Why Air America Is Failing

After all the hype. After all the free publicity from the MSM. After all the liberals in Hollywood and the media got together to beat the drum for them. After all the talk of how successful Air America is... It is in fact a colossal failure. From Brian Anderson's L.A. Times column today :

Wait a second, you say, didn't I read that Air America has expanded to more than 50 markets? That's true, but let's put things in perspective: Conservative pundit and former Reagan official William J. Bennett's morning talk show, launched at the same time as Air America, reaches nearly 124 markets, including 18 of the top 20, joining the growing ranks of successful right-of-center talk programs (Limbaugh is still the ratings leader, drawing more than 15 million listeners a week).

And look at Air America's ratings: They're pitifully weak, even in places where you would think they'd be strong. WLIB, its flagship in New York City, has sunk to 24th in the metro area Arbitron ratings — worse than the all-Caribbean format it replaced, notes the Radio Blogger. In the liberal meccas of San Francisco and Los Angeles, Air America is doing lousier still.

I think my favorite bit from all that is: "worse than the all-Caribbean format it replaced[.]" How does it get sweeter than that?

Imagine if Rush or Sean were doing poorly. Think maybe you'd hear more about it in the MSM? Especially after all the publicity it's launch received? But of course Air America's dive is either ignored or spun into "expanding to 50 stations." In other words, the liberal media focuses on the positive so as not to pile on and thus fuel the inevitable. Something they would gleefully do if Air America were conservative. 

Anderson then goes on to explain why liberal radio is a failure and breaks it down into three reasons.

1. The conservatives are simply more entertaining and funnier. One of the reasons is they're not hampered and self-censored by political correctness.

2. White liberals already have NPR. Blacks and Hispanics already have radio stations that cater to them. Who's left?

3. The MSM is so bias, liberals don't ache for an alternative.

Those may be very valid reasons,  but the most important reason is missing: Talk radio requires debate, and liberals ideas -- be they in the arena of history, facts, or compassion -- cannot survive fair and open debate. Being liberal requires taking a poison called "intellectual dishonesty," and intellectual dishonesty cannot sustain in an open debate forum like talk radio.

Liberals want an acknowledgment of Bush successes -- because they're real -- but want to know why and how they can hang onto their ideology in the face of them. During the Clinton years, that's what Rush did. He didn't ignore the economy -- he explained how it was Reagan's tax cuts still working. And he explained it in a way that made sense. Rush didn't ignore the shrinking deficit of the 90's. He explained why it was congressional Republicans and Reagan policies that made it possible.

Liberals aren't doing that (because they can't). So, Air America and other liberal talking heads are forced to holler, "WMD!" every time the Iraq election is mentioned. They're forced to holler, "Deficit!" every time the economic recovery is mentioned. They're forced to holler, "Theocracy! Hitler! Chimp! Halliburton!" every time any other Bush success is mentioned.

"Hate" is not a debating point. "Anti-war" is not a debating point. Cheap shots and hip-cynicism are not debating points. In order to survive hour after hour, day after day, year after year, the host's ideas must be sustainable intellectually and today liberals are forced to ignore the Oil-For-Food scandal (unless it involves a Texan) and Bush successes in Iraq, the greater Middle East, and the economy. Liberal listeners notice their Air America hosts ignoring the facts and it makes them uneasy.

Liberals want the facts confronted and then to be told why it was the United Nations that made Iraq free or why it was Clinton policies that caused the rise of freedom in the Middle East. They want an intellectual, logical, and compassionate explanation of why the Bush successes are luck and how liberalism birthed them. Instead they get diversions and non-sequiters about Hitler and Halliburton.

I heard Dennis Miller confront Harry Shearer about the success in the Middle East and ask about giving Bush a little credit for it. Shearer refused to even pretend he was asked the question and went on and on about how we would invade Iran and how Bolton was this or that. It was pathetic. Miller asked again. Same response.

Conservatives turn to talk radio to hear, among many things, why we're right. In the face of it all, please tell us why we're still right. Air America can't do that. All they can do is ignore the question. That's mighty cold comfort and no way create to a revolution.

UPDATE: Welcome fellow Michelle Malkin fans! Take a look around. Hope you'll visit again.

Comments

[Dan]

Good point. Everyone wants to be told they are right. But the intellectually honest folks eventually want more than just validation. They want to understand why they should think they were right, how to explain it and what the counter argument would sound like.

Currently, the folks on the left are just giving themselves the intellectual equivalent of a "social promotion". They were right, because not being right is unacceptable and hurtful. They can't examine the actual facts too closely or they would be confronted by their own moral vacuousness.

