There used to be no winger talk radio on my FM dial. I’m sure there was plenty on AM, but I’m never on AM. Now there are three winger stations no my FM dial — 92.1, 99.7, and 107.7. When I drive I usually flick randomly through all the FM stations, so every day I get a few snippets of “bowing to the King of Saudia Arabia”, “these people want to destroy us”, etc. Pretty much all if it, with the sometime exceptions of Dennis Miller and Fred Thompson, is yelled in an angry voice.
There’s all these books and movies where there’s something going on in the background that eventually blows everything up — the Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus in That Obscure Object Desire, the Cuban revolutionaries in Godfather II. I get that vibe more and more from right-wing radio.
Dave
Went to Borders the other day and it was pretty empty. What you could still buy multiple copies of at 80% off were all the right wing diatribes. Perhaps the closing of the big box book stores is a good thing as it is one less way for their propaganda covers to not be constantly shoved in your face.
cleek
I get that vibe more and more from right-wing radio.
i can get it on lefty blogs everywhere.
sure. everybody loves creative destruction in the abstract. the idea of being able to start from a clean slate where you can form the society you like is much more attractive than the idea of working to convince other people to convince other people to convince enough of their Congresspeople that your ideas are right.
blow it all up, start clean, make sure you’re in a position to control the rebuilding. yeah, good luck with that.
mpbruss
The chemist (or biologist) quietly working for crazy Brad Pitt’s dad in 12 Monkeys?
PurpleGirl
But didn’t George W. Bush walk hand and hand with Prince Bandur; I’m sure I saw pictures of it.
Linda Featheringill
Are you saying that centrifugal forces are striding across the land?
Yes.
MattF
They’re inching ever closer to real-live ’30’s fascism– and don’t kid yourself, the radio ranters all know precisely where that line is. The weird difference is that in the ’30’s it was all about the next generation overcoming the past. Here it’s the past overcoming the next generation. So, I still don’t get it, despite the evidence before my lying eyes.
Napoleon
Is this your first Everclear lyrics reference?
c u n d gulag
When I was living in NC, the righties had all their bloviating assholes on FM as well as AM. You had a tough time even finding NPR on the FM dial.
Now, I live 70 miles north of NYC, and I still can’t get a Liberal radio station, except out of Buffalo, about 350 miles away, and then only at night, and THEN only if one of their local sports teams, major or minor, isn’t playing. So that makes it about a couple of times on weekdays in the winter.
Righties have owned the radio dial for many, many decades – one of the smartest things they ever did in a culture based on cars and driving.
They had already begun to build their audience before tapes and CD’s came into cars, let alone DVD’s.
Dennis SGMM
How about the increasing enmity between Turkey and Israel?
rlrr
@PurpleGirl:
IOKIYAR, always.
Culture of Truth
“WKRAP all over the country…..”
lacp
@cleek: What makes you think wingnuts want to rebuild anything?
Glen Tomkins
There are two main possibilities presented by the Right Wing Radio consensus that a blow-up is imminent.
History replays every tragedy as a farce, and these RWR types are merely the folks who pile out of the Clown Car of History whenever it pulls to a random stop in its journey around the Big Tent of Life.
The other possiblity is that they are the Fools on the Hill and things really are about to blow up. They’re still clowns and idiots, of course, but that means that they are more in tune with the clownish idiocy of the masses than we elite types.
No way to disprove the latter from anyone on this thread, because we can all read beyond the 4th Grade level. Unfortunately, it’s also true that, for all our collective brilliance, we can’t be sure that we aren’t seeing the unfolding of the tragedy whose farcical recurrence future sophisticates such as ourselves will be able to laugh at.
Hunter Gathers
When your audience is hooked on doomsday conspiracy theories involving dark-skinned interlopers and their race-traitor enablers, the way to keep that audience is to, well, keep fucking that chicken. Or as HST once wrote :
It’s also easier to keep fucking that chicken on radio. It’s cheaper, involves a smaller, more dedicated audience and there’s always a market for things that angry up the blood of middle-aged white male losers.
