Grasping at media straws

I really shouldn't snark any more about "Charlie from Brooklyn" or "Nick from New Jersey" or "Frank from Lodi" (the latter two of whom I actually know slightly in real life) after I found myself calling the new WWRL morning show this morning to talk about last night's debate. But with Mr. Brilliant finally discovering the value of an MP3 player in playing old Morning Sedition shows while at work, and us turning our laptop and Bose Wave into the world's most expensive AM radio to listen to Rachel Maddow at dinnertime, I was just so GRATEFUL to have even a tolerable morning AM radio show to listen to.

For nearly two years, my mornings started with "It's six past the hour, and this....is Morning Sedition", followed by "Good morning geniuses, philosopher kings and queens, working class heroes, progressive utopians with no sense of humor, lurking conservatives...." And after listening to a couple of hours of Marc Maron's bebop funny, the smart interplay among Maron, Riley, the writers, and the board dudes, I was ready to face the horror that is life in the Bush years.

So when I left work today at five and rushed out to the car so I could hear the last hour of Maron's sub gig for Randi Rhodes, and my face broke out in a wide grin, I realized that things are at a sorry pass indeed when the world somehow seems so much more tolerable when this hopelessly neurotic, narcissistic, emotional wreck of a Jewish man is on the radio. And it isn't just me. Morning Sedition has been gone for nearly two years, and every time Maron subs for someone on Air America, there will be five callers, and it's not even gypsy or Seanie or Kristapea from the Seditionists blog, saying "I really miss you on the radio, man!" I wonder how he feels when he hears that; if he goes home after the show and sits on his deck, smoking a cigar and muttering dire things about what he'd like to do to Danny Goldberg. Hell, I sit there after the show muttering dire things about what I think should be done to Danny Goldberg.

It isn't that I'm not glad that Rennie Bishop finally realized that an idiot shill like Armstrong Williams had no place on progressive talk radio. And it isn't that I have a grudge against Mark Riley for not going to bat for Maron when Danny Goldberg was painting a huge target on his own network and then shooting it as if he were Dick Cheney and Air America were Harry Whittington's face. When you're on the shady side of 50 and have to earn a living, sometimes Fighting the Good Fight has to take second place to being able to buy shoes for your kid. It's kind of nice to have Riley back on the radio in the morning even if it does feel like a bone tossed at us old Seditionists; and if Richard Bey isn't Marc Maron, well, who else is? Could we really handle more than one of him? But after having been screwed over as badly in his radio career in the last few years as Maron has, it's promising that Bey has finally landed on his feet after four years in the AM Substitute Host Purgatory in which Marc Maron finds himself these days. Maybe it's an omen.

I still don't understand people who call radio shows on a regular basis, especially in the morning, when you have barely enough time to make your point and hope that the host doesn't mistake your unfortunate use of the word "pragmatism" to describe why Dennis Kucinich isn't really a viable candidate to mean that you are a Hillary supporter. I suppose there's a certain amount of pseudo-fame that comes with being a regular caller. "Nick" is actually a pretty bright guy, though he's sort of the Leonard Zelig of Bergen County Democratic politics in that he's EVERYWHERE. And "Charlie from Brooklyn" knows of what he speaks as well. I'm not sure it's any worse to call every Air America show than it is to spend enough time with AM radio on that one knows that "H.R. from Staten Island", the elderly conservative who for some reason used to call Sam Seder every week and seemed to be fond of him despite their disagreements, also calls Richard Neer on WFAN on Saturdays, identifying himself as "Howie from Staten Island" instead -- as if he's some kind of secret agent going by a number of aliases.

Melina wrote earlier this evening about what it was like when Air America started up and people like us realized that it wasn't just us out here, that there were other people who also saw what was going on; who didn't have those fucking ribbon magnets on our cars and didn't see George Bush as a tough guy because he "went after the terrorists." It was like being Donna Douglas in the old Twilight Zone episode Eye of the Beholder and being in that place with others like us so that we could finally feel normal.

The people who run progressive talk radio, and particularly those who run Air America (for while the cast changes, nothing else really does) really don't understand what a lifeline it is to have these shows out there in a sea of media where presidential candidates are asked about UFOs and who they want to win the World Series instead of about FISA and the Constitution; and where the Speaker of the House is asked if she prays for the troops to win in Iraq and Robert Novak still insists that everyone in Washington knew who Valerie Plame was and that she wasn't covert. They don't understand how we NEED to hear over the airwaves that we are Not Insane and to reach out and grasp the figurative hand that reaches out through the radio -- and now over the Intertubes -- to let us know we're not alone.