The Disembodied Voice from the Edge of Sanity
I remember when I was growing up in North Dakota, in my mid-teens, starting out in the radio business. I had never really heard of "talk radio", per se - it was a very different thing in 1980. We didn't hear much "mainstream" talk radio, other than Larry King on some ghosty AM station in the distance at night.
Beyond that, the only "talk radio" we'd hear was the occasional talk show on the occasional small, onely little station in the sticks - and it's odd, now that I mention it, that there was a time when AM radio often sounded that way; late at night when the signals would ghost and skip and intermingle, you'd envision some little shack at the end of some lonely, frozen prairie road, manned (back in the days when radio stations were manned, by law) by some lonely old husk at the end of a miserable, unfulfilling career (or some punk, like me, at the beginning of one), playing programs on vinyl records.
And on some of those little, lonely stations, late at night, you'd hear them; preachers with shrill, abrasive southern accents, preaching jeremiads against the "Jee-Yews" and the "Homo-SECKshulls" and the "Commanists", spotting conspiracy around every corner, painting a picture of a nasty, ugly, hateful world that the broadcaster and his audience shouldn't feel too bad about leaving someday.
I'd almost forgotten about that brand of radio - until Saturday night. I flipped past Air America.
The host, Mike Malloy, was...that voice.
The rage and hatred at the administration and at conservatives was so close to the surface, at time his voice dissolved into a strangled grunt in mid-sentence. Twice.
Which makes me wonder- is there a liberal talk host in the country that doesn't get time on Air America? If that's how far down they have to dig...
Posted by Mitch at
January 10, 2005 05:37 AM
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I got a cheapo shortwave for Christmas. That's almost all you can get from the US anyone -- incredibly insane and disturbed talk shows. Most of them are right-wing (but still make the NARN sound like Wellstone), but a few lefties crackpots show up too. Some of that has changed since Radio for Peace, the home of the loony left on SW, was forced to shut down awhile back.
Still, the only lefty talker not on Err America must be Alan Colmes. However, he has some class, so he wouldn't fit on there anyway.
Posted by: Jerry Leigh at January 10, 2005 06:29 AMMitch,
I concur completely with your take on Air Anti-America. I happened to be listening to Malloy on Sat. night and I've never heard such insane, raw, ranting, venomous hate.
I'm very thankful that most liberals are afraid of guns, 'cuz these guys would be truly dangerous.
BTW, where in ND are you from? I'm from up by Rugby, where my family has farmed since 1892. I escaped to the Twin Cities for school and ended up staying here.
Blog on!
Posted by: Kent Berdahl at January 10, 2005 10:52 AMI sometimes "radio surf" at night, just on the AM band. Sometimes I listen to AA, and it invariably goes negative and personal within two minutes, and all of it dripping with condescention.
The latest was on Social Security. No facts, no discussion of the proposals or the associated goals. No counter-proposals, not even an admission that SS is in trouble, just "why" the Republicans are out to destroy "your" America.
What else can I call it but "hate" speech?
Posted by: R-Five at January 10, 2005 10:44 PMTalk radio of any stripe is pretty much trash. Drudge included. I stopped listening to it because it really discusses nothing in the end. I used to listen to Rush and Joe Soucheray, faithfully because I wanted to hear what your side was thinking. The last time I listened to Souch was in 2002, and his inability to get the facts correct, furthered by the obfuscation of the listeners was extremely frustrating. Here is the issue:
I was working at a body shop, and the shop is affiliated with a mechanical shop. Body repair and mechanical repair sometimes intertwine. We would need to use diagnostic codes sometimes to determine what a particular problem is. A few manufacturers had decided that they would only allow their dealers to have the diagnostic codes, driving independent shops to their dealers for repair.
This is anti-competitive and hurts the consumer and insurance company by driving up the cost of body repair. It also takes away the consumers' choice of where to take their cars for service. The AASP-MN (an independent shop lobbying group) lobbied Wellstone to get involved. He did, and introduced a bill to force the mfr's to release their data for purchase by independents. Wellstone came to our shop to announce the bill, held a press release, the whole shebang.
Souch got ahold of the story, and opened a call in session. At first Joe and Garage Logic were all in favor of it, but then the idiots started calling in and changed Joe's mind. I tried to get into the show, telling the producer where I work and that I have better knowledge of it than any of the people calling in. We had the software engineers calling in, claiming that the mfrs. owned the source code for the cars' computers and that they had the right to release to whoever they wanted.
Here's what is wrong with that:
Diagnostic codes are not part of the source code for the cars' computers. They are trouble codes that tell the owner what is wrong with the car, what is failing, what isn't set right. The diagnostic codes are no more the ownership of manufacturers than the data that you type into the computer. The manufacturers publish the data for diagnostic computers just as they used to publish the data that you could find in any Chilton's - spark plug gaps, etc.
I didn't get in that day, because when I called I was on my way back to work from my lunch break, and I had to hang up while still on hold. It's just symptomatic. Talk radio doesn't have to get the facts right, the hosts just have to have an opinion and be able to articulate it. That's all it takes. Drudge, Limbaugh, Schultz, they are all the same to me...
Before talk radio got really into national syndication, and hosts were more local, they would move around the country and would change their political leanings depending on the needs of the market. They were leftist if that was how the ratings drove them, they were rightist if that was how the ratings drove them. Reusse claims that when Rush worked for the Royals, he was actually a liberal democrat, but when he got a show in Sacramento he decided that the route to syndication was to be conservative. "We don't know that." But I wouldn't be surprised.
BTW - Social Security is not in trouble. The trust fund is so solid that it could actually be used to pay down the interest on the federal debt and still be solid by the time my children retire.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich at January 13, 2005 07:04 AMTalk radio and Bush have it wrong.