Beck self-destructed and kept losing his already small audience until he decided to quit, and El Rushbo’s forays into teevee ended badly because his shtick doesn’t play well in a visual medium. Quivering your man-boobs over minorities is no way to increase your ratings.
Montysano
@MattF:
QFT. I just finished Tom Levenson’s “Einstein in Berlin”, and yikes… I’m always hesitant to Godwin any subject, but our direction is spookily similar to late-20’s/early-30s Germany.
CaptainFwiffo
I keep expecting to hear instructions to cut down the tall trees.
Napoleon
@Montysano:
I have said this a bunch of times here, but also Spain before the Civil War.
A Mom Anon
COX media(who owns WSB TV-the ABC affiliate,and WSB AM radio-conservative talk and local news)just bought an FM station here in Atlanta that features Hannity and Boortz(eww) and I forget who else,it’s the same crap that plays on the AM station. Atlanta has one teeny little AM progressive radio station but you have to live within a mile or two of the station to get reception. I think Randi Rhodes is on an AM conservative station because she’s part of a Premire Media package that is all conservative except for her.I’m not sure who owns that one,I think it’s Clear Channel.
I can’t listen to wingnuts on the radio anymore,it’s too crazy and depressing. They lie so much it’s hard to keep up with it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PurpleGirl:
Bandar (known in his and Bush family social circles as “Bandar Bush”) was the Saudi ambassador to the US, my recollection is that picture was with the now-king, maybe then crown prince/regent.
Even though I’m aware that a combination of segmented marketing and my own increasing-with-age removal from pop-culture insulates me from Real America, I am astounded that there are enough listeners to keep Dennis Miller and Fred Thompson on the air, and so many others I vaguely remember from the days I obsessively watched cable during the Clenis Crisis: Janet Parshall, Michael Reagan, Neal Boortz, Mark Levin…
fasteddie9318
Here’s a fun exercise: compare and contrast current American right-wing talk radio with what was being broadcast on Radio Rwanda and RTLM (the latter, I believe, used in the film Hotel Rwanda) prior to the Rwandan genocide.
CaptainFwiffo beat me to it.
Omnes Omnibus
Jonathan Richman/Modern Lovers FTW.
cleek
@lacp:
well, i don’t think wingnuts are anarchists. maybe some libertarian types would want to keep it bare-bones, but most wingnuts would probably want to do something teatardy like “get back to the Constitution” or wutevah.
Linda Featheringill
@CaptainFwiffo:
I had to google that phrase to find out what you meant.
Oh.
Are you serious?
BillinGlendaleCA (aka 10amla)
@Hunter Gathers:
Now I need brain bleach.
Makewi
Barry’s true legacy, increasing the desire for and reach of right wing radio. I guess I should buy stock in Depends.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Remember a little while ago when you, Doug, posted an article about some atheists meeting together, and you poo-pooed it because you didn’t see the point in it? One of the reasons that those of us on the left need to start meeting together is because while we wonder aimlessly, the right is taking over stuff like this.
Villago Delenda Est
“Learn the Truth about Rick Perry!”
Paid for by Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee Inc.
OT: Um, why is there any talk radio on FM? FM is “no static at all”, you know…
PurpleGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ah, thanks. I knew that Bush had walked hand-in-hand with a Saudi royal. It’s incredible they go crazy over Obama following protocol in meeting other leaders and totally ignore the cozy, crony relationship between Bush (and his family) with the Saudi royal family.
Dennis SGMM
@Hunter Gathers:
Pickup trucks are as yet unable to receive broadcast television. Middle-aged white male Americans are looking for anyone other than themselves and their votes to blame for their current state.
dragonath
I don’t know what the situation is like in your area, but you can thank a lot of the religious/political programming out there to an outfit called Salem Communications. Their business model revolves around buying remote radio stations (mostly) on the lower end of the dial and then upping their signal to the point they overwhelm the smaller, usually college stations.