[Randi Baghdad Betty Rhodes]

Baghdad Betty can be distinguished from Tokyo Rose for one very salient reason. Baghdad Betty does not broadcast from Iraq --she broadcasts from New York City.

World War II gave us Tokyo Rose, the Japanese radio broadcaster whose job it was to demoralize American troops. Seoul City Sue did the same thing for the North Korean communists during the Korean War. Hanoi Hanna was the Vietnamese communist version.

Today we have Baghdad Betty. However, Baghdad Betty can be distinguished from the aforementioned for one very salient reason. Baghdad Betty does not broadcast from Iraq -- she broadcasts from New York.

Baghdad Betty aka Randi Rhodes is one of Air America’s premier talk show hosts. Actually, Randi Rhodes is a nome de microphone. According to a recent Ann Coulter column, her real name is a secret.

I first heard Rhodes about a year ago during a trip to Fort Lauderdale. After about twenty minutes of her repeating Bush and Nazi I realized she was incapable of an original thought so I changed the station.

I have not listened to Air America since I wrote about the network when it first began broadcasting. I felt it might be interesting to get their current perspective. So I tuned in recently to listen.

I began with the 10 AM show of Lizz Winsted and Rachel Maddow. I skipped the noontime Al Franken show and returned for Baghdad Betty/Randi Rhodes. What I heard was a rebroadcast of her show of several weeks earlier. Listening to Baghdad Betty’s dialogue with a caller named Dave and her subsequent monologue I learned:

“We (the United States) invaded an unarmed country (Iraq).”

“We (US) bombed the hell out of “unarmed country ( Iraq).”

“They (Iraq) had no air force”

“We (US military) are torturing the people we went to liberate (Iraqis).”

“They (the Iraqi people) waited a year for us to take care of them. We didn’t. Then they found out about us torturing people that is what created the insurgency.”

“Every single solitary military guy,” said there were not sufficient troops in Iraq.

Just imagine: all this disinformation was from just one show. One can only imagine what Baghdad Betty says on a regular basis. Her rant was pure propaganda. One only wonders if she is a dupe of the antiwar crowd or intentionally deceiving people.

Whichever it is none of what she said was true. For example:

If Iraq were an “unarmed country” as she said, then maybe she could explain how Lance Corporal Andrew Julian Aviles was killed when an Iraqi artillery round struck his amphibious assault vehicle on April 7, 2003.

If we did “bomb the hell out of an unarmed country” then she should explain the December 1998 CNN report stating, “Iraqi forces would shoot at warplanes patrolling the no-fly zones.”

If Iraq did not have an air force as Baghdad Betty says, then why did the December 2002 Daily Telegraph say, “An Iraqi warplane shot down an unmanned US surveillance drone yesterday, threatening to escalate the tension in the region as America builds up its forces for a possible war early next year. Why did a 2001 UPI story claim, “Since December 1998… [there are] more than 160 incidents of Iraqi aircraft violating the zones.”

Baghdad Betty claimed the Iraqi people waited for a year for us to do something to help them then, when we did not help them, and seeing the photographs from Abu Ghraib, the insurgency began. If this were true why is it that the November 13, 2004 New York Times reported, “nearly 18 months after the Iraq insurgency began in May 2003.” (italics mine) Why is it that the nonprofit think tank Jamestown Foundation wrote on June 17, 2004, “insurgency began in May 2003 with the outbreak of violence by the Sunni Arab population.”

According to Baghdad Betty, we are torturing the people we were liberating.

Does she think SSGT Joseph Darby was torturing prisoners? He was the person who told officials about the illegal conduct by guards at Abu Ghraib. What about all the other troops who investigated and prosecuted these abuses? Are they all guilty of torturing innocent Iraqis or Iraqi prisoners.

She also said that “every single solitary military person, “said more troops were needed. Yet, General Tommy Franks was quoted as saying July 7, 2003, “more troops not needed for Iraq.”

Baghdad Betty said we do not have any trouble murdering people in this country, while drawing the parallel to capital punishment here and the snuff films broadcast by the terrorists.

There is a report that she once advocated the assassination of President Bush during her broadcast.

Her biography says she was in the Air Force. If this is to be believed her insulting of the military is outrageous. Her biography also says she is a “smoky-voiced Brooklyn native” (This explains why I thought she was merely doing a bad imitation of Barbra Streisand).

She is completely without credibility. Randi “Baghdad Betty” Rhodes is to talk radio what “Tikrit” Teddy Rall, who said Pat Tillman was an idiot, is to newspaper cartoons.

They are fools.