Radio Sweethearts

I’m running late with this, so I’m just going to launch into it. But wait for the tail end of this. Bob cracks through his shell, starts owning his job… all of that. He makes me proud.

But everything until that point gets glossed over.

Oh, and yes, that picture is of Wolfman Jack. It’ll make sense at the end.

If you’ve been following the news at all, you know Zimbabwe sucks. The elections a few weeks ago were made into a total sham when Robert Mugabe cracked ruthlessly down upon his opposition. I feel completely unqualified to talk about this, so here’s the link. It’s interesting. Go for it.

Also, food is expensive.

And then we’ve got two stories about Evangelicals. This is where things get interesting. Apparently, there are far fewer people who are strict adherents to evangelicalism than thought. About 7% of Americans, as opposed to about 25%, which is the figure commonly touted by the big-name evangelicals themselves.

Then, in the kind of story usually better kept to Coast to Coast AM, Bob interviews Jeff Sharlet about the vast Evangelical conspiracy. They talk about how Evangelicals make themselves more powerful than their numbers really allow for. It involves secrecy, shadiness and something called “The Family.” Probably also Nicolas Cage.

So that’s kind of awesome, but what really impressed me was when, in commenting on Rush Limbaugh’s 20th anniversary in broadcasting, Bob tears into the guy writing about Limbaugh for the “New York Times.”

I’m just going to copy this bit from the transcript:

BOB GARFIELD: Your piece on Limbaugh was very generous, I would say even flattering. You seem to give him a pass for his excesses. And when I’m talking about excesses, I’m talking about ad hominem attacks, truly mean-spirited stuff that goes way beyond satire and into the politics of vilification, and also playing fast and loose with the truth, seizing on some news item and grossly misrepresenting it and creating a lot of hubbub, using as the kernel of his satire something that is just fundamentally untrue.

ZEV CHAFETS: Well, do you have an example of that? I’m not an apologist for Rush Limbaugh, but I’m a little bit defensive because I think that the liberal media takes such an unfair view of him.

I hear people being vilified on the radio, on all sorts of radio stations by all sorts of people all day long. And Limbaugh is not worse than many of the ones I hear, even on NPR. He just has a different point of view.

BOB GARFIELD: The NAACP should have a riot rehearsal, they should get a liquor store and practice robberies?

ZEV CHAFETS: Not my sense of humor, but it’s not a lie.

BOB GARFIELD: Did Limbaugh not say that Abu Ghraib was no worse than a Skull and Bones initiation?

ZEV CHAFETS: Yeah, he did. It’s his opinion.

BOB GARFIELD: Yeah. Did he not deny that genocide was committed against the American Indian and state that the population is higher now than it was before Christopher Columbus — of Native Americans?

ZEV CHAFETS: Mm, I don’t know. I didn’t ask him that either. I don’t know what the population was before Christopher Columbus.

BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, it was about 15 million and, you know, by the 19th century it was 250,000. I mean, that’s what – that’s the numbers.

Okay, now I know [LAUGHS] you don’t want to be an apologist for Rush Limbaugh or his spokesmen.

ZEV CHAFETS: Right.

BOB GARFIELD: But do you not think that he is answerable for things that are, at minimum, offensive and obnoxious and mean spirited that he has said on the air?

Seriously, I think Bob has been taking classes at the Brooke Gladstone School of Peabody-Level Ass-Kicking. Somebody close to WNYC – as I’m sure some of you readers are, give the man a pat on the back. Or bake him some cookies. Or a cookie cake. Those things are kind of awesome. Even if the icing is a bit much.

And then, Bob makes the most amazing admission ever: While remembering Clay Felker, founding editor of “New York” magazine, Bob praises Felker’s boldness, saying “he was wrong with a passion.”

Note that in the previous paragraph, Bob remembers his connection with Felker. “Late in his career, Felker hired me to do humor columns for Adweek Magazine. Those pieces were, mm, let’s say, ordinary.”

Wrong with a passion, indeed.

The last story deals with Border radio. Which is probably my favorite cultural phenomenon that I simply missed out on by virtue of being born in 1982. Its echoes are still heard, somewhat weakly, in the aforementioned Coast to Coast AM, which I used to listen to via the furthest, weakest signals I could find.

But that’s a repeat, and so here, I end transmission.

This week’s “On the Media” recap was written by Matthew, and wasn’t edited by Kerry, or really edited at all, because Matthew put off writing the dad-gummed thing because there is a massive TV with 800 channels looming in the other room. Kerry has next week, and probably no TV looming.