The same outfit owns Hot Air also, too.
trollhattan
Know what would be great? An “equal time doctrine.”
Media consolidation led to cost savings passed on to the consumer, also, too. At this point they pay us to listen to the radio, so efficient is modern broadcasting. It’s magic.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Montysano:
Ok let’s turn the hyperbole down – please show were there is the equivalent of the FreeKorps crushing Soviet Republics in the United States? Until we have private right wing armies of ex-professional soldiers lose in our streets killing at will we haven’t gone there.
Most of wingers are the middle age drug abusing dregs of one of the most privilege generations in human history throwing a mass temper tantrum. There is a huge difference between that and the blood thirsty, PSD combat vet rage of Adolph Hitler.
Glen Tomkins
@BillinGlendaleCA (aka 10amla): “Now I need brain bleach.”
You’re just as bad. After your crack, I can’t get the association with “Out, out, damned spot!” out of my head. Or, “not all the oceans can wash away, etc.”.
Straight out of farce and back to tragedy. McRushBo, indeed!
geg6
@PurpleGirl:
And kissed. Don’t forget the kissing.
lacp
@cleek: Oh. You mean, like Charleston SC circa 1859?
Will Reks
I’m fortunate to be able to listen to progressive talk radio out of Chicago here in SE WI during my commutes.
It seems a lot of winger radio is tied into local issues. It helps if there’s a large city (Milwaukee) nearby that conservatives (mostly from Waukesha Co) can hate on. A few weeks ago there was fighting at the State Fair that got turned into a racial black on white thing. They jump all over issues like that very quickly.
Tsukune
@c u n d gulag: You can’t get any of the Alan Chartock NPR media empire here north of NYC?
Jager
Winger radio is ‘comfortable” for the owners and management.
I ran a pretty successful lefty radio station for 3 years (in spite of Air America)the secret of our operation was local in the morning and afternoon and live and local on the weekend. We were very aggressive in calling out the wingers at every turn. We would record the conservatives station’s shows and promos and point out the lies, make fun of them and the reward was having them spend hours on the air defending themselves. We recorded the wingers who called the station to bitch about us and turned their rants into promos. It worked so well the station doubled in value and the owner sold it, its now religion! Lefty radio was weak, wonkish and timid…that’s why its disappeared.
trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m in love with the modern world.
Massachusetts when it’s late at night.
And the neon when it’s cold outside.
I got the radio on…
mike s
@PurpleGirl:
The Bushes were close to them. The conspiracy theorists like to point out they are the link between Bush and Osama bin Laden, whose family is practically a part of the Saudi royal family.
But the yelling voices in the rightie talk radio sphere do rant endlessly about our oil policy making us beholden to the Saudis (which is why they want domestic drilling so very badly).
joeyess
Since the advent of satellite radio being a standard feature in new cars, winger formatted stations have been buying up FM bandwidth at every turn. There isn’t a winger station in Kansas City, MO that hasn’t bought the bandwidth to match.
Stefan
@Montysano:
Jesus, this stupid Godwin thing. When the discussion is about, say, rhododendrons or the NFL or Star Trek, the inevitable descent into the accusation that your opponent is just like Hitler! is, yes, absurd.
But when the topic under discussion is the use of political propganda to push a far-right/fascist agenda, then, you know, I don’t think that analogies to the best-known historical example of that happening in a modern Western democracy are that crazily out of place…
Tzal
I also noticed the expansion of conservative talkers onto FM radio. I got a rental a few weeks ago and it didn’t have satellite so I was forced to listen to FM stations. This was in Northern California. But I see more and more FM radio stations advertising conservative talkers as opposed to music.
Anecdotal, I know, but I wonder what effect satellite radio is having on the expansion of conservative talkers onto FM stations. Station owners need to fill airtime with something and maybe they are looking at c-grade conservative talk radio as a way to fill airtime cheaply. There seems to be some evidence suggesting that it is the case that radio is on the decline.
