Why are the people who run progressive talk radio such nimrods?

There are few people who have been bigger supporters of progressive talk radio than I am, and few blogs that have been more supportive than this one. Here at Casa la Brilliant, we started listening to Air America Radio from the very first day. Mr. Brilliant tuned in at noon on March 31, 2004, and we both started in with Morning Sedition the very next day. The trials and tribulations of Air America are now legendary, from the petty and preposterous Danny Goldberg first cancelling Unfiltered, which featured the creator of The Daily Show and some lesbian who'd never amount to anything named, uh, RACHEL MADDOW; and then Morning Sedition. The latter show will someday be listened to by radio cultists the way Jean Shepherd and Bob & Ray are today. I don't think Air America ever got its bearings back after that, as it has spent the last three years futzing around, first losing Al Franken to the then-unknown purgatory of running for Senate in Minnesota, screwing over the talented and loyal Sam Seder seventeen ways to Sunday, barely noticing as Rachel Maddow began her tiptoe out the door towards the greener pastures of MSNBC, and finally letting the one person who started out with actual radio experience walk over a contract dispute, deciding that William Kunstler's old protégè was somehow an improvement over the maddening, moody, but passionate and always prepared Randi Rhodes.

I'm not sure what's been going on over at NovaM the last few weeks, but one day I was downloading Randi's podcast and the next day she was gone. There's been much speculation as to exactly what happened, but it is now clear that Sheldon & Anita Drobny, co-founders of AAR who were forced out early on, and Randi Rhodes, have parted ways. And still none of Randi's listeners knows what happened. And the Drobnys and Rhodes are locked in a battle of "we said...she said."

I'm not one of the Randi worshippers that hang out on her messageboard and call her show and call her goddess, though I found that in the months since returning to Florida and syndicating through NovaM, she had returned to the form I used to listen to back in the days when my old job hadn't blocked streaming audio and I would listen to Mike Malloy on the now-defunct ieAmerica and Neil Rogers and Randi Rhodes over internet streams. Randi was tough, funny, and while not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer, always ferociously prepared. And apparently even more self-destructive than Marc Maron, who has managed to get himself fired from Air America twice and is only back in the fold now due to the inescapable reality of his own fiercely loyal fan base -- a fan base for which he has nothing but contempt, as this is a man who does not want to be part of any club that would have him as a member. But at least for the time being, until the suits at Air America decide that some lightweight, droning sleep-inducer needs to be paid instead, they've decided to run with the experiment that is Break Room Live, or as I wish it were called, Two Live Jews.

But back on the radio tubes, all is still crappy in the land of progressive radio. I had taken a Founders Club membership with NovaM after Randi landed there for the sole purpose of downloading her podcasts, since Mike Malloy has become unlistenable now that his show consists entirely of ranting about Israel as if nothing else in the world was going on. NovaM has alienated the only property they had in wide release, while Air America is, I suspect, more reliant than ever on the eyeballs that Marc Maron and Sam Seder are bringing to the company's Web site.

So what is the problem with progressive talk radio?