You can never keep everyone happy.  And when you do talk radio – even as an amateur weekend warrior – it’s usually best not to try to.

On the NARN, we don’t get a lot of chances to interview people with whom we disagree.  Partly because we just don’t do a lot of guests; partly because a lot of liberals don’t bother returning interview request calls from conservative talkers, much less actually appear on the shows.  There’s good reason for that, of course; the fact is, talk radio can be a rough room to work. 

One of the things people miss – especially people whose primary interest is news or politics – is that talk radio is an entertainment medium first, an informational/news medium second.  And throwing plates – picking fights with guests, generating heat and eschewing light – can be mighty entertaining (when it’s not completely tiresome).  The masters of the talk radio attack interview genre – the late Morton Downey Jr, Bob Grant, Tom Leykis and dozens of others – have mastered pushing guests’ buttons as well as those of the audience in the same way that Michael Savage has conquered pushing them in monologue.  It pays the bills.

It’s not how I’m wired.

Part of it is that I got my start as an actual reporter, at one point.  Another part is that I actually have a lot more fun talking with people than throwing plates at them. 

And finally – most important of all – people give you much better material when they’re not on the defensive.

In the past few months, I’ve taken a certain amount of flak for a couple of interviews with Ed and I on the NARN Volume II show – last October’s go-around with the Strib’s Rochelle Olson, and the June 16 chat with former Strib/current Minnesota Monitor reporter Eric Black.   One commenter on another blog called the Black interview a “love fest”, apparently hoping that I’d carry out a Daniel Pearl-style beheading live on the air. 

And what’d be the point of that?  Everyone knows we disagree on a lot of things – do people need to see how very very much I disagree for it to matter?  And frankly, I think you get a lot more interesting material out of people by talking to them, and letting them respond; the Olson interview in particular, if you were listening, exposed some ghastly breakdowns in the way media handles news.  I’m not sure any of that would have come out if I’d have yelled at Ms. Olson, and she’d have hung up and walked away.

In this country, we face a dual challenge: disagree, sometimes vehemently, while still living together under the same governmental roof.   It’s a challenge at which most of the world fails really, really dismally.  And to me, it’s a lot more interesting when conversations are actually two-way things. 

Wanna hear people throwing plates at each other?  Fair enough.  A lot of talk shows will do that for you.  Or start your own, if you’d like. 

Go for it.