Katha Pollit on Radionation with Laur Flanders today

Sunday on RadioNation with Laura Flanders Katha Pollitt will be a guest. We plan to listen and hope you as well. Tonight's show? We'll catch it in the archive.

Reasons? Commercials and news breaks, honestly.

To be clear, C.I. intended to note (at The Common Ills) the guests for Saturday's show. (C.I. got caught up in helping a friend realize that a "second act turning point" -- or something -- was actually the "mid-point" and congratulations to you if you grasp that, we don't claim to but will ask about it when the edition winds down.) However, there were serious questions about spotlighting RadioNation with Laura Flanders this week among those participating here.

That had nothing to do with Flanders or her staff or the quality of her show.

What's the problem?

Don't make me come to Vegas
Don't make me pull you out of his bed
-- "Don't Make Me Come To Vegas" written by Tori Amos, off the album Scarlet's Walk

C.I. truly does not read the op-ed pages. Any doubt of that vanished with Saturday's entry commenting on Adam Nagourney's nonsense in the Saturday New York Times. C.I. missed Maureen Dowd's column (which non Times subscribers can read for free by clicking here).

We almost wrote about the nonsense last week when we repeatedly heard the ads. Then Air America Radio began promoting it as a premium service (the network's sought out donations from listeners if you're not up to speed).

We're not that crazy about the network. Randi Rhodes we can support and enjoy because she's an independent voice. Even if you disagree with her, you know the playbook she's reading from is her own. Otherwise? (We would say the same of Mike Malloy, by the way.)

Baby Cries a Lot is the obvious pull down. There's the disappearance of Lizz Winstead. There's the hiring of Jerry Springer. There's been a preponderance of White males.

Flanders show has guests of both gender, of all races. That's not true of all the shows who regularly book guests. We like Janeane Garofalo but we gave up on The Majority Report during her long absence. If we wanted to hear a moderate White Male (Sam Seder) talk to other White Males about issues through a White Male framework, we'd listen. We see no value in that.

We don't enjoy the digs Seder gets in at Garofalo's expense (and never have). The segment with her father always struck us as some sort of Melissa Steadman (thirty-something) reduxe. Single woman trying to talk to Daddy. We doubt it was intended that way but, week after week, hearing Sam chuckle at the foibles of the single woman while he apparently floats on some sort of Rob Petrie cloud didn't engage us.

There's also the nature of Seder's whine which, when he solos, rises and rises until dogs howl and people cover their ears. It's not attractive radio.

But we mainly don't care to hear a bunch of White Males Sitting Around Boasting.

And when Janeane is on, we don't chuckle at the efforts to silence her, efforts (that anyone listening can tell) frustrate her to no end.

They frustrate us too. Were Seder as amusing as he thinks he is, his career might have taken off. Now he's pushing a book which will probably sell more copies than Baby Cries A Lot's recent book but, as Baby's fortunes have fallen, that's not saying a great deal.

We're tired of the weekend "ghetto." Flanders carved out a spot there with a show that should air five days a week. (In a just world.) But largely, it's become the place where Air America Radio, more recently, attempts to prove it's not just the White Male Radio Network. The truth is that if they took the weekend schedule and put it in play during the week, there would be more worth listening to.

When the network started, Marty Kaplan aired between Randi Rhodes and The Majority Report. It was a nice show, one worth listening to and one that eased you from Rhodes' drive time (which she does very well) into the evening. Rhodes' (deserved) success seems to have left the implication that all anyone needed to do was to ape what they thought her style was.

Seder thinks he has it down. He is mistaken. Rhodes knows her facts and can marshall them with ease. She's not stammering and stuttering while her voice soars up many octives as she attempts to remember the article she wanted to discuss. More importantly, she knows radio.

She has a voice that's a natural for radio. It sounds perfect coming over the radio. Seder's not blessed with the same equipment (even when he keeps it in a lower range). But radio's not standup and Seder's still shaping his anger performance as though it is. Between rage fits, he mocks in the superior tone that's a turnoff to most listeners. After ten minutes, you find yourself wishing someone would slip him a Ritalin already.

