First, the triggered memory:
Austin, Texas, late 1980's.  I was having lunch at a Chinese restaurant in North Austin, off Anderson Lane. A late-20ish/early 30ish guy, in white-collar attire is lunching with a woman about the same age, possibly a co-worker, at an adjacent table.  The conversation is loud enough to drift my way from time to time.  They are talking about some social issue, and the guy says, "Well, here's what Rush has to say about it..."  That caught my ear because Rush Limbaugh was at that time, a relatively fresh entry into the Austin radio market.  A lot of us checked him out because he was so new.  And to be truthful about it, I at first found his brand of humor refreshing.  Here was someone poking fun at many of our liberal sacred cows in clever ways that I'd never heard before.  This was also after the '88 election and before '92, when Rush thought himself to be a player powerful enough to elect GHWBush to a second term.  His tone noticeably changed during and then after the '92 election, when he began swapping cleverness for rants that grew more pig-headed and vitriolic by the day.  Anyway, the main point of this Austin memory is that it signaled to me a major cultural shift away from the established opinion-makers and pundits, and also from the TV talking heads of the time.  And this was a young guy referencing Rush Limbaugh in Austin Texas, a very liberal, progressive city, despite what went on throughout the rest of the state.

OK, flash forward to this summer, 2008, to a large, Rocky Mountain city where a whole bunch of Democrats will be coming in just a few weeks.  This family-oriented restaurant is situated in a northern bedroom community, in the heart of a red enclave in an increasingly purple-to-blue metropolis. A lot of seniors eat here, along with a few families.  At an adjacent table to ours, a young man wearing young-professional work attire is holding forth in a family conversation amongst people old and young.  He says, "Well I was watching Jon Stewart the other night and he said...."  This was met with a bit of laughter and a female voice responding, "Oh, I love Jon Stewart."  Is this indicative of a cultural shift?  Lord, I hope so....