In Wednesday’s Daily News, writer David Hinckley did a short piece about the long-overdue collapse of the Air America talk radio network. For a little less than three years, Air America had been the nation’s largest wholesale supplier of vitriolic hate-speech for all ranges on the ideological spectrum: not only the Extreme Left, but also the Ultra-Extreme Left, and even the hard-to-please Mega-Ultra-Extreme Left.
Hinckley’s article dealt mostly with the current situation of the bottom-of-the-barrel radio hosts whom the station currently employs, such as Rachel Maddow, who is an NPR leftover, and Randi Rhodes, who has been as successful as anyone on ‘progressive’ talk radio in history. What does that mean? It means that her audience is about one-tenth of the lousiest nationally-sydicated conservative talker on any given day.
This week, the feeble network is being purchased in bankruptcy court for the unimpressive sum of 4.25 million dollars. Even though it’s all over but the funeral service, Air America will continue to have some function as a kind of left-wing Old Faithful: a perpetual fountain of venom for that new breed of communist who just isn’t astute or patient enough for NPR. I want my Bush-is-Hitler diatribe NOW, not after having to sit through twenty minutes of intellectual debate, dammit! I don’t have a problem with that. Actually, until we taxpayers come to our senses and demand that all funding for PBS and NPR be cut off completely, I’m glad to hear a differing viewpoint put forth by a privately-funded business that I know I’m not paying for. As an added bonus, we can all take delight in the fact that George Soros has lost millions of his stolen American dollars, throwing bad money after bad, as he desperately tried to keep this wreckage afloat. We’ll deal with all the fiscal and managerial bungling in a later blog. Right now, I want to critique Hinckley’s analysis of the current state of left-wing talk radio, particularly as he cites some input from a fellow who should, ostensibly, know something about talk radio, Talkers magazine’s Michael Harrison.
If anyone has tuned into AM radio at least one time in the last twenty years, then that individual should have a major problem with this statement from Harrison:
“There were liberals on the radio before....And there’s other progressive talk now: Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller. They will continue regardless of Air America, which is really just a couple of good shows and a brand name.”
Harrison is right about one thing. There were plenty of liberal talkers on the radio before, but that was because of one of the most flagrantly unconstitutional fiats this country had ever seen: the Fairness Doctrine. However, even after it was repealed, yes--it is true, there were a substantial number of libs on the airwaves during the Rush era in big time slots and with national audiences. Lynn Samuels, Joy Behar, Jay Diamond, Richard Bey...hell, Lionel was the morning drive guy--the most important slot on radio--on WABC for years.
Well, what happened? In the month of September in the year 2001, the world was changed by a genocide which occurred on American soil, thus rendering anti-intellectual political viewpoints untenable. The ivory-tower utopianism of the lefties no longer held a sustainable position in the media, especially radio, which is a medium of cold facts, logic, and reason. Television, and film, on the other hand, can be manipulated to induce a certain pre-programmed viewer reaction through the use of sensationalized visual images. If you’ve ever seen a Michael Moore ‘documentary’, then you know what I’m talking about. I agree completely with Michael Medved, the film and cultural critic (who may have been quoting Bernie Goldberg when he said this; I’m not sure who said it first), who said that radio is, by nature, rational and must use intellectual arguments to make points, and therefore tends to lean to the right, while TV is sensational and relies on imagery, not logic, to produce an emotional reaction and thus tends to lean toward the left. That truism makes this next statement of Harrison’s so perplexing:
“Most talk radio is not political....You have sports talk, black talk, car talk, NPR. Conservative talk is very successful, but it’s not the majority of talk radio. It’s a niche. That’s what liberal talk can be.”
Black talk is not political? NPR is not political?!? Are you kidding me? And, Conservative talk is not the majority of talk radio? A NICHE?!? These are not the words of a person who knows the first thing about radio. These sound like Air America talking points. And that is why they are being read their Last Rites on their deathbed as they sign up some character named Thom Hartmann to donate yet another organ to their lost cause. More on him later.
In the past six years, no liberal radio talk show has been remotely successful on any level. No one ever will be. It has nothing to do with the talent or charisma of any of the lib talkers; the simple fact is that the average American farmer or laborer is more intelligent and knows more about history, economics, politics, and world affairs than the smartest voice on Air America or NPR. Until George Soros and his ilk come to terms with that undeniable fact, the Rushies, who have crushed the lefties since the eighties (and even before that), will continue to steamroll the libs for the next thirty years and beyond.
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