Baby Cries a Lot enough has been said of already. (In fact the network spent far too much time pushing him, that started before his lousy show even began airing.) So let's move on to Rachel Maddow who wishes the world could be as smart as she thinks she is -- and proves that desire every broadcast.

You can't talk Maddow without talking Lizz Winstead. The two, with Chuck D, co-hosted the cancelled Unfiltered. The show aired for exactly one year. Back when the nonsense of "family" was being pushed. Unfiltered wasn't perfect but we've been challenged by a reader to acknowledge the disappearance of Lizz Winstead. We have Dallas hunting down other links, but we're pretty sure that was addressed here in real time. If not, we know for a fact that C.I. and Rebecca addressed it at their sites.

Shortly before the show went off in March of 2005, Lizz Winstead suddenly vanished. She wasn't on the show. And she wasn't to be mentioned. A LIE was started by some at Air America (behind the scenes people) that Lizz was ill and had left the show for that reason. They showed up (AAR staff) at various websites posting that nonsense.

Winstead left because Jerry Springer was given Unfiltered's time slot and she didn't feel the need to spend the next few weeks chirping like an idiot and lying to the show's fans. On the show's blog, in its final weeks, the question of Lizz refused to go away (no matter how many staffers wrote idiotic things like "Lizz left because she is sick! We need to respect her privacy and drop it!"). Rachel Maddow refused to address the issue. Finally, forced to do so she offered some nonsense. (It was nonsense before the legal actions started.)

On the final show, Lizz was back . . . briefly . . . as a guest. Maddow also didn't announce the show's impending cancellation when she knew of it. Once it was announced, the obvious pressing concern was Rachel with even her own father showing up at the show's blog to insist that fans write Air America Radio to get them to keep Maddow.

(Elaine followed the Unfiltered blog regularly. It no longer exists. Rebecca and C.I. both have some copy and pastes from pages of the Unfiltered blog that Elaine e-mailed them through the life of the show. Elaine also verified the identity of the male who is still offended by the way Lizz was treated -- if it helps, we are as well -- a long term listener and frequent poster on the Unfiltered site.)

Chuck D wasn't going to carry water for the suits. There was a desire for him to be on everyone of the final shows with Rachel but Chuck wasn't going to play that game. (Good for him.) What the disappearance exploded was the myth that there was a "family" at AAR. Probably a good thing but still painful for many listeners.

The explosion of the myth allowed Seder to scream at a caller (we believe it was John Walsh who writes for CounterPunch) that he just does his show and doesn't follow what other people do on their shows. We'll applaud him for being honest. It's too bad so much time was wasted convincing everyone that this was any sort of a family.

Randi Rhodes earlier dispensed with that notion. While she can be supprotive of her co-workers, she can also toss out a line or two about Baby Cries a Lot tired shtick. Her audience has greatly expanded but it was there before the network started and she knows how to keep it real. (She most famously dispensed with the notion on the 2004 election night coverage when her displeasure with the mindlessly chattering of Maddow and the on-air-Patricia-Heaton-of-the-network led to a lot of nonsense while the election was being stolen. Time and again, Rhodes attempted to discuss what was happening in Florida but apparently the NPR crowd brought that mindset with them to Air America.)

Without Lizz Winstead at her side, Maddow revealed how boring she could be. One failed show led to a new one and the only consistents are the fact that she's still boring and that any show she's involved with feels it has ownership of things Lizz Winstead developed for Unfiltered.

That's really surprising considering how the network has fought against honoring Winstead's contract. Winstead wasn't just a voice at a mike, she helped develop the network. She was instrumental in the interview process, in devising the concept and so much more. She also brought her successful comedic experience (The Daily Show) over to Air America Radio. Having decided that a "name" like Jerry Springer could pull in more viewers than an integrated show (two White women, one African-American male), the thing to do was to honor the contractual agreements they had made with Winstead. Instead the result has been legal filings.

That's really sad. Winstead was hired for a reason and lived up to what she was hired to do (and then some). It was a mistake to cancel Unfiltered. Failure to honor Winstead's contract goes beyond "mistake."

