Opinions on ultra left wing radio aka Air America

Cafe Society
1

I want to know ONLY if you listened, and your frank opinon on it.

I was initially curiuos about it and it’s chances of making it, also somewhat suspicious of it being actually funded by political org. I listened on and off for the last 3 days, I personally find it hilarious. Not only are these people 99% wrong (I have to admit they get the time correct every so often or else they would be 100% wrong :wink: , but they believe themselves. Sometime I laugh so hard I almost can’t breath (really).

Again all my humble O

Would like your humble O, and don’t pull any punches, but this is opinion, so lets not get into any examples.

2

I’m curious if you could be more specific about what it is you believe they’ve been wrong about. I find that 99.9% of the time, they are dead on accurate.

3

Oops…I just realized you said you did not want to get into any examples. In any case, I find it refreshing to listen to something resembling the truth.

4

I find most of their shows entertaining. Of course it’s passive entertainment, not something that makes me really think, but it’s pleasent distraction. I also think a biased radio station like this is useful and necessary to balance the left-wing talk shows and TV network (i.e. Fox News).

Actually it’s not all fluff, I did hear a good thought-provoking debate about abortion on one of the shows. I think it was on the Laura Flanders Show.

5

Political debate is a lost cause anyway so don’t look to Air America radio for anything other than cheap entertainment, same as Rush.

6

Rightie (but not fundie!) speaking…

I had the opportunity to listen to it non-stop while on a 2-day business trip because of my rental car having XM radio (Air America isn’t here in Knoxville).

Al Franken seemed to spend too much time on trivial, non-political issues. He wasn’t as rabid as the titles of his books might suggest, but part of that might have been his NPR-esque radio voice: for a news show, that’s OK, but for a 3-hour opinion show, it doesn’t really engage. The co-host, Katherine Lanpher, was too silent too long… she might want to listen to Andrew Siciliano of the Tony Bruno Extravaganza to see how much a cohost can bring to the show. Right now she’s too in awe of Mr. Franken to properly do her job.

Randi Rhodes looks like a nice person, but her credulity level is amazingly high… I was wanting to call her up, not on any political subject, but just to get her opinion on subjects like the JFK shooting, the Bermuda Triangle, and What Really Happened to Art Bell? Very obsessed with the minutae of who met whom where and when, complete with unfinished (you can fill it in!) conclusions and long drawn out pauses.

So What Else is News was pretty good… its never a bad thing to get factual information with an obvious spin to it, as long as you are aware of the spin (of course, presentations that agree with me are unbiased. FYI.)

Never got to listen to The Majority Report, which is a shame 'cause I like Janeane Garofalo… but not enough to sit in my car at 10:00 at night for.

7

(Shouldn’t this be in Cafe Society?)

I’ve listened primarily to Randi Rhodes on my commute home, and while she’s acidic as heck, I also find that she’s dead-on about a lot of stuff – she makes a damn effort to verify the stuff she tosses out, so it’s not as much as “loonie leftie tin-foil hat” material as “stuff your corporate media sources aren’t telling you.”

I also listen to a bit of The O’Franken Factor and Morning Sedition. Franken’s pretty good, though his lack of radio experience shows, and there were times where he was caught flat-footed to a guest’s counterpoint when I think he could have made a more convincing rebuttal. Morning Sedition is just a breezy mix of stuff political and otherwise, and it’s nice to hear a bunch of folks chat about ordinary matters from time to time.
As for the OP, if you think Air America is “ultra left-wing radio,” you must be wayyyyyyyyyy to the right – AAR is relatively tame compared to some of the really way-out-left ideas out there. And AAR gets major credits in my book for actively encouraging callers and guests who disagree with their views, unlike some other talk rdio personalities I can name…

8

Been listening for the last couple of weeks… A total breath of fresh air from the usual right wing garbage on A.M.

9

It’s just as pointless and one-sided as the far-right radio shows.

