MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

The new academic year kicks off later this month. For those of you who are Mass Comms majors, I’ve prepared three (3) syllabuses for you.

In a playlist format. Because you like it like that.

Here’s the first one for those who plan to specialize in radio.

[3 credits]

 You know of course that Rush Limbaugh is gone. You also know that many people are dancing on his grave singing hallelujah. You might be one yourself.

 

I am not hear to dance upon his grave, as I’m generally not into grave-dancing. Actually I normally wouldn’t post anything at all, but as a political junkie who worked in radio (to include news/talk radio around the time that Limbaugh and conservative talk radio in general was ascending*), I feel compelled to say something.

 

And that’s only really because of this piece by Conor Friedersdorf dunking on conservatives who have been giving Limbaugh credit for advancing conservatism in America throughout his career. Friedersdorf argues this isn’t true. Many liberals have responded along the lines of “oh yes he jolly well did”.

 

It’s possible many of the latter group didn’t read past the standfirst. Friedersdorf is specifically referring to “conservatism” as the political and economic ideology championed by the likes of William F Buckley and Milton Friedman – the general ideology of small govt, free trade, balanced budgets and personal responsibility. Friedersdorf argues that conservatism as defined above has been on the decline since Reagan left office, and while Limbaugh kicked off his career pushing a Reaganesque conservative agenda, he eventually abandoned it (as did the GOP in general) in favor of the current GOP ideology of culture wars, manufactured outrage, lib-pwning and the defense of Straight White Christian America at all costs.

 

Therefore, Friedersdorf says, Limbaugh was never the champion of conservatism that modern conservatives make him out to be.

 

And ... well ... okay.

But ...

 

The question, I suppose, is whether conservatism can be fairly and accurately defined strictly as an economy-based political ideology.

 

I don't think it can.

 

For one thing, you have social conservatism, which has been around in the US for a long time but became a serious political force in the 1960s and went mainstream during Reagan’s term, thanks in no small part to the rise of the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. From that point on, the GOP spent as much time talking about traditional “family values” (and the alleged left-wing agenda to destroy them in favor of turning American children into gay Commie Satanic baby-killing multicultural dope fiends) as they did about free trade and tax cuts. By the mid-90s, social conservatism was inseparable from economic conservatism as far as GOP ideology was concerned.

 

While Limbaugh was never a conservative Christian in any meaningful sense, he was definitely onboard with social conservatives in terms of their basic political stances, even if he mainly used them as a way to bash liberals over the head. (Fact: Limbaugh was triggering libs before triggering libs was cool.)

 

Meanwhile, by the time Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution brought their Contract With America™ to Congress in 1994, the GOP had adopted a noticeably and increasingly more aggressive tone in its rhetoric – they weren’t just opposed to liberal policies, they were ANGRY about them. Anger and indignant outrage increasingly became the default setting for the GOP as the party tapped into (and encouraged) the anger, fear and frustration of their mostly white base that lived in fear of liberals turning the US into Cuba, or whatever they thought the Radical Liberal Agenda™ was. The other side of the aisle was no longer mere opposition – it was the Enemy of America. The GOP became less interested in bipartisanship and more interested in demonization, polarization and obstruction.

 

By perhaps no coincidence, conservative talk radio was expanding fast by exploiting that particular fear, and Limbaugh was leading that charge. Things took off from there, and now here we are in an era where the GOP is now the Trump Party that lives in a universe of alternative facts where libs are demonic anarchists who stole the election and are out to cancel white culture etc and so on.

 

So basically I’m not convinced by the argument that Limbaugh didn’t advance “conservatism” in the Buckley/Friedman sense, because that’s too narrow (and slightly dishonest) a definition of what “conservatism” has become. Friedersdorf kinda touches on this, and acknowledges that the GOP is no longer the party of Reagan in an economic-policy sense. But the party of Reagan was also the party of social conservatism, which Limbaugh and the GOP exploited to varying degrees of intensity for the last 30+ years to the point that the resulting culture war is now the dominant ideology. The economic side of GOP conservatism is now limited to ensuring that rich people live as tax-free as possible and this will somehow benefit the rest of us. (Spoiler: it won’t.)

