Air America Phoenix, Progressive Radio—Progressively Hypocritical

My sister just bought a house way the hell out in Southwest Phoenix a couple of months ago. Last weekend, I decided to take a trek over there because she said she’d let me have the old Super Nintendo system we used to have growing up. I was a bit disappointed when I got it home though because my Super Return of the Jedi and NBA Jam! Cartridges are missing (He’s heating up!). But anyway, on the 45 minute drive out there, I scanned the AM dial to look for the Air America affiliate that I’d heard had been launched.

I usually avoid news/politics talk radio because the people that participate make sports talk callers look well informed and intelligent, but I watched a documentary about Air America’s troubled startup and decided to tune in.

5pm to 7pm on Saturday, I discovered, is the M&M Show. The M&M “show” is 2 guys, brothers I think, who are so well regarded that they get 2 hours in the late afternoon on a Saturday in a Red State.

And they proceeded to do the exact same shit that turns me off from conservative talk radio. They used rhetorical talking points without representing an informed, well-thought out point-of-view. They constantly railed about how “they’re winning!” Take a look around the country fellas. They shouted down an old war veteran when you don’t need to shout anyone down on radio, you can just mute them, unless, of course, you’re trying to make a point that you’re edgy and controversial and in-your-face.

And for their grand finale, they decided to have some fun with Rush Limbaugh’s name and referred to him as “Limpwrist.”

I’ve got more than one problem with that.

1. Punning on someone’s name is probably about the most juvenile thing possible. I was expecting to hear “Rush Rush Bo Bush, Banana Nana No Nush, Fee Fie Fo Fush……” next.

2. If you’re going to make fun of someone’s name, make it funny like “In a Rush to find my next Oxy fix” or “Limpnoodle” because….

3. By broadcasting on a progressive/liberal station, you lose your right to get to make passive/aggressive gay bashing jokes, you idiots!

How does using a derogatory term for a gay person as an insult possibly jive with the values and politics these two purport to have? It doesn’t.

These 2 twerps were bragging about how they were such good “BP’s” (that’s button pushers in case you don’t plan your weekend around listening to them). That’s how people who don’t have better ideas operate. They wind others up to get them to make themselves and their point-of-view stupid—and that’s frankly how a lot of conservative talk hosts operate. That and they yell.

Which is what I wrote about earlier. A veteran of two wars called in to try to argue his opinion and these two yelled over the top of him before he could even get to the predicates of his sentences. And in doing so, they informed this gentleman that they were anti-military because they loved peace.

I don’t even know where to begin to touch that one, but I’ll start by saying that it’s a perfect example of why the term “liberal” has earned a 4-letter connotation over the last 30 years. I’m all in favor of idealism. We ought to strive for the ideal. But claiming that you are anti-military because you love peace is such a piece of zero-sum bullshit, that it fails to even deal in reality. It completely displaces compassion, empathy and appreciation for American women and men who choose to fight and defend our country so that people who don’t want to fight, don’t have to. It also neglects the fact that whether one likes it or not, a military—a damned good military—is a necessity in our world. Now I’m as anti-irresponsible-use-of-the-military as the next guy, but a distinction needs to be drawn, lest you come across as a numbnut with his head so high in the clouds, he can’t see the storm beneath.


So when I got home, I sat down immediately and emailed Air America Phoenix to tell them how disappointed I was as a first time listener to hear Sean Hannity’s show from the polar opposite perspective since “progressive” means, I don’t know--progress, moving forward, new stuff?!

If you are able to present and convey better ideas and truth in a well-informed, easy-to-understand, dare I say pleasant, manner, one stands a chance at changing minds. And isn’t that what progressive talk radio should be about? Or is it just about providing a head-nodding amenathon for those of us further left of center? Based on my experience, I’m going to assume the latter until I hear differently.

And the self-dubbed “start-up” hasn’t bothered to respond to me. So I’m doing the only thing I can do—pit the 8 readers of my blog against the 5 listeners of their program and drive them off the radio dial and back to obscurity forever. Mwah hah hah.

So I encourage you, dear reader, to write to KXXT 1010, Air America Phoenix at:

comments@1010kxxt.com


and not only further express my dissatisfaction with their hypocritical Saturday afternoon puppet show, but to suggest to them that I am the voice of progress and that I should be given my own pulpit from which to preach to the mountaintops the right takes, my takes, on things in the world today.


P.S. Air America Phoenix—If you want to be taken seriously, you’re going to need to get better ad sponsors. I don’t need Garafalo telling me to throw out my TV and go to the Phoenix Theater (we have a theater?) and watch a musical. Once again, you’re pandering to people who already agree with you. Save the elitist snobbery for our Congressmen.