What I think would do Air America the most good would be moving Randi Rhodes to the 5 a.m. time slot (3 a.m. would suit me better) and putting Rachel Maddow in the afternoon drive time slot. Maddow is knowledgeable, incisive and sharp as a tack, it’s always entertaining to listen to her. Rhodes is a slobbering cow. I have no idea how she got a plum slot on Air America, her whole schtick is an endless moaning diatribe against Bush that has very little actual content. I would love to listen to Air America on my drive home, but Rhodes keeps forcing me to turn the dial.
Frankly, ALL the Air America radio hosts could stand to give a good listen to right wing radio. Their performances (Maddow excepted) seem very sloppy and loose compared to the right wing people, who for all their lack of intellectual probity, are well formatted. It’s sorta like the bubble-gum rock – very well put together junk. If Air America, with its superior content, had similar production values, it would smoke everyone.
Ed Schultz (“Big Eddie”, a beef-eatin’, gun-totin’, enthusiastic liberal voice in Fargo, ND) is on a different network, although his show is carried on some of the same stations as Air America shows.
For a second I was worried, until I saw that the thread was started by Stephe. Since our Stephe is a willfully-ignorant, mendacious, not overly-bright li’l turd, I tend to assume anything s/he says is bullshit.
Listening to “Morning Sedition” right now. They have good interviews, Marc Maron goes on some great rants, and sometimes it’s funny as hell. (It helps that, unlike humorless lumps like Bill O’Reilly, liberal satirists don’t mind making fun of the more extreme elements of their own side.) I also like Al Franken’s show. (I took a look at the “frankenlies” website; it’s just sad. For one thing, they seem incapable of recognizing an obvious joke.)
Randi Rhodes is annoying. Even when I agree with her main point, she’s shrill, sometimes irrational, and often factually incorrect. There’s another guy on Air America (Mike Malloy?) who sounds bitterly, self-righteously polemic; I don’t want to listen to that every day. I like Rachel Maddows.
So, Air America is a mixed bag. I’m predicting that when it celebrates its five-year anniversary, Bill O’Reilly will still be lying about it, and we’ll still have nitwits like Stephe crowing that it’s going down any day.
Egads, Diogenes, that is such total bullshit. I read crap like that from you and wonder how you manage to get through the day without falling down and hurting yourself.
I love Air America and I listen to it every day on my way to work (and then on my way back again).
If it were to die, I’d be upset, but I think AA would experience something akin to the Obi-Wan Kenobi Effect. (Strike it down, it becomes more powerful…)
Do you even LISTEN to Air America, Psycho Pirate? Franken mumbles a lot and is very prone to self-deprecating humor. Garafolo is angry but not hateful. Maddow is sharp as a tack, neither angry nor hateful, unless you’re talking about the focussed anger that makes for a good political commentator, rather than the broad anger of a partisan. Morning Sedition is funny and sharp, not hateful at all, and only angry on occasions. Springer is neither angry nor hateful and tries very hard to be inclusive with conservatives call in. The only one who fits your mold is Randi Rhodes, and she’s nowhere near any of the mean-as-a-snake right wing commentators like Coulter and O’Reilly.
Sorry, the right pretty much has the anger and hatred corner all to itself.
I really have no idea whether Air America is doing well or not. I wish them well.
I really can’t stand all-talk radio; it seems tailor made for those who need others to give them their opinions. Limbaugh’s and O’Reilly’s listeners seem to listen with open mouths. Well, it’s easier than lifting the spoon to your own mouth, I guess…
Sitting on the left side of the fence, I’d prefer to have news stories given to me without editorials, and make up my own mind. For me, NPR is the way to go. But since W took office, the media have been running scared of saying or publishing anything that might jeapordize their access to the White House, or (in the case of NPR) their funding. I listen to NPR quite a bit, but ever since Air America started, it was on their broadcasts that I first heard of some of the news stories that we hear today (Downing Street Memo, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, etc. etc.). By comparison, all one had to do on a weekend was to listen to BBC’s analysis to know how much had been left out of the NPR broadcast. I think that NPR dropped the ball during that time, and I’m glad that someone was there to pick it up and run with it.
Until the media gets a little courage, I’m going to put up with the talk format in order to get another side to the predigested pap everywhere else. I’ve never heard Franken in a contradiction or a lie, but I have heard him break a story that took weeks to hear of elsewhere.
With “Torture is cool” Limbaugh and “Kill da Libruls” Coulter, I think the hate market is pretty well glutted right now. People like Franken and Garafalo, and John Stewart (not Air America but it fits sort of) can be clever and witty, and can draw on their comedy backgrounds. Merciless ridicule and sarcasm can be deadly in the right hands.
No, I don’t listen to Air America regularly. But I have heard it before, and I have seen the documentary Left of the Dial. And these people were some of the most hateful, vicious people I have ever seen. I am no fan of Limbaugh, but mocking him for a drug problem is hateful. They are certainly angry, and that comes across especially clearly from Ms. Rhodes, who in my opinion is ten times worse than Coulter ever was. Morning Sedition is definitely hateful thanks to the presence of talentless Mark Maron.
I’ll admit that some on the right are angry and even hateful. The fact that you claim that “the right pretty much has the anger and hatred corner all to itself” shows how blindedly biased you are.
Educate yourself. Take the blinders off. Step out of the echo chamber for five minutes. Are you honestly telling me that the right has the market cornered on hatred when the BBQ Pit (home of hateful, angry, and vicious threads) is splitting at the seams with anti-Republican Right threads? Sure…
I don’t see folks mocking Limbaugh for his drug problem; I see them mocking him for the blatant hypocrisy of his stance toward “other” people with drug problems in light of his own.
Yes they are. It’s true that if you wanted to reduce hatefulness, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every republican baby in this country, and your hate rate would go down.
So, in your book, anti-Republican Right equals hate? This, I think, explains some of the difficulty you may be having in matching your views with, uh, reality.
I’m honestly telling you that, and I’m astonished that there’s even any debate on the subject. Even in the Pit, even from the most mindlessly anti-right posters we have here, I’ve never seen anything to match the vituperation that regularly comes from successful right-wing celebrities like Coulter, Michael Savage, or even Rush Limbaugh. Not even close. And rjung or ElvisL1ves don’t have nationally syndicated radio shows with millions and millions of listeners eagerly lapping up every slur and diatribe.
I don’t think you’re in any position to tell other people to “remove their blinders,” let alone to “educate” themselves.
I know I’m not one to call someone on their spelling but
[QUOTE=Stephe96]
Yikes! Hot on the heels of the news that Al Franken, Garofalo et al. have been reduced to begging for money from listeners to stay alive comes this news that the failing liberal Air America radio network is being kicked off Philly radio. Ha ha ha. I love it. QUOTE]
Yes we hate Republicans. They on the other hand, hate fags, and forieners, and blacks, and education, and diplomacy, and the environment, and comsumers, and most of all, they hate the government. They hate themselves.
Can someone remind me how long Fox News ran in the red before they finally started turning a profit?
As for Air America, I’ll just say that Stephanie Miller and her two no-men are the funniest crew on the “progressive” airwaves over here. They’re not technically part of Air America (nor is Ed Schultz, IIRC), but the station has them interleaved with some of the AA programming. If Air America helps these other talented folks get more exposure, I say more power to 'em.