 

Ironically, of course, many people who call themselves conservatives in the modern 21^st Century sense still tend to fancy themselves as liberty-loving tax-cutting small-govt Reaganites. But at least some of those are from the conservative intellectual crowd who lost their usefulness around the time that Sarah Palin became a household name. They’re also being disingenuous – the GOP hasn’t embraced any meaningful form of economic conservatism or fiscal responsibility for decades. Even Reagan raised taxes, and he also more than doubled both the deficit and the national debt. In my lifetime, the deficit had only even gone down during Demo admins, not Republican ones. (There are complicated reasons for this – I'm just saying.)

 

Limbaugh himself occasionally complained about this and went after who he considered to be RINOs. But he ultimately went along with it, I think, because the Loud Angry White Populist schtick of the GOP suited his radio style. He was always a demagogue and an outrage merchant, and he delighted in stoking white fear of a black planet under Obama. Trump was the first President to successfully trade in the kind of xenophobic white-identity insult comedy that Limbaugh had pioneered. 

 

Rush is often credited with countering the alleged liberal narrative of the Mainstream Media™, but it’s more accurate to say he helped create a new conservative narrative for an alternate universe that only ever made sense if you never questioned it. Which of course was part of Limbaugh’s whole brand – his loyal “dittohead” audience openly bragged about believing every word he said without question, if only to make the libs scream in frustration.

 

Limbaugh didn’t do that on his own, of course – he had help from fellow radio hosts, Fox News, right-wing bloggers and the GOP in general. But his dittohead army was arguably the rock upon which the Trump Party built its alt-realty church.

 

So in my opinion, Limbaugh didn't just help advance conservatism in America – he played a role in transforming it to the ugly hateful beast it is today.

 

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, etc.

 

*FULL DISCLOSURE: I worked at a news/talk radio station from 1994 to 1996 in Southern Illinois, but we didn’t carry Limbaugh’s show. Our mainstay was Chuck Harder, who at that time tended towards centrist populism of the kind you typically heard from Ross Perot, Pat Choate and Ralph Nader. He also entertained Clinton conspiracy theories.

 

Radio silence,

 

This is dF

I have returned from the US, and I’ve more or less recovered from the jet lag and the 15-hour flight.

It was mostly the same deal as last year: a road trip from Chicago to Maryville-Alcoa and back, by way of Carbondale, Nashville and Cincinnati (rather than Indianapolis). Overall it went smoothly, apart from the occasional debilitating illness. Also, this time out we were unable to meet a few people we wanted to meet due to schedule conflicts and lost wallets. Anyone we were unable to meet, sorry about that, we'll make it up to you next time. 

Other than that, it was a pretty fun time. Here are the highlights:

1. Cheap books

We joined Books A Million and scoured McKay’s (both the Nashville and Knoxville locations), as well as Hastings and a couple other places. Here’s my take:



Note that I’ve read The Sirens Of Titan before, but for $5.97, I’m keen to re-read it.

Also, I’ve finally decided to take the plunge and try some of the Star Wars expanded universe books. I’ve avoided them in the past mainly because I thought it was just too much to keep up with. I was also worried about the quality of the writing. But with all the excitement about the new movie and all, I just felt inspired to try a couple, though I’m sticking to Original Trilogy period for now. We’ll see how these two go and take it from there.

2. Conservative books for conservatives who read

In Maryville-Alcoa, I also visited a place called Ollie’s, which is sort of like Big Lots. It has a book section. It looks like this.



So I didn’t find much there. But I did notice a pattern in Tennessee bookstores, where (1) you see a lot of books on prominent display from authors like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Brian Kilmeade and various GOP candidates – particularly Donald Trump and Ben Carson. As opposed to, say, books by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Just saying.

I also noticed that a lot of these authors take up prominent space in the American History section. You kind of expect that with Bill O’Reilly, who seems to have a second career writing books about famous political assassinations of famous Americans (Lincoln, Kennedy, Patton, Jesus, etc). Glenn Beck and Brian Kilmeade, not so much.

Res ipsa loqitur.

