I used to call local talk radio (in Albany, NY) regularly, but not so much lately, as I cut back on listening to daily denigration of everything Democratic.
What's the point -- the 27 percent cannot be dissuaded from their delusions, and conservative radio hosts have no incentive to treat Democratic callers fairly.
Plus, we won. Let them cry, gnash their teeth, lie about Democrats nationally and locally, and preach to their little choir of old white men.
Heard it all before, and it gets boring.
Occasionally, I check in, like today, when Melody Burns, the afternoon wingnut on WGDJ-AM, was going on about how Democrats lie 24/7 about every issue.
Since this is gun-nut rabble-rousing time on talk radio, Burns spent some time bewailing the "lie" that the Newtown mass-murderer used an AR-15 in his elementary school massacre.
For the first time in many months, I was inspired to call in, and point out that police and local media reports in the aftermath had confirmed that an AR-15 killed most/maybe all of the children.
Burns would have none of that, because of "conflicting reports" and some audio from the Today show.
More, below.
While listening to Burns' ranting, I googled to find the facts.
The best I came up with quickly was a blog post by Ken Tingley, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Glens Falls Post Star, headlined "Debate and misinformation continues on Newtown, guns."
From today.
The relevant bit:
I am also seeing an uptick on readers using facts that are not true. It has surfaced again on the Internet that the Newtown shooter did not use a rifle at all in the killings, only pistols. Those were the initial reports the day of the shooting, but we have checked and rechecked this and the police in Connecticut have established that the victims were each shot multiple times by the AR-15 rifle.
In the interest of not perpetuating misinformation we have not allowed comments that insist the pistols were used to kill the children to be published in the comments section.
RW talk radio standards are nothing like that -- fact-free CTs about Obama/Hitler, Agenda 21, etc., from callers are welcome, and supported.
So I told Burns that an AR-15 did kill kids in Newtown, and she started yelling that she had a tape from the Today Show.
I responded that she was lying, during a show dedicated to Democratic "lying."
She had some trouble getting the tape on the air until after she cut me off, but when she played it, it was obvious that it was from the day or two after the massacre.
So I called back to talk to the screener (an Albany city cop early-retired on disability), and asked him what the date was for the Today tape.
He would not tell me, and repeated the "conflicting reports" BS.
I expected as much -- WGDJ has been rabble-rousing the gun nuts since Gov. Cuomo moved a gun control bill through the Legislature in near-record time.
And, if WGDJ's callers reflect its meagre audience, they are mostly angry, old white men who hate Democrats who provided them with Social Security and Medicare.
And the major gun store owner in the area is an advertiser, and regular on-air "guest" (he's paying for it).
And Burns said she will be a speaker at the gun-rights rally tomorrow at the Capitol, part of the NRA-promoted Guns Appreciation Day.
I'll be there, too -- to see what the tea party far-right is like after they took a couple years off from mass rallies.
And to record some lies and CT BS from the speakers, and photograph some Second American Revolution wingnuts.
Who will be some of the same people who spoke and turned out for tea party rallies in 2009 and 2010 -- the few hundred of the GOP far-right around here.
Guaranteed.