Tonight on the Majority Report Radio show on Air America, hosts Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder had a pretty serious argument on the air that resulted in both Sam and the show's producer walking out of the show. Could this be the end of Garofalo & Seder, the Burns & Allen of Air America?
The disagreement arose over the fact that Janeane has had members of the NY Rescue Workers Detoxification Project (http://nydetox.org/) on twice in the last 6 weeks and was planning on having them on again tonight. The group is basically a Scientology front group and has been criticized
http://www.nytimes.com/...
http://www.cultnews.com/...
as being full of junk remedies and potentially harmful to the clients. Janeane is very supportive of the group.
More....
The first two interviews took place on Fridays when Sam is off, but he has hinted about his qualms about the group and the MRR blog
http://www.majorityreportradio.com
has been very critical of Janeane on this. After Sam found out about the planned third appearance of the group, he finally made his concerns vocal to Janeane on the air and stated that he would be present for the next interview. He also called the group today and stated that he intended to question them about the criticism of the program, unlike Janeane who has been pretty fawning, IMO. The group cancelled the appearance.
Well, things finally came to a boil tonight as Janeane appears to have taken Sam's criticism as a personal attack and claimed that Sam and the show's producer were actively seeking to embarrass her and the group for no good reason. Janeane (who is an atheist) makes it very clear that she is supportive only of the Detoxification Project but in no way supports Scientology and states that she thinks it's as much fantasy-based as any other religion such as Christianity, but if the Detox Project is helping the 1st responders, who cares who's funding it.
Sam's POV is that two appearances were enough and the show shouldn't be pushing such a questionable group. Janeane (incredibly) says it's no different than having the recurring Fighting Dems segment with Markos. She also stated that Sam would not have a problem with the Detox Project if it were a Jewish group(!). Sam took offense at that comment and after a bit of loud back and forth the show went to commercial. When it came back, Janeane said that Sam and the producer had walked out. The show stumbled to close about twenty minutes later.
Now, I'm a HUGH fan of Sam Seder. When the show began a couple of years ago he was complete radio novice. But since then he's really grown into a great host and he's built the show into a platform for grassroots progressive action. And the show is very blog friendly with regular segments with Markos, Atrios and Bill Scher. And, of course, Sammy will not only be a panelist at YearlyKos, he will also be broadcasting his show from there. So, it is not without a little frustration that I see Janeane, who really has not been all that connected to the show the past year, take steps that undermine the show and its credibility. I know without her Sam wouldn't even have a show, but he's really worked his ass off to make the show his own. And that's been out of necessity since Janeane is frequently absent, often for weeks or months at a time.
So what ever you may think about the Sam/Janeane embroligo, if you see Sam in Vegas next week, give the man some love. He deserves it.