3. Touch me I’m sick

I came down with stomach flu in Maryville-Alcoa. Laid me out for two straight days. Then my mom got strep throat. Then KT got both. Then the cat started vomiting. It was kind of funny after awhile. Anyway, everyone recovered fairly quickly, so our travel plans didn’t get seriously disrupted as a result. I did end up sleeping through Halloween, though.

I just hope my travel insurance will cover my doctor’s visit. I don’t have a lot of experience with American HMOs, except that even something relatively simple can cost you a fortune in consultation fees. The actual medicine was only $20.00.

4. Burger time

We ate a lot of burgers. This is probably unavoidable, though we did try to avoid the obvious stuff on the road.

The highlight: Five Guys, which is still our Gold Standard for fast food burgers.

The lowlight: Steak’n’Shake, which used to be the Gold Standard back in college, but these days seems to go down in quality every time we visit. The shakes are still good, and the food isn’t terrible, but it’s not something to look forward to anymore.

Best décor: S&B Burger Joint, which has a serious rock theme going on. It’s also the only burger place I’ve been to that requires an orientation session from the server. Good food though. Try the deep fried pickles.





5. Toll roads

Chicago is bristling with them. I discovered this last year, but this year we got caught up a little more than usual in the system, thanks to a few toll plazas where either cash isn’t an option, or we ended up in a situation where it was an unmanned toll booth and we had no change. You do have the option to pay online and you have seven days to do so (though you have to remember which toll booth it was, and what time you went through it). The fine for not paying is substantial, but I do find myself wondering how many people actually bother, or how rigorously it’s enforced.

6. There ain't much to country living

We stopped in Paducah, KY for coffee and gas. Inside was two guys in overalls buying wintergreen chewing tobacco. Outside was a pick-up truck with some bullet holes in the side. Meanwhile, in a rest area by the state line, I got into a conversation with the tour booth woman who told me about her 120-pound mini-pig.

Later, in TN, I found myself behind a pick-up truck with a bumper sticker that said: “Uncle Sam wants you to speak English.”

7. I’m bored of American radio

This year’s rental car didn’t come with a Sirius XM subscription, so I had to make do with standard radio, which is hard to do on a road trip where you can only stick with a station for so long until you drive out of range.

Making matters worse is that American radio is just terrible – it seems to get worse every year I come over. It says a lot when you find yrself settling for whatever classic rock station you can find, knowing that’s probably as good as it gets for decent music.

I did notice one trend I hadn’t picked up on before: talk radio on the FM dial. This may be old news to you, but I wasn’t aware that talk radio was in so much demand that the AM dial no longer had sufficient room for it. Unfortunately, this meant that in Tennessee, around 75% of my programming choices on FM were limited to news/talk, sports/talk and country music. The rest was either Top 40 or a classic rock station that was always just five miles away from bad reception.

8. Cheap gas

I paid $1.77/gal for gas in Maryville.

Thanks, Obama.

Well, that’s enough, isn’t it?

Back to the grind,

This is dF

And now, college radio humor!

What the program director says:



[Via Pirate Treasure]

What the DJs do:



[Via LP Cover Lover]

Final vinyl,

This is dF

Casey Kasem passed away a couple of weeks ago, but I was neck-deep in travel and work, so I didn’t have time to write something about him. Now I do, and there’s really no way I can’t blog about him.

Not because of the family melodrama over his healthcare, which doesn’t interest me at all, but because – like a lot of people my age – Kasem was an ubiquitous presence in pop culture, either via cartoon voiceovers (he WAS Shaggy Rogers) or American Top 40.

As a youngster, of course, I had no idea they were the same guy. I never made the connection between Shaggy and the guy doing the weekly countdown on the radio. (This was in the days before cartoons gave credits to the voice talent, and even when they did, the end credits typically ran at blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speeds. So sue me.) Once I found out, I was impressed that there was more to him than American Top 40.

That said, American Top 40 was itself a radio institution. American music fans tend not to be as chart-obsessed as (say) British music fans, but we do like to rank songs, and even though American Top 40 was based on strictly quantitative data from Billboard, there was something appealing about finding out what the top songs were – at least until you outgrew Top 40, discovered college radio and learned that there was so much better music out there.

