Talk radio reveals a lot of hate

I was tempted to draw something about Don Imus, but that's like shooting fish in a barrel. Besides, with all the attention he's getting, the U.S. Attorney hearings has been allowed to fall under most people's radar- just what Bush, Rove, and Gonzales want, I'm sure. Plus, since he's out of office and long dead, how many opportunities will I get to draw Nixon? Actually, I think the Rove I drew a couple of weeks ago as a Humpty Dumpty egg was better, but he does kind of lend himself to caricature, doesn't he?

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Just visit http://malloryart.blogspot.com/2007/04/more-cartoon-magic-demystified.html

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Talk radio reveals a lot of hate
Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday, April 19, 2007 – Page 3

I’m almost as sick of hearing about Don Imus as I am about Anna Nicole Smith. That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to draw a cartoon about him- that and that it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

But as sick of all the hubbub as I am, I’m not above writing about it. Not so much because I side with the politically correct folks who are gleefully gloating about his getting fired or because I side with the die hard defenders of the First Amendment who think he shouldn’t have been raked over the coals at all- but just because I’ve had in mind to write something about talk radio for a long time anyway. By the time this gets printed, the Imus scandal will have died down and the dust settled. Of course, MSNBC will probably fill his time slot with a show exclusively about Anna Nicole Smith, but, whatchya gonna do?

Also, because I already started writing about it on my blog and decided to go ahead and run with it. (Scroll down, you're bound to find it).

I don’t know if I’m just too old to rock and roll or if I’m just such a product of TV and radio that I can’t stand to be alone in a quiet room, but I am much more likely to listen to talk radio than to music.

But I get so tired of yelling and malice that I prefer to listen to 640 WOI AM. It’s the NPR station out of Ames. Half the time they have people call in to ask questions from the Iowa State University Extension’s climatologist. I’m not a farmer and know nothing about gardening, so it’s pretty dry stuff, but between it and the market reports, which I also don’t understand, I somehow feel connected to the world.

As you might expect, I listen to Air America Radio on the internet quite a bit. But the thing with Air America is, there are experts like Rachel Maddow and Tom Hartman who are all policy talk and no humor, or loud mouths like Ed Schulz and Randi Rhodes who are just as angry and loud as the right-wingers like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

Once upon a time, they boasted Al Frankin, the political author, USO entertainer and former Saturday Night live writer did what almost no other talk radio host has, he combined intelligence, idealism, and humor, without belittling or bullying anybody. But alas, the expert satirist and left-wing intellectual has retired from radio in order to run for the Senate in Minnesota.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit to once being a regular Imus in the Morning listener. He used to be on 620 AM, I think it’s a sports station from either Omaha or Sioux City. I enjoyed listening whenever John McCain or Terry Bradshaw. But eventually it dawned on me that Imus was just another adolescent drive time D.J., only with no teenage pop music and high-end guests. I kicked the habit about a year ago.

Let’s face it, Imus was known for being a sexist, racist jerk- that’s his schtick, that’s why people tune in, so while yes, he deserves what he got, we shouldn’t all be so PC and hypersensitive to sexist, racist, jerks when after all, that’s their schtick anyway.

We should also recognize that there is a huge double standard because right-wing hate mongers like Mike Savage and Bill Bennett are constantly saying things that are as bad or worse (forget about Howard Stern). Remember Bennett suggested that crime rates would go down if Black babies were aborted? How about when Rush Limbaugh was making fun of Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s tremors? Rush has also called Halle Berry and Barack Obama “Half-rican-Americans.”

Glenn Beck referred to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina as “scum bags.”
Now, I’m no Rosie O’Donnell fan, but Glenn Beck actually talked on his radio show about how many oil lamps we could keep burning off of her fat? But he’s so sweet and middle-of-the-road on his TV show on CNN.

And how about that Ann Colter? Oh yeah, I forgot, she’s a writer who’s a frequent guest on talk radio and TV.

The other thing people seem to have forgotten is that there are people making OBSCENE amounts of money selling 11-22 year old white kids music by “Gangstas” that really, REALLY perpetuates negative racial stereotypes and sexist attitudes. Now I’m a white, male, middle-class, Midwesterner, so I realize that it may not be my place to preach to the African American community, but I think that before we throw a fit about an old shock jock who made it big like Imus, we should listen to what Doctor Bill Cosby has been saying for years. If I were Black, I think I’d be way more offended by most of rap and hip hop music than one crotchety old cowboy who raises a lot of money for kids with cancer- even though what Imus said was flagrantly outrageous and even cruel to the Rutgers women’s basketball players.

Finally, Imus is a jerk and he’ll probably say things like this again if he ever gets back on the air, but he has apologized more clearly, succinctly, more earnestly, more directly and more often then Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, Trent Lot, Joe Biden, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Clinton or any other public figure in recent memory. That ought to be worth something.

Ted Mallory lives in Charter Oak and teaches at Boyer Valley Schools in Dunlap. ‘Ted’s Column’ has appeared weekly in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper since 2002. If you’d like to see any of Ted’s editorial cartoons bigger and brighter, you can visit http://tmal.multiply.com/photos/album/2