Posts Tagged → talk radio
Democratic self-rule is not supposed to be easy
Up until Congressman Mike Johnson was unanimously elected as the next Speaker of the US House of Representatives last week, political watchers, news reporters, and insiders were in a state of panic, panic I tell ya.
The Epoch Times described the US House of Representatives scrum for selecting a Speaker, after China-owned RINO Kevin McCarthy was ejected by hero Congressman Matt Gaetz, as a time of “paralysis.”
The unreliable and constantly discredited New York Times called the blessed time without a Speaker of the House as “weeks of chaos.”
Conservative talk radio was filled up to puke-on-your-feet levels of “Gaetz should have had a plan,” and “You only remove the Speaker when you have a plan,” and similar Conservative Inc. mistrust of the essential democratic process and worshiping of the unnaturally smooth “normal” process that just has to be corrupt. Sean Hannity, Clay and Buck, Glenn Beck, and the rest of you radio guys, you know who you are.
The rest of the press/media/ political outlets, both establishment/legacy and new alike, were of a common mind: Washington works best when it works perfectly smoothly, efficiently, and there are no hiccups, apparently. And thus we conclude that apparently democratic processes of debating and voting and disagreeing are uncomfortable to political insiders. Isn’t that reassuring?
Thankfully, when Speaker Mike Johnson was eventually coronated, we had the Babylon Bee in the room to shed the most accurate light on the situation: Their headline “Smoke Rises Over Capitol Indicating Congress Has Resumed Setting Taxpayers’ Money On Fire” wasn’t really funny, because the truth is painful.
That Babylon Bee humor was an updated version of Mark Twain’s observations of Congress: “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
And his “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
But wait, there’s more of how Americans then and now really feel about Congress when it is working properly:
“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when a baby gets hold of a hammer.” (Will Rogers)
“The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back.” (Will Rogers)
“I love to go to Washington, if only to be near my money.” (Bob Hope)
“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” (Ronald Reagan)
“Members of Congress should be compelled to wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers, so we could identify their corporate sponsors.” (Caroline Baum)
The truth is that self-rule by a group of citizens, by way of their elected representatives, is not supposed to be easy, or smooth, or efficient, or painless, or without occasional hiccups. To expect nothing but easy, smooth sailing when power and money are being fought over would be a childish fantasy. Or an evil wish.
Think about some of the total brawls we have witnessed in recent years from South Korea’s parliament, or Japan’s parliament. Chairs flying, punches thrown, martial arts kicks landing on unhappy faces! Likewise in a few European parliamentary democracies in recent years, where policy disagreements were settled with fist fights. Vive le human passion for truth, I say.
Well do I recall first seeing 18th and 19th century drawings and political cartoons of fisticuffs, cudglings, and canings in the US Congress, as well as accurate pictures of fatal duels among elected officials. These old drawings showed the true inner workings of representative government – members beating the snot out of each other. The other good side of these bloodlettings and drawn-out disputes is that when responsible people feel strongly about freedom vs tyranny, about slavery vs abolition, about fair taxation vs taxation without representation (which Americans are living under right now), they have strong disagreements. Government commensurately slows down and waits for the disagreements to get resolved. Good, this is natural and healthy.
You know what scares me in politics? Bipartisanship. Yep, that old let’s–reach-across-the-aisle crap means only one thing: Both political parties have reached agreement on mutually beneficial ways of wasting and pocketing our hard-earned tax money that the government coerced out of our pockets at gunpoint.
I was glad to see Rep. Kevin McCarthy ejected from the Speaker’s seat. Smoooooth McCarthy was an embarrassment in so many ways (not the least of which his evil role in covertly delaying and unnecessarily drawing out the selection process in the hopes of being re-installed as Speaker), and he smells of corruption.
I was glad to see Rep. Matt Gaetz and others (where was my US Congressman Scott Perry in all this?) demand that McCarthy be held accountable for breaking the promises he made to attain the Speaker’s seat. I was glad to see Rep. Gaetz eventually widely recognized and appreciated for having toppled the DC Swamp’s man in Congress and replacing him with Rep. Mike Johnson, who appears to be a decent person from East Succotash America and not yet familiar with greasy handshakes.
Overall, the shut down and gridlock in Congress during the struggle for the Speakership was a big gain for the US citizenry, and I would like to know what Mark Twain would have said about it. Whatever Mark Twain would have said about those glorious weeks of Congressional inaction, we just know he would have hit the nail on the head.
iHeart Radio’s Gillette Hari Kari Moment
Over the past couple of weeks, iHeart Radio has embarked on its own style of Gillette razors campaign, where a successful brand with a wide following abruptly changes everything it does and thereby deliberately antagonizes and alienates its own customer base.