One funny thing about American Top 40 is that, reportedly, a lot of people are writing tributes to Kasem hailing him as a sort of tastemaker of pop music who knew a hit when he heard one and didn’t let himself get pinned down by any single genre.

Which is, of course, ludicrous. Kasem didn’t decide anything – his weekly countdowns were determined by the Billboard charts. He was basically reporting the charts and movements, and giving a modicum of background for each track, without passing any personal judgments on them, yet sounding as though he liked each track. Which is what all DJs are supposed to do (unless they get paid to be opinionated). He was the equivalent of an anchorman reporting the news, but more personable and engaged rather than detached.

And he was very good at it. Arguably he was better at it than his eventual replacements Shadoe Stevens and Ryan Seacrest.

I suspect that’s why those studio outtakes of him swearing out the staff became a popular item. Some people just thought it was funny to hear Mr Clean Cut American Top 40 say “fuck”, but others hated Kasem (or more accurately hated the music on his show) and saw it as proof that the Corporate Rock advocated by Kasem and Tipper Gore was two-faced hypocritical bullshit, man.

Personally, I didn’t find it all that funny after the initial shock value wore off, if only because I was already in radio by then and hey, I’ve had bad days in the studio too. And I probably wouldn't like it if someone taped that and released it into the wild – especially if there was a chance it would cost me my reputation or my job. (For the record, I didn’t find that Bill O’Reilly Inside Edition meltdown outtake all that funny for similar reasons. Politically I think Papa Bear is way off the reservation, but I don’t think the tape proves anything except broadcasting is a stressful job, especially when you depend on other people doing their job so you can do yours.)

That said, I admit there’s something fascinating about the Kasem tape as a sort of contradictory pop-culture artifact. So I appreciate it better in the context of something like, say, Negativland’s notorious “U2” record.

Speaking of which, Negativland has marked Kasem’s passing by releasing the “U2” single in multi-track form and inviting fans to remix it and post the results on their site. I plan to give it a shot.

TRUE STORY: My first commercial radio job was running Casey's Countdown, a shorter version of Casey's Top 40, the show he did after quitting American Top 40 in 1988. The show was delivered to the radio station on six (6) vinyl records, so my job was to play the records and commercial spots and station IDs during the breaks. My first day on the job, I mixed up the records and played one side in the wrong order. Big fun. 

Keep reaching for the stars,

This is dF

And now, here’s a very big infographic explaining the impact of media consolidation on the radio and television business.

For a start, it’s why Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs Robinson” is in rotation on at least one radio station in every city in America.

( Big graphic and wordy essay commence ... )

Meanwhile, here’s one more stat to chew on: while six companies may control 90% of broadcast media, the biggest media company in America (in terms of media revenue) isn’t even on that list. 

Who would that be, you ask?

Why Google, of course.

I want it all,

This is dF

You know that question you get as a kid: What do you want to be when you grow up? 

Somewhere in junior high school, I knew the answer: I wanted to be a radio DJ.

And this Donald Fagen album cover pretty much explains why.



I honestly thought radio would be a lot like that – me sitting in a booth late at night, smoking and drinking, playing my favorite records and talking about whatever I liked.

And of course, eventually I got my wish and got into the business, and I was a regular DJ on the graveyard shift.

And it was pretty much nothing like what Donald Fagen promised me.

Which is why I write about telephones now. That and the pay was crap.

To be fair, college radio is a lot closer to that album cover (apart from the cigarettes – no smoking allowed, which is okay since I never took up smoking anyway), and I put in a lot of hours doing that. It was fun for me, if not for the listeners.

Anyway, point being, it's a great album cover.

CLARIFICATION: The album cover itself didn't inspire me to get into radio. The Nightfly came out in 1986 – I wanted to get into radio well before that, just from listening to it enough. Radio was a lifeline for me at the time, feeding me music that was helping me get through every single day of my not-so-fun childhood. I wanted to be part of that.

How was I to know it wasn’t nearly as spontaneous as it sounded?