Is it unreasonable to conclude that conservative talkers are dominating a dying medium? Good for them.
Chris
@MattF:
Oh, definitely.
Maybe there’s hope, then. After all, it’s kind of hard to wage street wars against Lousy Stinking Commies from a Medicare-supplied wheelchair.
djork
@A Mom Anon:
There’s also a community radio station that has great progressive shows like Democracy Now. I believe it is 89.3. You can pick it up most everywhere in Atlanta.
trollhattan
@Jager:
I think radio’s a bit like owning an urban dive bar–the real value is in the liquor license. That’s why most “good” i.e., interesting radio is outside metro areas where the license isn’t worth much, so the facility and talent are the only value. If you have enough crazy hippies and free thinkers around to support it, you kan haz a crazy radio station.
Anybody who buys an urban radio station is looking at it strictly as an investment to be flipped.
All this is why microstations were fought tooth and claw–they could conceivably water down license values.
Elie
You have to read history to keep from going crazy. As bad as times are now, as crazy as the messaging and as unbalanced wealth and power seems to be, it is not unprecedented.
One great book and a good pretty fast read is Timothy Egan’s “The Big Burn” about Teddy Roosevelt’s successful but fraught establishment of the forest service and many of the national parks. It is filled with stories of legislators with the same narrow, destructive and corrupt, greed driven approaches to making policy for our country… some every bit as destructive and reckless as those now.
In August 1910, essentially the western United States exploded in flames brought about by the severe understaffing and crippling of the Forest Service by the corruption enabled congress. The average Joe American was as clueless as now and the Newspapers consistenly did not tell the whole story or the correct story.
What turned the “story” in the midst of the this enormous conflagration where the rangers were outmatched and under extreme stress, was for the public to see their bravery and persistence in the face of extreme opposition by the “Robber Barons” and their legislature cronies.
Its making the difference for me because my sense of unmitigated doom has been getting the best of me lately and this book has helped me put things a little in perspective.
The other good thing is that sitting outsiide last night, I heard, to me at least for the first time, the call of a Great Horned Owl….one of the fiercest predators. It reminded me to be courageous in the face of the harshness of life…
evap
@djork: Yea 89.3, WRFG! (Radio Free Georgia, natch.) Their news and political stuff is very good. My spousal unit does a show there (on Celtic music).
eemom
@cleek:
You “steely-eyed realist” you.
[snicker]
Sorry, I couldn’t help it.
Big Baby DougJ
@Napoleon:
Modern Lovers!
Big Baby DougJ
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I’m all about liberals meeting, I just don’t think atheism is a cause worth meeting about. I don’t think religion is either, FWIW.
Dennis SGMM
TURN YOUR RADIO ON
Writer Albert E. Brumley
Come and listen in to a radio station, where the mighty host of Heaven sing,
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on), turn your radio on (turn your radio on),
If you want to want to hear the songs of Zion,
Coming from the land of endless spring,
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on).
Chorus
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And listen to the music in the air,
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And glory to share (glory share)
Turn the lights down low (lights down low)
And listen to the Master’s Radio,
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Turn your radio on.
Brother, listen in to the gloryland chorus,
Listen to the glad hosannahs roll,
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
Get a little taste of joys awaiting,
Get a little Heaven in your soul,
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Find More lyrics at http://www.sweetslyrics.com
Turn your radio on.
Chorus
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And listen to the music in the air,
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And glory to share (glory share)
Turn the lights down low (lights down low)
And listen to the Master’s Radio,
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Turn your radio on.
Listen to the songs of the fathers and the mothers,
And the many friends gone on before,
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on),
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on),
Some eternal morning we shall meet them,
Over on the Hallelujah Shore,
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God),
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on).