Recall that last year Gillette had a campaign against straight white men, families, and religion that revealed how clueless liberals are, despite their claims of being “open minded.”
Gillette’s discriminatory ads revealed the stereotypes of regular Americans that liberals live under, and how warped the world of Hollywood, New York City, the entertainment industry, and modern cancel culture are. The ensuing hue and cry by smeared, racially profiled, gender shamed, antagonized, and alienated buyers of Gillette products resulted in Gillette losing gazillions of dollars of business, as former devotees purchased hair gels and razors made by Gillette’s competitors, instead. Whatever Gillette was after, they reaped the exact opposite result, to their own great loss.
Well, if you listen to AM radio talk radio, here in Harrisburg it is WHP580, then you are probably listening to an iHeart Radio station, and now they are following Gillette’s lead full steam ahead.
For decades, talk radio stations have followed a pretty standard and successful format, where the talk show host – Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Bob Durgin, Ken Matthews, Buck Sexton et al – speaks, shares his or her views on politics and culture, and then also has some product advertising. Sprinkle in some general news reporting by some media outlet, usually Fox News these days, and you have a 2-4-minute break, at the end of which the talk show host returns and picks up where they left off. This format has worked like a Swiss watch for about thirty years, and suddenly, iHeart Radio has thrown it overboard.
Well, let’s call this like it is: Man overboard!
It is a catastrophic man overboard moment, because iHeart Radio has not only abandoned the working format, they are introducing an enormous amount of content and political commentary totally contrary to the hosts in whose show this new content is appearing. For example, iHeart Radio now plays all kinds of oldies songs shorts from the 1970s-1990s and has bizarre commentary about them, has interviews with Hollywood actors who are well on record as hating the talk show host the audience is presently listening to, encourages listeners to enjoy the benefits of covid19’s impact on nature (fewer humans are alive to ruin the natural world), and a bunch of socialist entertainment industry pap and commentary. Topped off with NBC News literally reading verbatim China’s talking points against this administration and against America.
Literally all of this new content runs contrary to the interests and educated beliefs held by the listening audience. Not to mention it all takes up time that the audience wants to be listening to their talk show host. It literally stretches into five minutes of Hollywood news and entertainment crap. My favorite bizarre moment was this chipper baby-talking radio lady, who could have been a suburban soccer mom anywhere, announcing the tour of “the up and coming rapper named Pitbull!”
Her enthusiasm was so obviously artificial and fake, especially because American soccer moms don’t normally listen to up-and-coming violent rap thugs named Pitbull. All cheery like and all.
Now surely iHeart Radio is run by some pretty smart people. It has to be. It is, after all, a huge business with a lot to gain and a lot to lose. Smart people usually make business choices that reinforce brand loyalty and reward their customers with more of what their customers want. So one cannot help but come to the conclusion here that iHeart Radio is deliberately trying to alienate and push away the very audience that has made them successful, just like Gillette did.
But why would iHeart Radio staff try to alienate their own audience?
Because like the goofball liberals running Gillette’s self-detonating social commentary advertisements, the same mindset at iHeart Radio informs the same type of liberal-in-a-bubble that they can feed us America First idiots anything, even things toxic to us, and we will just eat it up. Because they see us as deplorable morons with no independent thoughts and no ability to think for ourselves. Which is of course not true, because talk radio audiences are the best informed of all media audiences in America. Just ask the New York Times! True fact.
And so we are watching iHeart Radio follow the same path as Gillette and other virtue signalling companies, whose leadership and staff mistakenly thought they could “educate” their customers by belittling them and driving them away. Incidentally, Fox News is also going in this direction. If you listen to Fox News radio briefs these days, you will hear “news” that is 100% overt policy assaults on the Trump administration, with no rebuttal or other viewpoint followup provided. With the two Murdoch boys running it, Fox News is now just part of the larger Democrat Party mainstream media.
If iHeart Radio is going to commit hari kari (Japanese ritual suicide), then maybe One America News should be exploring its options for providing radio listeners with just one small space to be free, to call our own. Free from the monotonous, poisonous uniculture of Hollywood’s vacuous, heavily leftist entertainment industry.
This little space on the radio dial is all we want. But is iHeart Radio listening?
Screenshot of iHeart Radio’s web page…no “Contact Us” or feedback page. No phone number. Just “hand made in New York City”…by liberals who just don’t care
iHeart Radio wants to answer our questions, so long as we are satisfied with inaccurate off-topic stock replies. Note that they only provide a “Yes” button, and no “No” button. Hello? Is anybody listening?