BONUS TRACK: While we’re at it, here’s my favorite track from that album.

Gonna have a wingding,

This is dF

You thought you’d heard the last of Glenn Beck when Fox News canned him.

But Glenn Beck is still in the batshit conspiracy business.

And business is good.



It’s even more mind-boggling when you pause to remember that, in terms of batshit talk radio ratings, Glenn Beck isn’t even on top of the list. He’s No. 3 behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

It’s hard to think of anything to add to this that isn’t really obvious.

All I can say is that when you live in a society that rewards wholesale ignorance, revisionist history, race baiting, apocryphal anecdotes, batshit paranoid fantasies and cash-for-gold scams with that kind of money, it’s probably not a sign of the Apocalypse so much as a sign that we probably deserve one at this point.

Or is that too harsh?

Maybe. But I probably wouldn’t mind so much if so many people didn’t take Beck seriously. Which is why I can’t decide which is worse: whether Beck really believes his own schtick, or he’s a savvy broadcaster who knows how to draw an audience. Because if it’s the latter, I’m pretty most of his audience isn’t in on the joke.

Either way, it’s the latest indication that Rational Discourse is LONG dead and gone. And all because there’s no money in it.

Why bother,

This is dF

There’s some dispute as to what was the last song to air on WRVU before it became WFCL.

Some reports say it was New Order’s “Waiting For The Siren’s Call”.



The Nashville Scene says it was Johnny Thunders’ “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory”.



I’d like to think it was the latter – partially because I prefer Johnny Thunders to New Order, and partially because it just fits.

Don’t try,

This is dF

Or, “Why I keep doing this when bloggery is dead.”

Today marks the sixth anniversary of my presence on the LJs (though not this specific blog, which I started in late 2007).

I’m racking my brains trying to think of something clever to say about it. Honestly I’m not coming up with much. One thing I can say is that I’ve learned an important lesson in doing this:

Blogging is a lot like college radio. You do yr show, play yr music and say what’s on yr mind, imagining all the while that yr friends are out there listening and digging it – when in reality most of them don’t even have their radio turned on.

Which is the case with me. Sure, I have 62 followers (which is probably about 5x as many people as used to listen to my radio shows), but most of you are people I’ve met here on LJ. Of all the meatspace friends I’m in contact with, almost none of them read this blog.

This isn’t their fault, of course. I know it’s nothing personal. They have lives, and each life comes with different priorities, some of which are beyond control. Few of them listened to my radio show as well for similar reasons.

Granted, a key difference is that radio is a fixed yet ethereal medium – it goes out into the ether live, at a fixed time, for one broadcast only, never to be heard again unless someone bothers to tape/archive/syndicate it. With blogs, it’s all recorded and time-shiftable – and still most people I know will never see the vast majority of what I post, mainly because they’re not on LJ and never will be. The only way I can reach them is on Facebook – and even there, most of what I post goes unnoticed and/or "unliked" (and that’s due to the fact that I’m competing with a million other posts in their news feed, 80% of them Farmville updates).

Which begs the question: why bother?

The answer – at least for me – is that I do it for the same reason I did college radio: partly for the love of the medium, partly for my own amusement, and partly to keep in practice. And yes, because I'm an opinionated bastard. But I also do it for the few people who do tune in for whatever reason, whether I know them or not.

(I believe the medical term for this is “sheer bloody-mindedness”. I’ll have to check.)

The same applies to comments (or lack thereof). I get very few of them, but it’s really no different from college radio in that respect – hardly anyone ever called in apart from the occasional request, often for songs I had no interest in playing (Skid Row and Warrant were common examples). If anything, the bloggery gets a better response (with the caveat that I don’t have a troll/spam problem, or a lot of psychotic ex-girlfriends/boyfriends/spouses tuning in, as I know other people do).

All of which I mention because I’ve seen other LJers despair from lack of commentary. But for me, it’s like I’m back in the DJ booth broadcasting to the ether. I just assume that yr out there, and yr getting it, even if you don’t phone in.

Which is my meandering way of saying thanks for tuning in, and that broadcasts will continue as normal.

On with the countdown,

This is dF