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Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

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Sunday, 24 July 2005
Through the Looking Glass
Topic: Out of Flyover Land
`I ca'n't believe that!' said Alice

`Ca'n't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone. `Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.

Alice laughed. `There's no use trying,' she said`one ca'n't believe impossible things.'"

`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast"



I suppose for some people it is much easier, much safer to believe impossible things. One recent example has been the media blitz concerning Air America and on the surface, man did it sure look good.

Message Received
A Year After the Launch of the Air America Radio Network, Progressive Talk is Making Progress

by Mark Jurkowitz

Providence talk station WHJJ-AM (920), also owned by Clear Channel, went to a more liberal lineup with several Air America shows in October. ''We found that Air America is a real opportunity for us," said program director Bill George. ''I think the time is right. I think the talk world is much larger than the narrow right-wing views we hear from Rush and Hannity."

But then reality, which may be ignored but never can be stopped rears it's ugly head as Buster Block over at Inmuscatine points out.

"Yep. The great success story. You bet there's a market for Liberal talk radio. Let's see - dead last, or next to dead last in every market in which it airs. The only question left to ask about (Dead)Air America is - when are they going to pull the plug?"

What is the truth instead of the impossible things we are supposed to be practicing believing?

"In one of talk radio's biggest-ever screw-ups, a once well-performing conservative talk station has been destroyed by switching to "progressive" Air America programming.

Most astounding: it took only a year to kill Providence's WHJJ-AM.

Since it's one of the few to dump a viable conservative lineup for Franken & Co., it provides an important case study for liberal talk's failure.

We're talking about Rhode Island here, not Wyoming (although there is a town by that name in the Ocean State).

It's the land of Congressmen named Kennedy, corrupt Democrat power brokers and squishy Republicans like Sen. Lincoln Chafee. Shouldn't it be a great place for liberal talk?

Not according to Arbitron, which released spring ratings results for the city-state, late Thursday.

WHJJ-AM has seen its audience sliced in half since the change, going from a respectable 3.5 share last summer, to a miniscule 1.8. Most amazing: a distant Boston signal from WBZ-AM actually beat hometown WHJJ. That has to be a first."

Radio Equalizer | It's All About Providence


Never fear. the folks at Common Dreams above (I could NOT have made a better name up for this essay!) are ready to give us a solution for Air America's doldrums!

Yes the figure who wil be able to exlain nuance to the Ignorant Red State Voters is none other than.

Can we please have a drum roll?

JERRY SPRINGER!

"Air America is about to get another marquee name. Starting tomorrow, the network will carry the radio show hosted by the trash-TV icon and former Cincinnati mayor, Jerry Springer.

''When you hear him on the radio, it's very intimate," said Jon Sinton, Air America's president of programming. ''We think he's right on the issues. He's heavily enough anti-Bush to be credible for our audience."

Maybe they have decided they need someone who can speak in a language that the unwashed masses can understand?

Yes it is SO much better to believe 6 impossible things before breakfast than to face the truth.

They may SAY "Clear Channel's Hobbs sounded bullish on his company's plans to convert more stations to the liberal talk roster. ''Intellectually I don't think you can argue against the niche. There's a theoretical hole big enough to drive a truck through," he said. ''So far our batting average is pretty high. I see no reason to slow down or stop at all."

But I have always maintained, question your ASSUMPTIONS. One wonders, does their target audience LISTEN to Radio? It is one thing to drag market share away from other venues, but if your target audience is watching TV, reading a book, and does not have a radio on what are you going to accomplish, besides dragging what few viewers NPR have away, that is?

But I guess for their target audience, it is easy to get them to believe the 6 impossible things before breakfast,

Red State Voters are a little harder to control, that was pointed out after the last election by
Jane Smiley in her essay The unteachable ignorance of the red states.
among our many failings she finds, " red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do?they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable."


We are unteachable it seems, believing 6 impossible things before breakfast, requires dedication and TALENT in self-delusion.

A perfect example of this theme is the rancor and ire heaped upon those who can be termed Neo-cons.
What does that term mean? No I do not mean "Bad, REALLY BAD" which would be the answer from Impossible believers, what does it REALLY mean?

The prefix Neo means new, so that would imply before one was a Neo-con (neoconservative) one would have been something else?

What would that be? Besides Liberal that is?
There is the reason for all the rancor spite and ire, Neo-Cons are deserters from the Leftist Agenda they are in so many words Apostate Progressives.

One would cause a person to walk away from the philosophy and political Ideals of a Life time.
Perhaps it was looking at the world one day and saying to oneself, "I cannot believe this stuff any more."??

One of the Greatest examples is the road taken by Christopher Hitchens, one time shining light of the left and lifetime Trotskyite.

Here is the story of his Epiphany.
"Don't Cross Over if You Have Any Intention of Going Back": Politics and Literature in the Mind of Christopher Hitchens


"I can tell you exactly when the breaking point came, actually. I was invited by Michael Moore to be his interviewer at the Telluride Film Festival for his awful, baggy, dishonest, boring movie, Bowling for Columbine. In that film, clips about the Kosovo war from Serbian television are used as objective. Moore implies that the bombing of Kosovo might have inspired the murderers in Columbine. You don't know where to start with someone as mentally lazy as this. This was on the anniversary of September 11 terrorist attacks, and he said, "Well, if it's true that bin Laden did this thing in New York . . ." It was early in the morning; just a second, I thought. "Say that again? If they did this?" He said, "Well, if they did this." And he opposed the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan?a reactionary, conservative position couched in radical anti-imperialist language. My Marxist training tells me things don't remain the same. Reactionary-left positions won't hold for long; they will metamorphose into reactionary-right ones. He says he considers the Iraqi resistance?the beheaders and kidnappers and rapists, the people who throw petrol and explosives into the mosques of rival Muslims, among other things?the equivalents of the Minutemen of the American Revolution. This is the statement of a flat-out brown shirt. It has to be described as such. And all the people who thought that was a great movie to rock the vote, they should be fucking ashamed. There is no room for compromising on a thing like this. He's a lying, fascist, thug."


You see? Christopher Hitchens cannot believe the impossible thing Moore claims "the beheaders and kidnappers and rapists, the people who throw petrol and explosives into the mosques of rival Muslims, among other things?the equivalents of the Minutemen of the American Revolution."

He has taken a good look at the world and concluded..


"Everybody knows what the grievances of the jihadists arethey're very easy to identify. They grieve for the loss of the caliphate. They're not anti-imperialists?they're pro-imperialists. There's an empire they lost and want back. They're offended?deeply, grievously offended?by the sight of an undraped woman or the existence of a Shiite Muslim, or a Christian, or a Jew. These things they consider to be offensive. They believe God gives them the right to erase these things. Let's not understate the fact that they do have deep-seated grievances. But to hear this ventriloquized on the left as some sort of perverse populism was too much for me."


I used to think the Dove/Hawk paradigm needed to be changed to Ostriche/Hawk to denote those who keep their heads in the sand, I think now it should be Dodo/Hawk. because Dodos are jus too stupid to believe anything or anyone would want or be able to hurt THEM that they continued to believe that impossible thing even while someone was coming up and hitting their neighbors over the head and even until they came up to them.




Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 10:44 PM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 6:10 AM CDT

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