What was Unfiltered? A three hour morning show where Arianna Huffington could stop by and speak without Baby Cries a Lot making what he thought was a funny sex joke. It was a place where Amy Goodman could speak, or Medea Benjamin, without being cut off. It was a place where women weren't the token guest. (The way Christy Harvey is squeed in each week on Baby Cries A Lot.) When Chuck D was on (he wasn't on every broadcast), neither Winstead nor Maddow would play TV sitcom wife giving him all the funny lines and tsk-tskining "Oh you" with the implied head shake.

You had three people discussing issues. Lizz wasn't going to throw reproductive rights into the back of the closet now that some "leaders" were pushing it as something to abandon, Maddow wasn't going to play nice while attacks on same-sex couples were launched (Maddow is open lesbian) and Chuck D wouldn't allow the very real issues of rrace to be forgotten. It was a lively mix. Unlike The Majority Report, there was no attempt to prime the online pump by chasing after various (Male) bloggers. It was an interesting mix of comedy and politics that actually informed you.

It wasn't without its faults. For instance, a "peace activist" translated as someone from Op-Truth (an organization supporting the war, only bickering over the how-tos of it). That was a critique often raised on the show's blog. The "rainman" moment when a male who had apparently beat his wife was awared with not one but two appearances on the show (in the same week) was among the more embarrassing moments. The failure to note guest' Nicholas Kristof's attacks on feminists was a mistake. That's really all that comes to mind. (And among all participating, we probably heard every episode of the show.) That's saying a great deal.

There were individual faults. Maddow could usually be counted on to speak of story in "yesterday's" whatever that was in fact from a Saturday paper (a bit of problem when the day in question is a Monday or Tuesday). Maddow often played "big brain" (as Rebecca dubbed it at the time) when there was little evidence that she grapsed what she was speaking of (though we understand she tests well). Winstead could usually bring it back to reality (and no one on air could explain Medicare as well as Winstead).

But you had a pretty interesting mix. "The Pap Attack" got it's start there and was actually funny and informative. ("Pap Smear" sent the man in question into a nervous frenzy.) Ambrosia sang the news, wonderfully, every Friday. And Kent Jones was always humorous. (Maddow's carried him to ever program she's done since. He's not as funny now because the mood is not there to set up his bits. It's like pulling Phyliss out of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where she works perfectly and trying to impose her into Everybody's Bored With Raymond.)

Apparently grasping how deadly dull Pacifca-hater Maddow is solo, they've tired to recreate the magic of Unfiltered by teaming her with another male who is African-American. He's a nice enough personality, he's not Chuck D. It makes for tepid radio at best.

At a reader's request, we wrote an article about the state (health) of Air America Radio. We're covering all of this at another reader's request. (And largely at the insistence of Elaine who states Unfiltered had few stronger supporters than this man.)

Scorecard?

Laura Flanders leads the excellence that is the weekend programming. (New shows airing on the weekends.) Randi Rhodes got the national prominence that she was denied but deserved all along. Mike Malloy will never be bought by anyone.

The other shows? The Majority Report lost us when Janeane was doing the West Wing. We can't take coming home to hearing a squeaky voice screaming for three hours (when not being so amused with his own self). If the original balance was restored to the show (and Seder stopped treating Garofalo as a joke), we'd listen and grimace over the fact that so few women in the world do so little in someone's eyes (judging by the guest line up). We'd still miss the days when real conversations took place. (They've been replaced with Seder's rants and monologues.) Jerry Springer? While he has every right to run for office (and should if he wants to), don't kid that his hiring didn't turn the network into a joke and a freak show. Maddow's show? If a stick of Blue Bonnet margarine could speak, this is what it would sound like. Baby Cries a Lot? May he whimper for many years . . . in silence. The man who uses his own children as an example of why we have to stay in Iraq (his children who are not serving in Iraq) knows no shame. But, as he infamously admitted, he's not really that liberal. No, he's not. And since his 'comedy' no longer plays on TV we'll apparently be served the tired routine daily on the radio. (As we write this, his show is being rebroadcast for anyone in a lesiure suit, gold chains and a shirt unbuttoned to the waist to enjoy.)