If you take far-right and far-left and mix them, you don’t get impartial. You just get a double load of crap.

10

Moving this to Cafe Society.

11

So, liberals think Thin Air America is spot-on accurate. Conservatives think Hannity and O’Reilly are spot-on. What’s the point? Me calling a liberal wrong is no more valid than a liberal calling me wrong. If you agree with the points the host is making, they are by definition correct.

Oh, and I did get a chance to hear Franken (not O’Franken, the phony). I nearly broke a rib laughing so hard.

12

True, but a load of crap on only one side would flip over a boat. A balanced load of crap would be more stable.

13

I fucking love it.

14

The point (near as I can make it) is team-building. Just like Limbaugh and such the point is to entertain, promote the issues within the existing client-base, and raise the level of political interest among the converted.

The long-term goal would be to increase liberal voter awareness and turnout on election day, I’d guess.

15

Ultra-left wing? Sorry, but I haven’t heard “All hail the 40th anniversary of the Third Revolutionary People’s Internationalist Communist Committee” or anything like that.

If you want something left of Air America, there’s Radio Pacifica. Some talk shows on urban radio stations, where Cracker Feo Honky Whitey Man is to blame for all that’s wrong in the world, have a radical leftist bent.

16

I’m with Moody Bastard – I fucking love it too!

Most of all, I love that it offers viewpoints that are not being heard on commercial radio elsewhere.

I also love that it has a good variety of talent styles. There’s something for every (lefty) taste: from the smart, deceptively mild, dry and sometimes goofy Al Franken to the impassioned and articulate firebrand Randi Rhodes; from the fairly lighthearted but a tad stiff Marty Kaplan to the feisty, funny, blissfully angry tagteam of Majority Report’s Janeane Garafolo and Sam Seder to the NPR-esque seriousness of Laura Flanders.

I disagree that Randi is some kind of conspiracy Art Bell fruitcake. She is an ardent, voracious reader, that’s why she can correctly identify names and dates and places to the Nth degree. Being well-informed is somehow worse than the half-baked utterly unfactual ravings of Limbaugh and O’Reilly? Please! She may sound paranoid, but that’s more due to the very scary times we’re living in. Randi rarely makes any factual reference or accusation that isn’t backed up by painstaking research. (And when she does make an error, she acknowledges it.)

The only shows I haven’t been able to get into are Morning Sedition and Unfiltered, and that’s mainly because I work at night and am almost never up in the mornings. But I heard Mark Maron (cohost of Morning) on Friday night when he stopped by the Janeane/Sam show, and he really impressed me. I remember him as being an innocuous comedian on Comedy Central (was he a host of Short Attention Span Theater after Jon Stewart left?) and thus I was surprised at how articulate and on top of the issues he appears to be.

What little I’ve heard of Lizz Winstead on Unfiltered disappoints me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved her on The Daily Show and she deserves a place in heaven for that alone! But she rambles and goes off topic too often. Al does that too, but he’s got three hours to fill, so I don’t mind some digressions as long as they’re funny. Lizz isn’t quite as funny as I expected her to be. (Plus she sounds exactly like Kathy Griffen, which in my book is an offense punishable by $5000 or 30 days in prison.) Meanwhile, her cohost Chuck D, from what I’ve heard so far, is very good indeed. Not surprising, since I remember him facing off against none other than the brilliant Bill McNeal! ;))

Hosts aside … holy cow, the guests throughout the past month have been absolutely stellar! John Dean, Al Gore, Chalmers Johnson, Howard Zinn, Hillary Clinton, Bob Kerrey, Bob Graham, even G. Gordon Liddy (oy) … every day there’s some incredible discussion to learn from. Of course, I’m sure the star-studdedness of the shows will diminish a bit as time goes by, since they’re probably pulling out all the stops in these early weeks. But then again, I can imagine that many politicos and other guests will be relieved themselves to find a relatively safe harbor. For me, it’s certainly a relief to listen to voices and points of view that aren’t welcome on other networks!