Chorus
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And listen to the music in the air,
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And glory to share (glory share)
Turn the lights down low (lights down low)
And listen to the Master’s Radio,
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Turn your radio on.
kindness
Take CD’s with you. If your car stereo has a din plug, plug in your ipod.
Anything to take you away from the crazies. Just ’cause they choose to live there doesn’t mean you should have to.
Jager
@trollhattan: I persuaded the owner to let me do “liberal” because the station was the least valuable property he owned. It was worth about 5 million when we changed it over, it sold for just under 12 million cash.
I was part of the FM revolution in the early 1970’s. The only reason we were able to put rock on FM was the owners didn’t value the FM side. When I got into FM only about 15% of the population had access to an FM radio. By 1976 85% of music listening was on FM, it was a stunning thing to be part of. In those days you could buy a top ten market FM signal for a couple of million dollars, today between 50 and 100 million.
A broker friend of mine called last week, he has a 50kw AM for sale in San Francisco, he asked what I’d do with it.
I told full time gay talk and entertainment and not be shy about it. His prospective buyer is thinking sports…good fucking luck to him without the Giants or the Niners!
Mino
Legal Schnauser has a post up about Obama advisers fearing a coup if the government tried to charge the idiots with their crimes.
And our CIA and the IMF is worried about a military coup in Greece right now. China is even offering to help in the next bailout.
Exciting times.
trollhattan
@Jager:
Great story! I grew up in Seattle and was around for the brief, glorious hippie takeover of FM, which ’til then was mostly relegated to simulcasting the AM signal (basically, license sitting). Clever folks doing clever, never before heard things–it seemed like an actual cultural revolution. I landed in NorCal for college and discovered the amazing KSAN, which set the hook pretty deep.
Studied broadcasting communications while doing the college radio thing (not a namby-pamby 10-watter either) but by the time I graduated, radio as we knew it was in the process of being ruined. The final dagger was awaking to KSAN having changed format to country (in San Francisco?!).
Of a gazillion stations in our area I listen to three–four during basketball season and the only commercial channel of the bunch. I suspect all the other stations have their programming sourced from a server farm in Atlanta or Dallas.
What a waste.
Calouste
@Mino:
I don’t think “worried” is the right verb in a sentence that also contains “CIA”, “Greece” and “military coup”. “Involved” or “supports” is probably what you are looking for.
BillinGlendaleCA (aka 10amla)
@Glen Tomkins:
Looks like I should get into the brain bleach bidnes.
Mino
@Calouste: Yikes! Didn’t they learn anything in the 60’s?
Elizabelle
@Montysano:
Thank you. I just ordered Tom Levenson’s book, Einstein in Berlin.
Yes, I feel the parallels too with 1920s-30s Germany, and it’s scary that it feels like a train that other people can’t see coming.
Jager
@trollhattan: All of us DFHs killed it by being too successful! I still get all the radio info services and there was buzz about a “live simulated DJ automation system”…as a hippy we teamed up with the mad scientists at MIT and did a show in 1975 with one of their early voice synthesizers. An engineer friend of mine (we’ve done a bunch of projects together)says there are much better digital systems available for radio. Systems that use a different set of frequencies, make all signals equal in coverage, CD quality sound, etc. The big guys (Clear Channel, CBS, Cumulus, etc) don’t want it to happen, too bad since radio is the real wireless.
KSAN did very well in ratings and revenue as country. People thought I was insane when I put a country FM on in Boston…its been in the top 5 for the past 8-10 years and has been number 2 all year this year.
I’m straight as an arrow but I’d do a gay station in the Bay Area in a minute. Unserved audience, plenty of political clout and lots of money…you would create a win for the listeners and a win for the station and that’s what it is supposed to be all about, isn’t it?
catclub
@Elizabelle: _Might_ be coming. Unemployment was 47% when Hitler first took power.
Now we have more of a safety net, as well as lower unemployment.
me
Let’s capture this AM mayhem.
