Air America Considered

by Marie

It’s good. It focuses on the major political news of the day. It’s funny. It’s informative. The hosts get good guests from Congress, the main stream media and blogs. And unlike rightwing talk radio that is only tolerable when NPR is carrying something as interesting as listening to grass grow, it lives up to it slogan, “Talk radio for the rest of us.”

The personality and politics of the hosts is varied and at least one of them should appeal to anyone with politics to the left of GOP-lite Democrats. It’s difficult to envision them walking in lockstep with some Democratic Party issued talking point of the day. Sure, they will mute criticism of Democratic politicians right before an election, but that will only be like what leftwing bloggers did last year. Sure, they focus most of their criticism on Republicans and GWB. That’s what political talk radio is all about, hammer the opposition. And sometimes they don’t get the facts quite right, but they are never like Rush and O’Reilly pulling things out of their asses.

For those who like a soft and soothing voice from the left, there is Jerry Springer in the morning. He’s more like the radio version of Phil Donohue than anyone else I can think of. He’s reasonably well informed. Some of the bits on his show are very funny, and he would be wise to leave the humor to his staff and not try to compete in this arena. He makes some good arguments. Unfortunately, he also makes some good ones for GWB who could simply borrow Springer’s argument for early withdrawal from Iraq to expand the war to Iran. He also acts as if the GWB administration is rational instead of ideological. It could only be his shtick, but given how quickly he rejects statements from callers who point out that GWB could care less about ordinary Americans, it’s difficult to conclude that it’s a shtick. Still, his style may be effective in getting some people to recognize that GWB doesn’t approach issues and challenges rationally.

Franken’s show has the best structure. The daily demonstration that “Rush Limbaugh is a Liar” with Al’s dittohead friend is fun, as well as scary to see what garbage millions of ditto heads will swallow. Franken chews up and spits out O’Reilly lies daily. Rush and O’Reilly give him so much fodder that debunking them could eat up most of the show. David Brock, Joe Conason and Tom Oliphant show up on a weekly basis. Alterman, JM Marshall, Clemons, Aravois and many others from the left and blogs make frequent appearances. Alter and Krugman from Newsweek and NYT were on the same day. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to discriminate between journalists and bloggers who haven’t carried GOP water and those who do so regularly like Fineman. Franken can be very funny, but he either hasn‘t hit his stride in the talk radio format or his humor is too much like lame portions of SNL for my taste. He’s not always sharp or precise on details but he has Katherine Lanpher to keep him somewhat in check. His worst habit is that he gets fascinated with some insignificant rightwing blather or one of his lame jokes and beats it to death when it died for the audience the first time.

Big Ed Schultz. This is “the guy” of Air America (technically, he’s not an Air America host but syndicated by the Jones Radio Network). Hunting, fishing, red-meat eating jock sort of guy. He’s also skilled at talk radio and exudes honesty. He clearly knows how to work his time and audience, both in the booth and live when he takes his show on the road. He has relationships with Senators like Harkin and Conrad that didn’t begin six months ago. He’s also more liberal than Franken, and doesn’t shy away from criticizing Democrats in general and a few specifically.. He gets it that NAFTA was loser for Democrats. He gets it that NCLB is a turkey; although the case he makes on this would be better if he refreshed and refined it. He’s also not all that good with issues that he hasn’t pre-packaged. It was sad to hear him conflating medical marijuana users with stoners and mocking them. This suggests that his wife Wendy has taught him well on the issues and compassion, but he’s not an integrated “leftie.” He made no comment after giving Lieberman and Kurtz airtime to spout rhetoric that could have been written by Rove. Yet, he manages to keep things simple and accessible and mostly gets it right, and when he doesn’t, he misses by a wide margin.

Randi Rhoades. She lives up to the reports that surfaced the first day Air America joined the airwaves. She isn’t a hack like Laura Ingraham who is irony deficient and that’s the kindest thing that could be said of Laura. Randi knows her gig. She has a better command of the details of the topics and issues that she covers than any of the other hosts. She doesn’t check her personal life at the door to the broadcast booth and effectively makes use of self-deprecating humor while remaining tough as nails. An example of this was the report that Viagra may cause blindness and that is good news for her because now she may be able to get some. She can rant. She can make you laugh, and her Friday musical introduction “Boobs a Bouncing” is a must to tune into at least once even if you hate talk radio. Her staff also puts together some great bits and the sound effects they interlace into her show are fun. Overall, she is the strongest host in the line-up and more solidly liberal and progressive than most of them.

