Taking calls from listeners (as usual) and I get a call from a man...
On the phone-call monitor in front of me, my engineer, who took the call, has typed in that the caller has identified himself as Bob and that he's calling from Idaho--but he could be Anybody from Anywhere... A lot of the callers are truckers or people in cars so they will sometimes identify themselves by their home state but might be anywhere in the country when they're calling on their cell phones. I often get calls from some trucker who is listed as calling from Texas but is currently rolling through Indiana hauling a load of appliances or dog food or plastic bags...They don't much care what they're pulling--its just something that gets picked up, hauled across half the country and delivered.
Some calls I can recognize by the area code (whenever someone calls any radio show these days their phone appears on the screen by area code and phone number-- Once people became aware of this, it cut down quite a bit on prank and outright bigoted, cursing phone calls).
But I digress... So, there I have on the phone, Bob from Idaho-- and not to be doing a kind of racial profiling here-- I can tell right away from his accent and tone and the rhythym of his speech, that I am dealing with someone very dense and probalby very conservative...
Used to be, when I first got to Sirius and took calls from all over the country, that I had to adjust my classic New York City bigoted attitude toward anybody with pronounced Southern or Southwestern accent.
Prior to going on Sirius, I had spent 25 years on a local New York City station--WBAI-FM-- where almost every caller had been from New York City, with a few from Jersey and Long Island... Not that I didn't get my share of idiotic callers and outright loons but, on the whole, the calls I got were mostly from people where pretty well educated or least knowledgable about the subject they were calling on... Growing up in New York City and having traveled a bit around the country (including down South and out West) I had gotten and retained a definite contempt for the intelligence and knowledge of Southerners and Southwesterners... But looking back on it all now, I can safely say that, having done more traveling, especially up to the NorthEast, and recalling my days in New York among all sorts of religious, ethnic and racial groups, that stupidity and bigotry is pretty evenly spread out across the country...
Hoever, having said that, I will say, that in a city like New York, with about fifty different languages and dialects spoken and every different color and religion and sect is represented, that people tend to make room for each other-- They get along pretty well--plain civilization and simple spatial accomadation require it.
You even tend, being so constantly exposed to so many different kinds of people, to develope acquaintances, friendships among otherwise very different groups of people, or, at the very least, there developes in many New Yorkers, a certain wearing away of bigotry...
Its really when you go to place where the population is almostly completely homogeneous that you run into a kind of mental (if not actual) inbreeding.
Lately we've seen this most markedly and frighteningly represented at the rallies for Sarah Palin and John McCain... When you show up at a place where everyone is white, and either lower-middle or middle-class; very conservative and, more likely than not, less educated/informed than the average American, you're going to get more outright bigotry expressed than at a typical Obama-Biden rally--where you get a much broader deeper mix of people...
Of course, you also have to fan the flames with outright demagogic rhetorick Like "Obama pals around with terrorists!" or have a fully uniformed white Florida sherrif, who, while introducing Palin, talk about Barack HUSSEIN Obama.. So, in the end, what you get is what you got this past Saturday--where some poor, frightened, deeply ignorant woman in Minnesota got up from the audience for McCain, took the hand-held microphone and said she was afraid because he (Obama) was an Arab... (an Arab! Oh God and Jesus defend us--call the 101st Airborne!).
McCain, after spending a couple of weeks (along with his scary sidekick, Palin, telling everyone who listened to him, that Obama was, in essence, a terrorist, finally had to take the microphone out this woman's hands and say: "No M'am, he's not an Arab-- he's an American and decent family man..."
Poor old John McCain, his sense of honor and his ambition have met in a head-on crash inside his heart and brain and caused him to fragment completely...
So he himself, and his pit-bull assistant and his campaign managers and the Republican National Committee have been calling Obama a terrorist and foreigner etc. etc. for a couple of weeks now---And then, when stupid, vicious mobs at rallies start calling for Obama to be killed and, incidentally, booing the press and using the word "nigger" when referring to a black camera-man for one of the TV networks, McCain has to backpeddle and tell the crowd (who booed him for saying it!) that Obama needs to be respected...
First you stand up in a crowded theater and scream fire, then condemn everyone for running out and trampling innocent people...
The very next day, Saturday, both McCain and Palin have switched to issues, like abortion, etc. (lying completely of course, but what else can you expect)--and taking a break-who knows for how long--from Bill Ayers and this shameful stuff about terrorism...
But wait! I digressed again...
