Talk Radio

During my stint in politics I was asked a few times to be a guest on a couple of the local talk radio shows. I came away from those experiences with the distinct impression that the world I portrayed in my cartoon strip was more real than not. Far right talk radio is "popular", not because it has so many listeners nodding in time with the comments and opinions of the host, but because the shows are putting forth the opinions the advertisers want to hear. The old adage still holds true: follow the money. How long do you think a Rush Limbaugh would remain on the air if no advertising money came in? About as long as it took for the producer to pull the plug.

The average American is neither far right nor far left. The average American is not concerned whether or not some camel jockey becomes the dictator over miles of sand. What the average American wants is to be able to pay the bills, raise the kids safely, and be unbothered by the government. The wierdos, kooks and screaming fanatics are all background noise. They are not that important...except to the radio hosts looking for a story.

You know, every problem we currently face could be solved literally overnight if those with the power to do so would let go of their personal ambition and greed. People would not be losing their homes to foreclosure, teachers would be able to actually teach in uncrowded classrooms, gas would be affordable as well as every other commodity on the market, and people would not have to go into debt in order to see a doctor.

That last paragraph is complete heresy to the talk radio crowd. It is almost as if they require the existence of a peasant class. At one cocktail party, the publisher of one of the local newspapers boasted that he used illegals for two-thirds of his crew at his printing plant, drunkingly adding that he was saving a fortune over hiring citizens for the same work. He has no shortage of money and even if he switched to union labor his personal fortune would not be harmed. No, like all of the other so-called powerful in this country, he is wallowing in self-satisfied greed assured that the broadcast media will go along with him...as long as the advertising dollars keep flowing.

And what about those dollars. What sort of life's necessities are Rush, Laura, Michael and the others selling? Less than twenty years ago many of their advertisers would have been arrested as frauds, or at the very least ridiculed as "snakeoil" peddlers. Now it seems anything goes as long as it makes a buck. No proof has to be offered that what is being sold has any basis in science or even reality. A pity, that. It would be nice to have an assurance that truth had come back to the airwaves. Of course, if that happened, we wouldn't have the great fortune to learn all about the latest sexual enhancement product being advertised on the radio.