Radio Sweethearts

Brooke opens this week’s episode of “On the Media” by saying “love is in the air…and on the air.”

Upon hearing that, I immediately sat up straighter, poised my pen for more extreme note taking, and hoped against all reason this would be the week where Brooke finally announced, for the sake of journalistic integrity, that Bob’s feelings were reciprocated. I was ready to start searching wedding registries and announcements. I had china all picked out! I was planning how many vacation days I’d need to take to go to the wedding! Matthew was going to volunteer to DJ.

Sadly, Brooke doesn’t love Bob. The media loves Barack Obama. Geez, OTM. Get my hopes up, why don’t you.

It’s like this: Barack Obama is that boy (or girl) that you had a crush on in high school. He’s hyper-likable, yet playing hard to get. He’s suave and always cool under pressure (like a gazelle, according to “OTM”). He’ll smile and say hello when you see him standing by his locker, but he’s never going to answer that “circle yes or no” note that you had a friend pass him in 7th period. But you (and the media) crave more.

Alternately, Hillary Clinton is having a bit of trouble. She’s like the boyfriend you dump after he cheats on you, but he still shows up almost daily begging you back, swearing that baby, he’s changed! For real! Sadly, there’s already the perception that Hil is totally calculating, and the press has been listening to too much Gloria Gaynor. They won’t be led on like that again.

Like high school girls, however, they will refuse to learn from past embarassments.

Remember the New Hampshire primary, when the media made a huge gaffe in their reporting of the results? (If not, we’ve remembered it for you, right here.)

They’re calling election results too early, declaring things over before they really are. I totally agree – CNN will post projected winners with one precinct reporting. This could also be why I tend to generally distrust everything CNN does except for AC360.

Even John McCain is in on it – he’s alluded in several speeches to facing Obama in the presidential race. This feeds the media perception, which feeds public perception and so on and so on until…seriously. Can we just elect somebody?

Bob takes the next story, which is fitting, given his moonlighting. We’re informed in a foreboding voice that on Feb. 17th, 2009 all analog TV broadcasts will stop. They’ll show nothing but static. And just in case you people with fancy digital sets have forgotten what analog sounds like, Bob plays a clip of static to demonstrate that the TVs will play nothing but static.

Bob, Bob, Bob. Please. We had a talk about this last week. Quit trying to be clever and read me the damn news.

Only 14 percent of people will be affected by the conversion. Those people include me – not that my TV (which is hooked up in a closet) picks up anything at all. But never fear! You can keep that old clunker TV that you love with a digital converter. They’re only $50, but the government will give you a coupon for $40 off. Because those using analog signal are clearly less evolved lifeforms, the conversion is going to cause us lots of confusion and panic.

Bob raises an obvious point – the conversion is 11 months away, and when “the rubber meets the road”, the newsmedia will let us know all about it. It’s in this sentence that I realize why Brooke gets the better assignments.

Matthew just pointed out that the song immediately following Bob’s segment is Radiohead’s “High and Dry”. And I don’t get it, but he insists it’s a bad joke, so it’s probably Bob’s doing.

And it’s Brooke to save the day! She’s interviewing Clay Shirkey, who has an amazing story of a woman, a cell phone, and a self-righteous 16 year-old who still believes in finders keepers. It’s interesting, and you should listen to it. Plus, I feel a bit weird being a girl who writes for a specific internet community commenting on the validity of internet communities.

Next up – conservative commentator William F. Buckley died this week. And though Bob isn’t thrilled about what Buckley spawned (looking at you, Ann Coulter), he does have some genuine reverence for the man himself. Plus, there are clips of Buckley, and he’s got a cool voice.

Bob continues with a story about the East German secret police, the Stasi. The Stasi kept minute by minute details of millions of people’s lives. The highly classified documents took up a lot of paper, and that paper had to be shredded.

Being Eastern Europe, they didn’t have paper shredders that could efficiently handle it. So they ripped them by hand. Because they’re that bad ass.

Now, the German government is trying to “put the pieces together” (seriously, Bob. It’s literal. Quit trying to make it funny!). The paper amounted to 160 shelf miles – somewhere, Al Gore is having a heart attack. Bob asks a legitimate question – why not just burn the paper? The answer, from Andrew Curry: “Well, I think if they could have set it on fire, they would have.” I think that’s a general German feeling.

At any rate, it’s a good thing they didn’t burn anything, because people have come looking for their files. Slowly, with the aid of a computer, the Germans are starting to feel th sting of finding out which of their close friends and family members were feeding the Stasi information.

It has to be a very mixed feeling. On one hand, I would totally want to know what they had on me, because I doubt my dossier would be very interesting. Matthew’s would be more interesting. I just imagine it has to be incredibly difficult to find out who sold you out, as most of these people are still alive.

It makes me shudder a little bit, and I think it’s kind of freaking Bob out too, because this week’s episode closes with something light, happy, and likely born out of serious dependence on mind-altering substances. If you guessed “America’s Next Top Model”, you’re wrong. If you said “Smurfs!” you’re absolutely right.

Brooke’s piece on the Smurfs is entirely longer than it needs to be. It is interesting – were the Smurfs commies? Were they into deviant sexual acts? “Look online at the discussions of the upcoming Smurf movie and you’ll find lots of potty-mouthed spewing about The Smurfs and numerous X-rated aspirations with regard to Smurfette,” says Brooke.

Listen to the whole thing here. And happy 50th birthday, little blue commie mysteries!

This week’s somewhat delayed recap was written by Kerry and edited by Matthew, who for once is editing live and in person!