I decided to start off with a diary entry, completely opinion and general observation, about media personalities and those who listen.
A man walks up to a microphone, clears his throat, and speaks his mind. Anyone can do it, but some get paid to do it. Preachers deliver sermons. Motivational Speakers, although most are hardly motivational, often get paid to speak. A Politician’s entire job is the verbal chess game.
Any idiot with a microphone and a medium in which to deliver his/her message can do so. One thing that we tend to forget is that all too often these people become idols, their word is gospel. They’re speaking directly to you. If you don’t agree, a knob turns them off and sends the voice into the oblivion, or replaces it with the sounds of music. If you agree though, the volume knob inches further and further toward max. The station, the website, the podcast feed, gets added to memory, to favorites, to routine.
Soon enough, it’s not just casual listening, but instead listening to a sermon. Their words make your head bob up and down in agreement, chuckle at their witty puns, and laugh as they hang up on someone who dare challenge His Excellency.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you talk radio/television.
I have for a long time been interested in politics. The entire process of something of wonder and amazement, and the excitement is never ending. So, as I write this I recognize my own hypocrisy. I listen to pundits from time to time, and my favorites are Olbermann and Maddow, but I tend to feel less guilty about watching those two as they have been known to draw claws against their ‘own clan’ when the need raised.
There are a few out there that are a little more balanced when it comes to their commentary, but they are a rare breed from what I have experienced.
Then again, just hearing talk radio makes me want to find a way to short circuit the radio from which it comes… and the television equivalent has been known to cause me to use parental controls to block channels like Fox News to keep the mindless drivel from accidentally spilling onto my clean carpet. I steam cleaned it once I don’t feel like doing that again.
Whatever happened to radio news being about news? I know it’s just as easy to wander over to The Seattle Times, The Arizona Republic, MSNBC.com, or The Sydney Morning Herald Online to get the latest news, but there is something special about being able to get the latest news while sitting in traffic, or while your boss thinks you’re listening to his pointless speech. Yet, instead any station called News/Talk is more talk, less news.
I’m not sure about anyone else, but I really don’t feel like hearing some guy rant on and on about how the radical left are out to destroy this country, or hearing some other guy make everything into some conspiracy theory. Even when it comes to progressive talk I’m as equally annoyed as I am with the conservative ranting.
“Call in and tell us how YOU feel” is a fixed offer in most cases.
The folks calling in rarely have more than a handful of sound bites to go by, and many others simply do not fully understand the topic. In other words their opinions are useless. Dissenting opinions are often squished much like ones squish a bug. Many a caller has heard the sounds of the dial tone halfway through their opening statement. If we’re counting Savage, this is quite a few.
So rather than filling the air waves with news, and maybe some good, honest analysis, we instead get people whose qualifications for being a talk radio host are they can be loud, obnoxious, and incite the masses.
So why do we put up with it? Why do we tune in day after day? Is it some sort of narcissistic protection of the first amendment?
Truth is we love carnage. Those who hate talk radio hosts would have to find something new to get our blood boiling, and those who praise them would have to find a new human-deity.
In all honesty I have nothing personal against Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, or Limbaugh. They constantly prove my theory correct that a large segment of the population will believe what they want to believe and to hell with the facts. Without them my theory would be harder to prove! That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see them out of a career… the mess created is far too expensive to clean up, even with the help of Mike Rowe.
While actually listening to the clowns on the radio and TV makes me want to see-saw between dry-heaving and sobbing for humanity, the resulting “Epic foot-in-mouth Failures” from their loyal masses is the best kind of slap-stick comedy out there. If it wasn’t for them, “Teabagger” would still be limited to sexual innuendo, and not a pack of very strange people getting involved in the political process.
While I would love to wish that people would stop listening to these guys and let them try to actually hold down a real job without getting fired, it’s like asking people to not look at a passenger train wreck. It is just not going to happen.
All we can do is remember it is our duty to take our family and friends aside each day after they run in screaming about some new scandalous way the Government is going to create death panels for our children based on how fast they can recite their ABC’s, pat them on the shoulder, and tell them that no matter what the ‘cool kids’ say, being an idiot is not the “in” thing, while immediately providing a maximum dose of “Bad Politics Benadryl”, also known as the facts.
If they walk away muttering “Whatever” and flip you the bird, then you’ll know the only thing left is an intervention: either come clean and sober, or, spend the rest of their life alone itching for hits of Beck or a dose of Limbaugh.
If you can break through the addiction and educate, you’re like that guy William Banks, only politics instead of Crack.
Which leaves me with a question… how long until we have “Pundit Addicts Anonymous”?