Tonight, friends, I need to share a dirty little secret with you:
I listen to wingnut talk radio.
Not just once in a while, either - almost every day. I live near Philadelphia, where there are a few choices when it comes to talk. In addition to the world's most obnoxious sports talk radio station, WIP, we've got a 24-hour, 50,000-watt right-wing propaganda machine - 1210 AM, "The Big Talker" - along with a much-less-powerful partial Air America affiliate, WHAT-AM, and our NPR station, WHYY, that airs some local and national talk programming.
So there are lots of places where I could put my ear. But so far this election season, I find myself tuning into the wingnuts more and more. There are probably deep and disturbing psychological explanations for why I do this, but I don't want to go there. Instead, I want to ask a question:
As Kerry supporters, what is our best reaction to Right-Wing talk radio?
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I used to believe that it was best to simply ignore them. Let them roar and screech and shout to each other, because really, it's all just preaching to the choir, anyway. People know that it's all trumped-up bullshit and hard-right spin, right? Nobody could take all that bombastic blather seriously, could they?
But now....I don't know.
I firmly believe that talk radio - not just the big national guys like Limbaugh, Hannity & O'Reilly, but the hundreds of local wannabes in markets all across the country - are a giant cog in the machine that gets things like the Swift Boat Liars into the mainstream.
I look at my fellow commuters inching along and I wonder just how many of them are tuning in to this crap simply to pass the time as they crawl to or from their jobs. How many of these people, who may not be political at all, are digesting on some level this steady diet of far-right "truth," which is nearly always presented without even a Colmes-ian attempt at balance.
But yet, talk radio would seem to be the perfect opportunity to engage these Rightist blowhards and poke the same holes in their blubber verbally as we do here in prose. I don't hear that happening very much, though.
Making the attempt isn't easy. Not only are you up against a moving target (by the time your call gets on the air, the comment you're referring to is a half-hour old and they've gone on to other topics), you are facing off against a host that holds all the power. They can interrupt, you can't; they can talk over you; you must wait your turn; they can ignore your point or your question; you must respond to theirs. And they are free to bully, ridicule, mock and scorn you as they see fit.
Still, I am thinking that the stakes are too high for us to continue to let this election pass without a full-scale invasion of the talk radio turf. Not a screaming, shouting, angry invasion - that won't work - but a succession of calls, as rational and good-natured as possible, armed with info and not afraid to stand up to whatever tactics might be used. This, to me, seems to be an idea whose time has come.
We have five weeks left until Election Day. In every city in America, we have free air time waiting for us to use it. This is a power that each of us has that just might make a difference.
What do you say - is it time to engage these windbags?