Mark Green, in Blazing Saddles, the remake

Well, not exactly. But remember that scene in Blazing Saddles where Cleavon Little holds the gun to his own head and says, "Nobody move or the n----- gets it!"?

Right now Air America management is like that Cleavon Little character.

Yesterday I was at home in the morning waiting for the plumber to come and let me know how many arms and legs it was going to cost to replace the toilet and vanity in the upstairs bathroom, and I took advantage of the opportunity to check into the "Sammy Cam", the camera that runs sometimes during Air America's Sam Seder Show. The most interesting thing about Sammy Cam is what you hear during the commercial breaks.

Yesterday what we heard after the show was something that had been rumored for a while, but has now been pretty much confirmed: If you thought that Air America under Stephen and Mark Green would somehow be different from the way it was under Danny Goldberg; that they would recognize the value of the talent to the Air America product, that they would realize it takes a while for radio shows to build a listener base and make a profit, well, guess again.

Because a little slip yesterday told us what Sam Seder has been alluding to all week: Once again, Air America management is putting the gun to its own head and cancelling one of its best shows.

I and other loyalists to Air America and to the old Morning Sedition crew have expended a great deal of energy over the past year lobbying with AAR to get Marc Maron back on the air. When those efforts failed, we for the most part adopted Sam Seder as the next best thing. And now it looks like they're doing it again. For whether it was accidental or not (and I have my doubts), the Sammy Cam was left on yesterday after the show, and temporary producer Dan Pashman mentioned something about doing a promo next week to tune into the final two Sam Seder shows.

So now we know. And now we know that any illusions we had that the new ownership would stop the relentless march of AAR down the road to a 12-hour lineup of progressive utopians with no sense of humor (® Maron); and its transformation into a hybrid of the most corporatist aspects of National Public Radio and the most insufferable self-righteousness of Pacifica, punctuated with commercials for Ovaltine, schemes to get rich quick in the foreclosure market, and baldness cures; have been broken on the rocks of continued mismanagement. We've already seen signs that Air America is simply a vanity project for Mark Green -- just as it was for Danny Goldberg, who promptly upon joining the company peppered the airwaves with ads for his own Artemis Records label and gave Artemis artist Steve Earle his own radio show. Ads for Green's latest book pepper the network's airwaves, and I have a feeling I know who is going to take over that 9 AM to noon timeslot. (Hint: he wrote this book.)

Melina has a long history in the broadcast industry, and puts it all into a larger perspective (including, for some reason, parrots, which actually now that I think about it may be appropriate). Meanwhile, it looks increasingly that all we can do is look back in sorrow AND in anger -- at what could have and should have been.