So, Bob from Idaho calls and he has this thick, slow, dumb tone to his voice and he proceeds to tell me how scary Obama was because he's not an American and he's a Muslim and he's a terrorist and his ex-pastor, Reverend Wright, hates America, etc. etc.-- One dumb piece of drivel after another... (Being tired after 2 and 1/2 hours on the air, I didn't even think to call the guy on the most obvious stupidity in his little deck of cards-- That Obama was "a Muslim" and his pastor, Reverend Wright hated America... How could Obama be a Muslim and have a Christian pastor... Oh well, who care?
Anyway, I tried to very calm and factual and patient with Bob-- Telling, with each wrong fact he utttered, that it WAS wrong, and the opposite was the case--
I asked where he heard this stuff-- He said: "Its all over TV". I told him that wasn't the case and asked him which TV channel... He just repeated: "TV."
You have to assume it was a local Fox affiliate somewhere...
If its not that, its some right-wing local or national radio show--
This really gets to me. I've met Rush Limbaugh and I know that he and the clowns on Fox TV, are not stupid people. They really are, with a couple of exceptions (Sean Hannity being the most prominent) at least average or above average intelligence. They are deliberately and cynically pouring this stupid inflammatory poison into people's minds... And because they seem to be or pretend, by the surrounding graphics and their serious tone to be, "reporters" or "hosts" like at a legitimate news channel, the mass of frightened and ignorant people in this country, and there are tens of millions of them apparently-- these people take this nonsense for the gospel truth...
I've listend occasionally to the hosts and callers on right-wing radio and you always tend to get (in response to the loud and angry drivel being issued by the host) much stupider, more bigoted people calling into these shows..
Its an old rule of talk radio--maybe the most fundamental rule--that on radio, you always gets back what you put out.
If you talk in a reasonable, balanced, mature and intelligent way about something (which I manage to do maybe 80% of the time with the occasional spectactular lapse), then that's the kind of caller you will get when you pick up the phone....
There are millions of Bobs from Idaho and there wouldn't be half as many if the people they look up to (their political leaders) and the people they get their information from (TV and radio mostly) attempted to be honest, respectful and more factual than opinionated...
But what am I saying?! How can you win an election or swindle or lie to millions of people on a daily basis unless you keep than as ignorant and scared as possible?
Mike Feder
mikefeder@nyc.rr.com
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5 comments:
Mike
There was a guy on talk radio 20 years or more back, AM station, who was already a dinosaur, and right wing radio talk shows had not proliferated.
I can't recall his name, but would recognize it. He was very intelligent, I would think he was middle of the road to progressive, he was an expert on the civil war, on trains, and he spoke in a CIVIL fashion. Hence, as you suggest, his callers were for the most part, respectful people, even in disagreement. On Friday nights, he would declare, NO POLITICS. You could talk about music, about broadway, about the the craziest general in the confederate army, or what train has the most cars being pulled, but NO POLITICS.
There are a few dinosaurs still today. ON TV, Jim Lehrer will interview 'pundits' who an hour earlier were on FOX, or CNN, even MNBC.........on the 24/7, they scream, they agitate, they go eye to eye.........on Lehrer, they spoke quietly, Lehrer did so in asking his questions, and so it went, and still goes.
But you know, better than I, that we're skipping toward extinction of civil discourse. I say, get out your tapes, and record Robert Siegal on All Things Considered, or Jim Lehrer, if for no other reason than for history's sake.
Barry
I appreciate your patience with the amazingly dim-witted among us. For nearly thirty years, I listened to local talk radio to keep up on local events. About three years ago, I had to stop listening. It had become nothing more than a local version of The Rush Limbaugh Show. I understand where the demagogues are coming from but, despite trying so hard to understand, I cannot quite grasp why citizens embrace it and then proudly call in to radio shows to spout it back. I'm having a very hard time finding my own sense of tolerance with these folks. Thank goodness some are calling you and hearing a different opinion, even if it doesn't seem to get through.
The internet can be wonderful; care to know all the shows that were held at the Fillmore and who was on each card.......internet........want to find 10 ways to remove grass stains from pants?........internet.......Recognize an actor in a BBC production on DVD, but don't know from where?......internet, you'll get the actor's every work.
For all of that information, the internet provides access to 1000x more MISinformation. Such is true with talk radio; the profusion of radio (and tv) talk shows brings to us that much more anger, confrontation, and like the internet, misinformation.
Today they are showing a clip of a true blue American assuring the camera that Obama is terrorist cell. That bit of information will be repeated 50 times per show, and would 1,000 shows be a conservative number?......
While there is access to information at the touch of a keyboard, or the dialing of a phone, or the tuning of a radio, there is an inexhaustible supply of lies, distortions, making it so very hard to trust what is, and what isn't.....
I love everything about you.
Sally
I don't think I know you, Sally, but.....oh, I'm sorry, you were speaking to Mike??? *wink*
B.
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