Jon Elliott, formerly of Air America, is starting a new venture, and you're invited to come along:
Jon Elliott hosts "This is America with Jon Elliott" the fastest three hours in broadcasting which is heard Monday to Friday from 3 - 6 PM Pacific (6-9 PM Eastern) on San Diego’s 1700 AM. In February, 2009 for the third year in a row, industry bible, Talkers Magazine named Jon one of the Top 250 radio talk show hosts in America. His daily radio program ranks in the top 10 progressive radio talk shows in the country.
If you like the idea of progressive talk radio, this is an opportunity to support it from the gound up. Jon's got one show on one station airing in San Diego at streaming at jontalk.com. He has a plan to grow and bring some favorite former Air America hosts back on air and make it national. YOU can help - by pledging $10/month, you'll help Jon attract an advertizing base and ensure progressive radio is run by progressives and not at the whim of conservative management and Clear Channel. Join.
Jon Elliott will LIVEBLOG THURSDAY at 11am PDT (that's 2pm EDT)
I was late to the party – I didn’t discover Daily Kos until I heard Kos was doing a booksigning for Crashing the Gates. And then honestly, I didn’t get past the Front Page or even get a UID until I volunteered at NN08. I’m slow, no question.
So, like many Americans who haven’t found this community or others like this, I was adrift in a sea of confusion and spells of hopelessness as I watched the previous administration stealing not one, but two elections in my estimation. My country did nothing to stop crooks who have subsequently plundered our country, taking us into a war of aggression to control resources in other countries for corporate cronies.
In early 2005, I met progressive radio when Los Angeles got a radio station with an all progressive format and it helped me to remind myself that this country is strong enough to withstand an administration antithetical to my understanding of American values and traditions (let alone some ‘piece of paper’ called "The Constitution").
My 2004 had been life-changing long before the presidential election. I don’t wanna gross anyone out, but I had a horrible medical accident in the middle of the year, and was profoundly debilitated. The accident was preventable, and I my warnings of the danger ahead of time were ignored. The situation became life-threatening as a result, I was revived through trauma surgery, had then had further, life-threatening events as I was leavin surgery. My recovery has been complicated and long - some of you know I became infected with the Lyme spirochete either at the time of the accident, or that's just when my immune system was compromised sufficiently that I could no loner keep the bug in check. I'm battling with it today, having finally received a correct diagnosis several years later.
So having lost my ability to support myself earlier that year, my head was already in a really bad place ahead of November 2004. I felt Swift Boat-ed myself during the campaign as I watched it play out. For a second time that year, I felt powerless - I watched with so many others as the returns came in and then the numbers began inexplicably reversing... omg, was it happening again?!
What was wrong with the country?! We’d gotten ourselves into a war of aggression and we let the guy who did that go back for another round? How was this EVEN possible?
So in February of 2005, KTLK went on the air in Los Angeles. I remember the first billboard along the 405 announcing Progressive Talk and wondering what that was all about – that was my first introduction to there being an Air America.
I credit Al Franken to some degree with helping me to keep myself sane when my body and the world had gone crazy. It was Al’s political humor which helped me get up in the morning, and brought me moments of relief while I was working to put mind and body back together. Al’s insights, his turn of phrase, the levity which acknowledged the level of absurdity to which our political world had come were like the clean cool air sweeping inland off the ocean. Al induced me to smile, and encouraged me to know that I would be able to survive to whatever depths we sank, that America is stronger than the trouble we were wreaking for ourselves. We would all return to health, me, the nation and everyone in it.
Al made me smile when friends and family had compassion fatigue with my prolonged disability, and those around me put aside their disbelief with what had happened with the election despite answers not adding up.
Loving Al introduced me to Thom and to Randi and later to Rachel, and I leaned on them all for support.
I wasn’t able to return to work, but since my doctors didn't discern why my recovery stalled (aforementioned long undiagnosed Lyme disease) I had trouble with my disability insurance because my doctors didn’t know what was wrong, so I no longer had substantiation that I was disabled. I spent all my retirement savings and had to flee Southern California to someplace less expensive.
I was fortunate to land in Austin, Texas where there is less traffic, people are friendly, and politics and values are progressive in many ways. I felt at home. My health didn’t improve, but I began to become familiar with my new surroundings, slow as I was, tired as I was, and dizzy a good deal of the time and often disoriented - all classic signs of Lyme, at that time still undiagnosed.
Air America stayed with me through the move. Until one day there was fuzz when I turned on the receiver. The next day there was a Spanish language station. Poof, all gone. If there was a press release or announcement, I never bumped into it.
So, I did the only thing a gal could do, I streamed. And in streaming, I listened more hours of the day, and I bumped into Jon Elliott late nights.
With Jon's show, I actually had an opportunity to voice my vent – while the ’08 Texas primary was reported in the national media as having gone for Hillary, I phoned in to This is America and said that the media had missed the actual result. This primary, of course, had been my first experience with the Texas Two-Step, and it takes too long to explain how it works, but Hillary only won one part of it (in part thanks to Operation Chaos). Because of how it’s set up, the official tally wouldn’t become official until June, which allowed the national media to keep reporting the incorrect result that the state went to Hillary. So I called Jon to ‘splain what I thought I understood.
Jon asked me to call again with an update, which I did after attending my County convention as a delegate since and now understood the process a bit better. Jon remembered all of the details of my previous call weeks previously, and announced them on air as he greeted me. I had my two minutes of time to call it like I saw it, and Jon gave me the opportunity to correct what I saw as a significant misunderstanding in the national media – as in blogging, I found that both gratifying and liberating. His show is accessible and informative and chatty and just like he says at the beginning of his show, I am home.
By the time the Texas results were official, Obama already was about to have sufficient electoral votes to clinch the nomination, so the story that Texas in fact didn’t go for Hillary was irrelevant, so I was pleased to have made an effort to correct the narrative while it was a current topic.
After initially rejoicing for Air America, I’ve been disappointed in how they’ve apparently treated their staff as their talent has been chased away for a variety of reasons, the result being a cast which doesn’t hold my attention or interest the way it did when I first met the lineup in 2005. I’m inclined to believe that management doesn’t hold the values I understood to be part of that organization. There are plenty of other stations where all one can hear is Republicans, so that Air America added one to their lineup says to me their heart ain't progressive.
I salute Jon Elliott for striking out to demonstrate that there is a passionate and hungry listenership for truly progressive voices on radio. I believe he’ll prove that assertion with membership which will attract advertisers who want access to a committed and interactive audience. I believe progressive talk is sustainable and will naturally increase as more Americans seek to understand the devastation wreaked on this country by the previous administration.
A progressive blog attracts people who already know what they believe. But progressive radio can reach more passive audiences by brining information to those less motivated to seek answers.
As we wait for Senator Franken to be sworn in, I’m glad we’re building a better system to keep liberal talk and progressive values on the air.
There's a goal of 200 memberships today ~ please be foundational in this effort to esbablish self-sustaining, progressive radio.
Congratulations on the new venue, Jon! Thanks for everything your doing.