Ring of Fire is a weekend show with Bobby Kennedy Jr and Mike Papantonio. Overlooking Bobby’s croaky voice, this is a very good show. Laura Flanders is another weekend host that does a decent job and combines it with a music segment.

Majority Report - Sam Seder and Janeane Garafalo. Sometimes first impressions are wrong. Janeane isn’t a leftwing airhead. Seder isn’t boring. On the stupid left-right political continuum, these two are the “lefties” of the day/evening line-up. They are also the ones with the most integrated political orientation and philosophy. This gives them an advantage over the other hosts because they can most easily and quickly cut through new GOP bs and propaganda. Sam doesn’t cut people like Friedman any slack unlike other hosts and Democrats do. Janeane is blunt. She easily lapses into rants that sound like far leftwing rambling diatribes that don’t effectively communicate or demonstrate the richness of her thought and knowledge. This is hopefully just inexperience talking, and with her talent, more experience will serve her well. Sam is my favorite of all the hosts. He’s easy to listen to and demonstrates good taste in reading material by quoting people like Steve Soto and other quality bloggers, many of whom make frequent guest appearances (Kos is part of the Wednesday line-up). Juan Cole is a regular guest and it doesn’t get better for some of us than hearing more from Juan. Sam has been following the Ohio GOP corruption that the Toledo Blade is investigating, and his call to the OH Worker’s Comp office to see if they would be interested in investing in his baseball cards was funny. This show is also more about political issues and less about the hosts than the other shows. This is a plus for me, but for those who like following Al’s obsessions, Ed’s fishing and Randi’s hot flashes, this would be a negative.

One shortcoming of all of the hosts except Seder and Kennedy is their interview skills. Granted they have neither the time nor expertise to be Terri Grosses, but they could do much better. They would all benefit from a defined Air America interview structure. One that allows them to maximize the reason for having a guest. One that reduces the tendency for many of the hosts to talk over and needlessly interrupt the guests. Franken does this so often that it borders on being obnoxious. And he can be better than that as he demonstrated in a recent interview with Alterman. Randi’s interview with Barbara Boxer was delightful, but Babs knows a thing or two about talk radio and she more than Randi controlled that interview. Whenever possible, they should try to hold the best guests for at least one more segment than they currently give them. Randi needs more guests and Springer needs guests.

They have all been properly critical of Bolton and Janice Rogers Brown based on their records. What I don’t understand is why Ed doesn’t apply the same standard to people he likes such as Hillary who voted for the IWR and Patriot Act. Or Randi to Chris Matthews who was cruel to Gore, salivated at the image of GWB prancing on that naval vessel and gave the SBV lots or airtime. Franken counts G. Gordon Liddy as a friend. And many of them speak of McCain with regard instead of trashing him for his voting record. Wish they would get a clue that McCain is only slightly to the left of GWB and doesn’t really mind much of what GWB has done.

It’s encouraging to see Air America take advantage of the wealth of information that surfaces or gets highlighted on left of center blogs. Ed needs to learn that the leftie blogs have less in common with the rightie blogs than he has with Rush. Springer needs to learn how to turn on a computer and find a blog.
As Kos says, “Steal What You Want.” And how I wish all of them would check out Billmon, the blogger’s blogger, every day.

Unfortunately, AM talk radio is ultimately an ugly format. Take out the news headlines, traffic, weather and the seemingly endless commercials and there isn’t a lot of time left for talk. (The ads for natural male enhancement have thankfully disappeared, not that I had any idea what was being sold.) As twenty odd percent of Americans get some or all of their news from talk radio, liberals can’t ignore it. However, there will be never be leftwing version of Rush’s dittoheads. The essence of being a dittohead is repeating falsehoods, prejudices, lies and uncontrovertible displays of ignorance in an effort to deny reality. Rightwing talk radio is vital sustenance for the ditto heads. Air America is merely another source of information for liberals. Brian Anderson has written the obituary for liberal talk radio. Of course, he didn’t bother to collect quality data before he began digging the grave site. For some reason he thinks that rightwing control of 90% of talk radio, better than 80% of cable news and likely all of “Christian” radio that couldn’t do better than give GWB a narrow victory is something to brag about. How much of the GOP agenda will they be able to institute before a few percentage of Americans wake up and smell the coffee and kick the bums out? Short of declaring Marshall Law (not something I would past the Cheney cabal from trying), their market penetration has peaked. Liberal bloggers and Air America have come into being and have drawn the line in the sand. But if more of our Democratic politicians don’t grow a spine and stand up to the GOP and stand for ordinary working Americans, the GOP could hold onto their market share until our children are drafted, our SSI checks don’t appear and we’re all working three jobs to “put food on our families.”