Back in 2004, I listened to Al Franken on Air America. For all of ten minutes.
Nine years ago, I was a Republican having second thoughts about giving George W. Bush a second term. Between the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the over-the-top demagoguery of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s marriage-equality ruling, I found the idea of voting for Bush again distasteful.
So I decided to give Franken, the franchise player of the then recently launched Air America radio network, a chance; maybe he could convince me to vote for John Kerry. However, after ten minutes of listening to Franken and co-host Katherine Lanpher, I decided that I wasn’t really the target audience. I went back to listening to Rush Limbaugh, and — God help me — I ended up voting for Bush again.
Looking back, I realize that I was taught to hate Franken — and anything that wasn’t right-wing radio. It’s a lesson I never should have learned…
Even before Air America debuted, right-wingers were convinced it would fail — and I was convinced that they were right. Right-wing radio star Jay Severin, then of WTKK-FM in Boston, wrote a piece for the Boston Globe just before Air America’s premiere insisting that the network would abruptly fail, because there was supposedly no real market for Progressive Talk.
My ten-minute experience with Franken reaffirmed my pre-conditioned view that Air America would “die quickly”, as Rep. Alan Grayson might say. A year later, a Massachusetts-based right-wing blogger named Brian “The Radio Equalizer” Maloney reported on allegations of financial impropriety at the network.
I started following Maloney’s writing, much of which was spent attacking Air America’s hosts and other progressive talkers for alleged offensiveness and hyperpartisanship; over the years, his targets included Randi Rhodes, Mike Malloy, Montel Williams, Thom Hartmann and Rachel Maddow. I could never figure out why Maloney devoted his blog to attacking progressive radio; after all, if progressive radio was, according to the right, a dead format that nobody listened to, why bother calling attention to it? Nevertheless, Maloney was a somewhat humorous writer, so I kept on reading.
Maloney’s work convinced me to never give Progressive Talk a second chance, even as Limbaugh’s program in particular became more and more obnoxious. In Maloney’s world, Rhodes was a self-righteous harridan who wanted to see all conservatives drop dead; Malloy was a bitter hothead who hated capitalism; Ed Schultz supported voter fraud; and Montel Williams worshiped the ground President Obama walked on. Maloney insisted that the world of Progressive Talk radio was a dark, nasty ideological ghetto where civility and reason were routinely mugged and assaulted; not the sort of place you’d want to be.
Maloney was, of course, a big Limbaugh booster, and as I lost interest in “El Rushbo,” I gradually began to lose interest in Maloney’s work. Still, I was influenced by his attacks on progressive radio, and didn’t start listening regularly to the medium until recently, after Brad Friedman — who I came to know after he featured me on a June 2011 KPFK-FM “BradCast” to discuss my then recent conversion on climate change — filled in for Ed Schultz on his nationally syndicated radio show.
Having had a chance to listen to Schultz, Hartmann and Rhodes for myself — and realizing that they are not the verbally abusive ogres Maloney made them out to be, but civil, lively personalities who communicate their ideas with wit and style — it occurred to me that Maloney’s actual goal was to bury progressive radio in the eyes of his readers, so that they would never consider listening to the medium in the event they wanted to hear something different from the repetitive Limbaugh/Hannity stuff. Certainly, I wish that I had avoided Maloney’s writings and given progressive radio a second chance in the mid- to late-2000s; perhaps I would have had an awakening on climate change prior to 2010!
The best aspect of progressive radio is that it’s NOT repetitive, as opposed to copycat “conservatalk”. You may recall the controversial 2008 article from Dan Shelley, the former news director of Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based WTMJ-AM, who described how the RNC would send talking points to the “conservative” hosts he worked with: the piece certainly explains why the hosts on your local wingnut talk station all seem to sound alike. I don’t get the sense that anyone is telling Rhodes, Hartmann and Schultz what to say. No wonder they sound so fresh compared to what I used to listen to — and of course, what I used to listen to continues to dominate our publicly owned airwaves, thanks to corporate consolidation and a sleeping-on-the-job FCC, as Friedman and Sue Wilson have noted here over the years.