Bill Murray
@Napoleon: I’d go with no, since this is The Modern Lovers Roadrunner
Cris (without an H)
In my neck of the woods, AM is still the stomping grounds for paranoid right wing talk. The main thing you get on FM is a whole raft of Christian stations. Public radio is sandwiched between praise networks, and I’m occasionally hard-pressed to know which I’ve dialed into.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Thank you.
The thing I don’t get is, why do folks have to shop overseas for doomtastic scenarios of doomy doom and gloomy gloom. What, 1861-1865 wasn’t bloody enough for you? Never heard of McCarthyism, the Palmer Raids, the Nullification Crisis, the election of 1800, the Alien and Sedition Acts? Come on people, if you are looking for a reason to cut yerselves, shop American and support domestic brands for a change. It’s the patriotic thing to do, fer crying out loud!
Elizabelle
@catclub:
Thank you catclub.
The degree is different.
But to me it seems like something very ugly in the wind.
nellcote
Godwin, not just for liberals any more. Here’s a former 28 year republican staffer:
bottyguy
Whenever I pass by one of the right wing hate yellers I think of this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3257748.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Collines
“The hateful rhetoric was placed alongside the sophisticated use of humor and popular Zairean music”
Napoleon
@Bill Murray:
Thanks – the Everclear lyrics are a little differant.
wenchacha
Doug:
WRUR 88.5FM – Lots of great music, plus some hours of NPR programming.
Southern Beale
Yes. Of course. It is all part of the GOP playbook. As is Fox News. When they realized during the Nixon years that the media was too liberal, they went and used their oil bazillions to make their own. Liberals were too worried about stupid shit like getting the Equal Rights Amendment passed to even notice.
This has been going on for a long, long time.
In other news: Dennis Miller has a radio show? Egads.
c u n d gulag
@Tsukune:
Oh sure I can.
My point was having difficulty trying to find one driving through the rural areas of NC and SC, while you can find Rush, Sean, Glenn, and the female clowns up and down both dials.
EriktheRed
@Glen Tomkins:
Damn, your post is so well-written the point you make is that much more depressing, especially since it’s something that’s occure to me, too.
Big Baby DougJ
@wenchacha:
I know but sometimes I gots to have my Jammin’ Oldies.
PhoenixRising
I noticed that as well: end caps of what no one wanted were heavily Jerome Corsi & Friends. At 20% of cover, there is no one smart enough to read a book who is dumb enough to want that book.
What do we think: Is the inevitable collapse of B&N, the last remaining chain bookstore, going to result in niche bookstores being the last one standing? If so, where will Regency or whatever dump their 10K copies of ‘Crazy Like an Ewok’ or whatever Michele Bachmann’s ghostwriter calls what she cranks out?
Davis X. Machina
@Dennis SGMM: Reminds me of my Atlanta days of of listening to WPLO, ‘His voice in Northwest Georgia…’
You’d think God, being omnipotent, would be able to broadcast after dark….
Tlazolteotl
the Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus in That Obscure Object Desire, the Cuban revolutionaries in Godfather II. I get that vibe more and more from right-wing radio.
James Ellroy
justawriter
I went out last night to see if I couldn’t get a harvest picture against the setting sun. Had to go about 25 miles but found something that would work. But coming back home I was listening to one of my regular sensible radio channels that faded out with the sun. I flipped to the nearest strong station and apparently fell into a twilight zone known as “America Coast to Coast.”
I learned that the Chinese will be invading sometime between 9-11 and 11-11. They are busy staging troops in Canada. NATO is already negotiating to see which European countries get what parts of what’s left. Bush was in on it, but it’s gonna be Obama’s fault. A lot of this sekrit intelligence information apparently came from truck drivers and waitresses. I learned all that in 10 short minutes.
Jon H
Since my iPhone still has an unlimited data plan, when I’m in the car I listen to the BBC radio streams using the RadioBOX app. I can usually listen all the way from Boston to my parents’ house in central CT.