind, I nursed a perverse appetite for Republican media personalities and the ideological struggles of the American right. For years, I spent my time at local news jobs slacking
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