Air America: Listen or Die

There has been a lot of consternation, most of it pretty rude, about the shuffling going on over at Air America. Here's my take: Someone over at Air America has finally realized that their greatest talent is one they had on before anyone was really awake to listen to her: Rachel Maddow. Although her audience at the crack of dawn has to be pretty miniscule, every day she produces the show as if she were broadcasting live from Madison Square Garden to waiting millions. She doesn't merely get on the radio and rant. Instead, like Diana the Hunter, she sharpens the arrows in her quiver and takes aim at the right wing propaganda machine and the people whose evil works it obscures, hitting the target with alarming regularity.

She is first and foremost, a journalist, who scours the news and comes up with items that get lost in the noise of John Mark Karr, missing white girls on tropical isles, and Tom Cruise and his baby. She opens every show with a discussion of exactly what is going on in Iraq every day. She somehow manages to make this horror fresh every day by reminding us every day --as the mainstream media should be doing-- that Americans and Iraqis are dying there.

She then teases out the other stories of the day that might have gone unnoticed, and analyzes them thoroughly, quickly, succinctly, with great humor and insight. Her most remarkable talent is a nearly encyclopedic memory that enables her to discern and explain patterns that are emerging in the ongoing evil. She does this with remarkable clarity. She can see the future (it's bleak). She has great --and often famous-- guests, and mixes it up with recipes for great drinks, wonderful live, in studio musical performances, and a delightful sports guy that you will want to listen to even if you could care less about such things. So, they finally figured it out and are putting her in the evening, when people can actually hear her. I, for one, cannot listen to Rachel Maddow on my local Air America station -- they don't carry her! I listened to her podcast ONCE, and I was hooked. It was free for awhile, and then it became subcription.

I subscribed because the FOURTH Estate is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Republicans, and by Corporatists who could care less ahout the public interest. It should be apparent that this ain't no party any more, and it ain't no disco. Our Republic is imperiled, and is rapidly becoming a third world country. Crime is up, wages are down, and entire city of half a million has been destroyed with no genuine signs of recovery. Information is critical.

Air America has shuffled the deck. With all due respect to the wonderful talents that have suffered as a result, I do think they are putting their best foot forward.

That Air America exists at all is a miracle. In my locale, the signal is so weak, that a powerful christian station nearly drowns it out. (Not a problem with the podcast). At times, when listening to it, I feel that I am figuratively huddled around a potbelly stove in Poland, listening to the Voice of America described the movements of the Nazis.

That Air America is needed at all demonstrates how dire our situation is. We need to support Air America, through good times and bad. The Thugs would like nothing better than for Air America to fade into static and disappear. We absolutely cannot let that happen.

Support Air America, buy something from their advertisers if you can. Subscribe to the podcasts. Do not let this voice flicker and fade.

I sense that Air America is struggling somewhat. Don't give Bill O'Reilly what he wants (unless it's a falafel). Rage, rage against the fading of the signal. Follow it where it goes. Give Rachel a try, if you haven't already. [Note to Rachel: quit being so rude to your soundman].

Bensdad. Over and out.