Yakkity-yak

The Supreme Court's recent Kelo decision regarding eminent domain has been the hot topic on blogs and talk radio. That, I suppose, is a good thing because, if nothing else, it holds up the five mental midgets on the court who favored this piece of crap decision up to the scorn they deserve. It's enough to make one start a "Spit on the Foul Five" campaign. But being civilized, we'll refrain from exciting such agitation.

Instead I'll address the topic of talk radio and its BIG HEAD.

Yours truly has been listening to talk radio in one form or another for forty years. I can remember the days when Joe Pyne used to tell the callers he disagreed with to "go gargle with razor blades." And they say that Rush Limbaugh is crude. But back in those days men were men and felt free to be jerks in public.

First of all, let's face the fact that nationwide talk radio programs are pretty useless, and the hosts have over-rated opinions of themselves and their power over the populace through the airwaves. If Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity had half the influence that they pretend to have Congress would have long ago seriously addressed the problem of illegal immigration, voted for the appointment of John Bolton as U.N. ambassador from the US or would have voted for Mr. Bush's nominees for the Federal bench. Instead our elected masters have continued have deigned to cut their usual capers i.e., posing, preening and screeching.

Local talk radio is a forum hosted by the half educated and half informed who have a talents for turning a phrase and mounting campaigns such as handing out broccoli at courthouses where juries have deliberated longer on murder cases than the hosts have thought proper. The local talk radio hosts who are really capable of more than superficial thought are few and far between. Doug McIntyre, Al Rantel and Jill Stewart are able to dig below the surface of a topic. But the rest spend most of their valuable airtime trying to humiliate their opponents via ad hominem attacks and clever phrases instead of engaging them in conversation, and scratching at the crust of a matter with a stick instead of digging to the heart.

But even back in the glory days of Ray Briem, and there was no radio host more informed regarding international affairs, the problem with talk radio was that it was almost a form of talk therapy i.e., if a problem is talked about enough the problem will be solved.

Take the case of Eula Love. Back in the 80s a woman named Eula Love was shot and killed by a Los Angeles policeman. She was, at the time, wielding a butcher knife And the person who made the call to the LAPD, a gas meter reader, claimed that she threatened him with the knife. For six months after the incident the talk radio world was dedicated to the case with only three variations of the theme: Woulda, shoulda, coulda. All the talk succeeded in -- nothing. But by the time the Eula Love matter finally faded from the talk radio world, the callers and many listeners seemed to have felt that the problem, through all the gassing, had been solved. Never mind that ten years later a very similar case took place showing that either police policy had not been changed or that human nature cannot be changed.

The difference between then and now is that then topics were better analyzed, and the hosts were better informed. It was considered the job of the talk show host to know his topic well and not just fly by the seat of his pants. Now many hosts are content with reading a headline and taking off from there. But in either case, all the talk solves nothing. It just raises blood pressure or serves as a source for jokes. Talk radio has as much connection to the real world and the world of ideas as does the World Weekly News. And the World Weekly News is more entertaining and takes itself less seriously.

Oh, Batboy! Whither goest thou?