Right-wing talk radio is very good at teaching people who to hate. Right-wing talk radio boosters such as Maloney obviously knew how to do that too. However, having listened to Schultz, Hartmann and Rhodes for myself, and realizing that Maloney falsely depicted them as foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic radicals, I realize that Maloney ultimately taught me to hate…Maloney — and the sort of talk radio he preferred.
D.R. Tucker is a Massachusetts-based freelance writer and a former contributor to the conservative website Human Events Online. He has also written for the Huffington Post, the Boston Herald, ClimateCrocks.com, FrumForum.com, the Ripon Forum, Truth-Out.org, TheNextRight.com, and BookerRising.com. In addition, he hosted a Blog Talk Radio program, The Notes, from August 2009 to June, 2010. You can follow him on Twitter here: @DRTucker.
Sure hope that Mr Tucker will give Norman Goldman a listen also. He is probably the best, next to Thom Hartmann, and for sure is the wittiest. http://www.normangoldman.com/
DR: Your experiences track those related by David Brock in Blinded by the Right, a worthwhile read.
Ernest, I read Brock’s book in 2011 and
enjoyed it! Thanks.
Hey man totally off topic, but here I AM. On this eve of the 4th I jus gotta say, the world is a whole and there is light everywhere. Just because our justice system is corrupted as all hell, doesn’t mean that all are. I have hope for humanity, funny wonderful things can happen at ANY TIME. Thanks to creator.
Julio in Denver stole my thunder. Absolutely! I think Norman Goldman is the most independent minded of all of the radio hosts out there… and I won’t call him Progressive (what does that mean anyway, right?) Give him a week of podcasts…you’ll be hooked on the independent analysis.
I’m astonished that your choices of radio talk shows generated this much angst, Can you not think for yourself, does your political philosophy depend on a sympathetic radio channel? Really?
Just a heads up that James o’ keefe was on CSPAN for 45 minutes this morning (call-in show) boasting about destroying ACORN and who knows what all….only caught a few minutes on the radio version.
We gotta pull some strings…call in some chits and get the Bradster on there for some balance
The problem with “progressive” talk radio is that just about every host is unwilling to be loyal to the ideology first, regardless of what transgressions the parties or their officeholders commit. I have tried to be a leftist first. I refuse to swear allegiance to any party, although I’m nominally a Democrat so I can vote in primaries (hope springs eternal). I did not support Obama either time, and will work hard to keep Hillary from being the nominee in ’16 because they are not not only not mainstream liberal, they are both warmongering Blue Dogs.
It really burns me to hear someone like Cenk Uygur rail about all of the horrible things Obama has done – drone assassinations, prosecuting whistle blowers, etc. and still say we had no choice but to vote for him! WTF? I have voted Green Party three out of the last four elections (and regret supporting and voting for Kerry in ’04), and will probably never again vote for the Democratic nominee for President, but will cast a vote of conscience for the Green Party or a similarly progressive candidate. Competition and supporting the ideology are the ONLY ways politics in this country will ever change.
Don’t feel like the lone ranger Mr. Tucker, because Twenty Seven percent of our presidents owned slaves:
(Presidents Who Owned Slaves). For that to happen there has to be a lot of rhetoric and peer pressure.
Resistance counts.
Given the financial assault on Progressive Radio — stations are routinely bought out and flipped to much worse performing 3rd or 4th sports talk station in a market — it’s good to remember that podcasts and Stitcher are other ways to tune in. I subscribe to the Stephanie Miller Radio Show on podcast and catch Rachel Maddow the next morning on Stitcher, if I missed it the night before. These alternate formats give us a fighting chance in a overtly hostile media market.
I was under the impression that progressive talk radio did well in certain bastion locations like San Francisco, New York, but poorly otherwise.
How are you going to sell corporate advertising on an anti-corporatist messaging system? That never seemed to work out in my head.
In response to Luagha,”How are you going to sell corporate advertising on an anti-corporatist messaging system? That never seemed to work out in my head.”
You’re correct that progressive radio would be a bad place for Walmart or other corporate vulture stores to advertise, but it is an excellent choice for small locally owned and operated businesses. Isn’t building communities part of progressive culture; the two should go hand in hand.