Air Amerikkka

XM radio came with the new Suburban, and perched one station to the right on the dial from the conservative talk radio station is Air Amerikkka, its liberal counterpart. I’m strangely attracted, making me wonder if I have sado-masochistic tendencies. So here are some observations on what I’ve heard so far, which is three separate hosts, one of which is Al Franken, another Randi Rhodes, and a third a woman I haven’t identified.

Originally I though that liberal talk radio would never survive because it cannot differentiate itself enough from mainstream news – who needs to hear guys on Air America put the same gloss on information that they’ll get from watching Dan Rather or reading the NYT. Conservative talk radio is immensely popular because unlike Air America it fills a real consumer need – a critical assessment of the stories and opinions pushed in more liberal press outlets that resonates with a significantly sized subset of the population. People can argue all they wish to about whether the mainstream press is biased (relative to the distribution of opinions held by the population), but the market success of conservative radio and the relative preponderance and popularity of conservative blogs is all the proof one should need.

That said, it is also undoubtedly true that people to the extreme left view the mainstream press as being biased to the right, and in comparison to the world view of a Nation reader (for example), it is. So the Nation reader would be attracted to a show that can be critical of the mainstream press and all of its critics on the right. But in the past the only people who read the Nation were those who wrote it. The question is whether or not there are enough such people now to make Air America successful. A show that positions itself more or less in line with the mainstream media is more or less redundant media. Air America has to be more on the fringe to be successful, and it has to hope that enough people have taken leave of their senses to the point where they can swallow conspiracy theories that have no factual support.

Alternatively, the network has to capitalize on the overwhelming need of even the more moderate factions of the political left to be told how morally superior they are to those on the right; such validation is not in great demand when they are in power, but it may be now. From my brief experience, it seems that there is a lot of both going on. So here are some observations:

1) People have told me that Al Franken is genuinely funny, and maybe that is so, but talking politics seems to strip him of his sense of humor. I’ve listened to at least 2 total hours of his show, and he’s just not that funny. It doesn’t even seem like he tries to be funny.

2) Neither Franken nor Rhodes seem to take many calls. Maybe it’s because we just all need to listen. But maybe it’s a good thing, because people might realize that the callers make more sense than the hosts. Franken goes off on one Schiavo related call saying that it would be better – good news in fact – if Schiavo were in a coma, because people come out of comas. He goes on to say that he’s spoken with injured soldiers who were put into medically induced comas, and that they come out of them, and this is the basis upon which he claims comas are good, because they are only temporary. So cheer up if you are reading this from a comatose state!

3) The left has learned not to spit on soldiers. Now they just condescend to them, treating them as hapless victims who thought they were just signing up to do fun obstacle courses. You never hear these guys talk about a soldier who isn’t maimed unless it’s Wesley Clark. Maybe that is because the soldiers who can walk just walk away from these guys – either that or journalists never approach soldiers because they are obvious targets.

4) Randi Rhodes goes off on how the Republicans don’t want to regulate any businesses, but they want to regulate people’s lives. And who can argue with that, given the Republican initiatives to eliminate or repeal the EPA, the SEC, the IRS, the FCC, the FTC, FERC, the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Reserve, the Sherman Antitrust Act, the FAA, the FDA and … well, you get the picture. If we had some regulation, we’d see people from Enron, WorldCom, Fannie Mae, etc. actually go to jail. Oh, wait a minute, that’s happening, isn’t it? But not before they cheated their shareholders and employees, which of course happened during Clinton’s watch.

5) Meanwhile, according to Ms. Rhodes in her incoherent rant, we want to tell people when they can live and die, when they can have babies and not. Isn’t it China that tells people when they can’t have babies? Can someone refill her prescription?

6) They need more villains. Twenty four hours of liberal talk radio hosts having epileptic seizures at the mere mention of Tom Delay gets old fast. Either that, or they need more powerful villains – one of 400 plus congresspersons is just not enough to fuel an entire entertainment genre. Can you imagine the conservative hosts talking about Henry Waxman 24/7? Frankly, we have a much better list of targets, with Al Sharpton, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson … the list goes on and on. I attribute this to a mainstream press that will string a shady conservative out to dry, but give any ethically challenged liberal every benefit of the doubt; because that is true, Republicans do a better job screening out candidates.

7) Liar liar liar liar. When Bush says anything, there is no benefit of the doubt accorded – he is a liar. Franken is big on this. In an interview with Barak Obama, they were talking about how Bush was “lying” when he recently was pointing out the fact that Social Security has generally been bad for blacks, who pay into it but die earlier. But there is plenty of evidence to support Bush’s claim. That offered by Franken to call him a liar – well, there was none.

People talk about the hate speech of conservative radio – usually those who don’t listen to any of it. They assume Rush, for example, is just telling people to commit hate crimes. I listened to Rush extensively in the nineties, and his show is relentlessly optimistic about America. Sure, he had plenty of complaints about the Clinton governance, but he seemed to always keep it in his head that, even when the other party is in office (stealing the furniture, as it were), it’s still better to live in America than anywhere else. I get the sense that this is what is lacking, especially with Rhodes, and to a lesser extent with Franken. These people actually believe their own rhetoric – they think they live in a police state. I don’t know that such relentless negativity can sustain a large enough audience, and I hope it can’t. Things could change, and probably would if a Dem were elected – then, all of a sudden, it would be morning in America again.