We have a number of issues with what's going down in Vegas (and think the bed analogy via Tori Amos plays quite well) and weren't in the mood to hear a bunch of commercials about it or possibly news breaks on it. Like most conventions dominated by White Males, we're sure it's a "hoot and holler" and think the setting is quite appropriate for the embedness, the corruption of it all. As C.I. wrote Saturday morning: "So in the city only the foolish want to visit (Las Vegas), where dreams die quickly, Adam Nagourney finds his natural resting place. It's almost poetic."
The morality the city was built upon makes it the perfect setting for the death of the once indepenent blogs. (A rebirth? There's always hope but we don't think hope comes on the wigs of Henry Hyde associates or DLC pushers.)

Endorsements are tricky things. We're glad that some no longer see themselves as citizen journalists or journalists of any sort. (Maureen Dowd covers that in her column.)

And endorsment was actually the issue that had us opt out of listening to Saturday's show. That had nothing to do with Flanders and we're sure it was a show worth listening to. We'll probably note Katha Pollitt's appearance next week. But last week, we had a comical short story based on Laura Flanders up against the world. It was funny and we enjoyed writing it but then, as Dona pointed out after the fact, Flanders' does not "preach love me. Her whole thing is about you empowering yourself."

We have no problem endorsing her program and if she ran for office, we'd all be behind her. If she annouced her candidacy for president tomorrow, C.I. would be break the no-candidate-endorsements-from-me that is in place at The Common Ills.

But we've praised another program. We got a number of e-mails complaining about that endorsement which took place weeks ago. We think a lot of the e-mails resutled from the fact that, although C.I. weighed in on Thursday, C.I. didn't name the program. Here's what happened. Two men pushed the "democracy is taking in hold" lie in Iraq. The host allowed it to be pushed. The issue of the undemocratic nature in the attack on women's rights was not addressed. No guest was present calling for an end to the occupation because we must fix what we broke (that was the message, it's bullshit and we'll say so).

We have no problem providing readers with "coming up" notices. Maybe it will be a good show, maybe it won't. We're not responsible for the content. We don't make the shows. Nor would we ever guest on them -- this weekend has driven home the correctness of C.I.'s repeated refusal to grant interviews as "C.I. the blogger" -- which is how the press requests usually refer to C.I. Even if they got off on the right foot (The Common Ills isn't a blog), C.I. would still turn them down. We dealt with why we would awhile back. This weekend drives home why independent media does not need to court approval from the mainstream. Independent media should not be a launching platform for the next Cokie Roberts (though it's already become that).

In the early days of Jess and Ava helping out with the e-mails at The Common Ills, they'd tell us, "Guess who asked for an interview?" and we'd listen and then reply, "Surely that's one C.I.'s going to do!" Nope they all get turned down. C.I. doesn't even read the e-mails before Jess and Ava (they work the public account more than C.I. does) decline the offer on C.I.'s behalf. [C.I. notes the only decline that resulted ina b it of a quandry came from a woman writing for a serious periodical (not a magazine) due to the nature of the periodical and the fact that it was a female journalist.]

It's each person's decision whether to self-market or not. ('Some' live their life never self-marketing, as Rebecca points out before adding, 'some' never had to which has a reply from C.I. that's unprintable. And, for the record, that has nothing to do with blogs.) As asprining journalists (some of us, Ava's announced that she'll not enter journalism this week as a reporter, she'll be in the "business" thanks to another job -- she was set professionally before her first class as a result of her family -- noted with her permission), we (Jim, Ty, Jess and Dona) wondered where the line was on helping actual journalists and on being the subject. We think we've seen it this weekend and it's rather repuslsive. When Ava and C.I. were asked to help a journalist a with a story focusing on TV a few months back, they went back and forth over the issue and finally decided no because it was likely that they would be the story and not be helping. (C.I. notes that was a request for assistance of some form and not a request for an interview or it would have been turned down outright.)

It's a line that's been blurred as famous for being semi-famous lands you a chat and chew gig or a shouting match invitation. We'll again note that Jon Stewart did not go on Crossfire and criticize Tucker Carlson only. He criticized the entire debased system of posers screaming at one another. Just as some on the left treated Baby Cries a Lot's whimpering to Bill O'Reilly as 'tearing into' O'Reilly, some on the left want to act as though Tucker Carlson was the only host of Crossfire.

