Randi Rhodes has never been my favorite among liberal talk show hosts, I'll admit, but her show used to be OK. But I listened for a half hour today, and she was just terrible and way off the rails.
There were a bunch of things that annoyed me about her little diatribe today. Being an Edwards supporter, the last annoyed me the most, but I'll go as I recall things in chronological order.
At the start of my listening time, she was talking at length about the Grammys. I don't have a strong opinion on that one way or the other. The sort of funny she was using is personal taste. I didn't think she was funny, but OK.
She used Obama's Grammy to move into his great showing over the weekend. That was fine. She stressed that she thought something big was happening. Also fine.
But then after doing this, she said she just has no patience for people who are "fine with either" candidate because she's voted and she does care. Then she added that she wouldn't say who she was supporting, because she's neutral during the primaries. Now, she isn't neutral. She clearly favors Obama. This is fine. I lurve Stephanie Miller, and she's been openly for Obama for months. She's been entirely upfront about it and still manages to be relatively fair to other candidates. But Randi trying to pretend she's at all neutral, "Pffft." Just say who you endorse and enjoy it and advocate for your candidate.
Then she went into a rant about superdelegates. Valid to some extent, but the same jumping the gun assumptions they're going to ignore the popular will because of course one of these candidates is somehow without any party clout. Besides, this system was in place long before this election, and Randi Rhodes didn't say boo about it to my knowledge. Now suddenly it's a big deal.
Then she went into a rant about how we'll elect Obama and then we can go to entirely public financing of elections and eliminate the Electoral College. These are fine goals, all, but not especially connected outside of her own weird stream of consciousness rant.
And finally, when I got really pissed off: She got to Edwards, faulting him for "interviewing the candidates" to sell his delegates. As if meetings for endorsements are some new development in electoral politics that John Edwards invented. But it got worse. Her reason for deeply disliking John Edwards is she knows "stuff." Apparently, nefarious "stuff" that she just can't share but that makes her not like Edwards. And, again, with her "I'm neutral during primaries" spiel and how she never said anything to people who liked Edwards except "Well, go vote." Fine, but she's already shown she's not at all neutral during the primary.
Look, if she has criticisms of John Edwards, she can shout them from the rooftops. But "stuff"? She knows "stuff"? That's it? It was really vile slander implying she just knows all sorts of nasty, nasty information because she's a big and important radio host. But we little people like Edwards because we don't know "stuff" that would make us dislike him.
So, basically "stuff" that Rhodes can't share on air (I suspect because it's entirely slander) makes her hate John Edwards.
I don't need "stuff" on Rhodes to dislike her intensely at the moment. She sounded completely unhinged.