Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Keillor tries to explain talk radio

I am continually amused with the way the liberal mind works. It has the ability to distort and warp facts in a way that even a death knell sounds like the melodious singing of a robin redbreast.

We all know that Air America is hardly making a dent in the radio world (except for lack of judgement regarding commercials). Well, Mr. Prairie Home Companion himself, Garrison Keillor, tries his hand at explaining why Air America is getting low ratings in his article "Confessions of a Listener"

The reason you find an army of right-wingers ratcheting on the radio and so few liberals is simple: Republicans are in need of affirmation, they don't feel comfortable in America and they crave listening to people who think like them.

Mr. Keillor is right. We do crave listening to people who think like us and lord knows we don't hear it from the MSM. And there are many that do listen and many more that agree. So many agree and voted that way, in fact, that Republicans now control the House, the Senate and the White House. The truth is that people want facts not liberal spin. Yes, Limbaugh, Hannity, Boortz et. al. are biased and make no attempt to hide it, but they present the other side of a story, which is valuable for people to make informed opinions.

Liberals actually enjoy living in a free society; tuning in to hear an echo is not our idea of a good time.

Oh really? Is that why a lot of liberals support dictators? Oh, I see, you mean a free society only for yourselves, not others. Thanks clearing that up.

Mr. Keillor uses this article to explain what he listens to on the radio. I bet you'll never guess.
drumroll please..... public radio.

The best of what you find on public radio is authentic experience. It has little to do with politics. The US Marine just returned from Sudan with lots of firsthand impressions of the crisis there; the journalist just back from Falluja, where he spent three months; a firsthand documentary about life aboard the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in the Middle East--that's what Edward R. Murrow did from London in 1940, and it's still golden today. It's the glorious past and it's the beautiful future. (Thanks to the Internet, the stuff doesn't vanish into thin air. You can go to thislife.org and get the story of the Houston woman or the aircraft carrier documentary. You can find the Sudan and Falluja interviews at whyy.org/freshair. More and more people are doing this. Nobody cares what Rush Limbaugh said two days ago; it's gone and forgotten, but the Internet has become an enormous extension of radio.) That's why public radio is growing by leaps and bounds. It is hospitable to scholars of all stripes and to travelers who have returned from the vast, unimaginable world with stories to tell. Out here in the heartland, we live for visitors like those. We will make the demented uncle shut up so we can listen to somebody who actually knows something.

Is public radio growing by leaps and bounds? Since it is not rated by Arbitron, (to quote the tootsie roll owl) "The world may never know." It is all that the liberals have to hang their hats on. It is like he is saying "See, liberal talk shows are not failing because they're bad, it's because we don't WANT to listen. We have better things to listen to on the radio than politics." I have to agree, there are better things to listen to on the radio than Air America and it seems everyone is doing just that.