So the news that telepunditry classes were being offered in Vegas struck us as really sad. (Okay, we all laughed first. It is laughable to think of a Squeaky Mouse getting ready for his close up.) Those hoping to land that "gig" will, like many before them, find themselves co-opted by a system or shut out from it.

Do you really think that any of them have more to say than Gloria Steinem? (When's the last time Meet the Press had her on? Go back many, many years.) More than Danny Schechter? More than Robert Parry? More than any of the number of people who have something to say worth hearing? We think not as a whole. We think some individuals may have and that those individuals will quickly learn that they either play the game or lose their spotlight.

We don't play a game here. We don't seek access. Or links. Or attempt to kiss ass. We'll endorse the work of Flanders and Amy Goodman because we believe in it.

But while Flanders was on vacation (no offense to her guest host but she makes the show for us and we couldn't take listening in with her gone) we endorsed other programs.

One of those has bit us in the butt with the Iraq coverage. Though some involved are willing to allow for anyone having a bad show, others note that on the next show a Cokie Roberts of this century was praised (the Cokie was not present). This led to a heated debate about one reader's e-mail requesting that we delete the feature. We've never deleted a feature. Our policy? It never came up. We post it and if we look smart, whatever, if we look stupid, whatever. It's there and someone can agree or disagree.


But the reader said the feature was an endorsement. The reader is correct. That was an endorsement. It made us take a look (as did other things) at what we'd done recently. The feature on Flanders last week is bad writing. (That's not withdrawing our endorsement of Flanders. That's noting that we can and often do publish bad writing. We're a weekly online magazine and we piece it together as we go along. Often scrapping something at the last minute -- the Flanders piece did run in the print edition -- and reworking it or quickly grabbing a new issue or topic to write about.)

We can't endorse anyone who presents propaganda about the illegal war and allows it to go unchallenged. It's up there, the endorsement of the show. Short of Naomi Klein being a guest on it, we don't intend to ever mention it again. It was bad radio (we can all agree on that).

But it's up there and we're not going to pull it. If we could all agree that the host is responsible, we'd do an update. (And just writing that sentence led to a huge argument.) We'll stake our on endorsements on the likes of Goodman or Flanders (or Michael Ratner, Dalia Hashad, Heidi Boghosian or Michael Smith) because they're working from a strong place. They're not changing with the wind. Otherwise, we'll just note. We may shake it up and do a highlight of Democracy Now! or of Law and Disorder (no links, Ty's typing this up and advises that the piece may be so long as it is that adding links will slow things down even further -- they're so slow that Ty's several words ahead in typing before anything displays onscreen).

But what happened on Thursday and then on Friday made us agree that we needed to rethink our own notions of endorsement. Since it was highly likely that ads or news breaks would cover a convention that we find repugnant we all (except C.I. who was not around a radio and announces would have listened if it were possible to). That's probably not fair to Flanders (and we agree she deserves better). But the show is archived at The Nation. and, as we were having this conversation late Saturday afternoon, Dona read an e-mail from a reader asking the same questions that we were asking.

We don't endorse Air America. We don't have a "war" with it (before that e-mail comes in). We just think most of it is useless as anything other than fundamental politics (we almost typed "intro" but then someone pointed out there was a class lower than that). We've noted the exceptions. We've explained our problems with it. (And hopefully where we stand.) We'll take a look at future coverage and attempt to avoid cheerleading (even for the left) when we write about radio. We're not deleting the entry but, as a group, we are withdrawing the endorsement of the program we covered while Flanders was on vacation. We do not and will not support any program that presents lies about the illegal occupation. The fact that one of the guests is a (pampered) Iraqi (Male, naturally) doesn't excuse not challenging the guest's lies. Some of us would add or booking two guests who are known ahead of time to be liars.

No matter who you are, an endorsement has weight. Whether you're giving it to your friends or online or in print. We will try to be much more selective in the future and we all (as a group) regret the endorsement that has bothered so many. (And to the one who asked that we delete it, two of the core Third Estate Sunday Review -- tow of six agree with you and say this issue s not dead.)