(Although I’m sure Ralph Nader was expecting more of a safe harbor than he got from Randi, hee!!! Take THAT, shmuck.)

I also really appreciate the respect and attention AAR gives to the hardworking, tireless web-based journalists/bloggers. Folks like Atrios and Bill Sher (from LiberalOasis) have been godsends in uncovering facts and disseminating them to the public. It’s terrific that they’re getting a wider audience including people who aren’t web-savvy yet.

The negatives? Lots of growing pains and technical problems have made it really rough going at times. Their webfeed sucks, and they really really really need to get either more servers or better techies. The contract battle with that idiot owner of the Chicago & L.A. affiliates has put some negative focus on AAR’s business plans, perhaps not entirely undeserved. They need to get new stations lined up ASAP to move beyond this mini-scandal. Also, why the heck don’t they have a message board? Blogs are great, but having to use the comments feature for discussion is, well, sucktastic in the extreme.

On the talent side, it’s obvious that several of the hosts are relative newbies, which can result in some awkward moments – although in the case of Janeane and Sam, I find their self-deprecating exasperation hilarious and endearing. Time will smooth out their rough edges, though. I can’t wait to hear Mike Papantonio and Robert Kennedy’s weekend show.

The biggest downside for me is – WHERE IS MIKE MALLOY??? Malloy is the best damn liberal radio host – whip-smart, absolutely hilarious, frothing with righteous anger, knowledgable about pop culture, and incredibly friendly/respectful to his callers. God, how I miss his show since the IE America Network folded. Mike would totally rule on AAR, and should be taking up the 11PM slot, or at the very least a weekend show of his own. It’s not as if there’s no room for him; AAR goes into repeats at night and on the weekends. With Mike Malloy, Randi Rhodes and Jeanane/Sam doling out the impassioned anger, and Al Franken, Marty Kaplan, Chuck D. and Laura Flanders providing the more laid-back tone, AAR’s lineup would kick ass and take names.

Even without Mike, and with all the little nagging glitches that have cropped up, AAR is the best thing that’s happened to the media world in a long, long time.

17

I’ve listened to all of the shows at one time or another. Not all of the cohost chemistry is ideal (Janeane and Sam are not a good combo, IMO) and they need to get their technical snafus straightened out, but not a bad start.

Franken is not as funny as he thinks he is. Rhodes makes up for it though.

I wouldn’t want it to be my only source of information but I’m glad they’re on the air.

18

I love it! Franken is pretty good, not spectacular though, but it’s still early. Landford is kinda boring. They may hit their stride yet. I’ll give it some time.

I like Randi Rhodes too. The only annoying thing about her show is, she makes this “ding” sound that’s exactly like the one my computer makes when I get new email, so I’m constantly checking and rechecking! ARGH! I wish she’d stop that.

19

Randi Rhodes was much better back in the day, playing guitar for Ozzy. :smiley:

20

I listen to it during the day at work, and I like it fine. The biggest problem is that The O’Franken Factor is on at the same time as The Thom Hartmann Show over at RadioPower.org. It’s often hard to decide between them: they’re equally entertaining to me, but Al attracts the higher-profile guests, while Thom is much more knowledgeable (particularly about history, which I find very useful to any politcal discussion).

I hope Air America gathers more affiliates over time. They have probably 5% or less of the coverage that Rush and the like have.

One of the great things about Air America and Radio Power is that while they are admittedly progressive and liberal, they are generally willing to let the opposition speak when they call in. Franken even has a regular appearance by a Limbaugh fan, to discuss Rush’s latest talking points. The exception, I’m afraid, is Randi Rhodes. She will take the calls, but she’ll shout down anyone who doesn’t seem to be on her side (often doing this to liberals as well). I find that irritating, but I’m willing to listen for the sake of the other stuff which I do like.