There is a finite life-cycle attached to everything, from the F-14 Tomcat jet fighter, the last of which retired a few days ago, to the Maytag washing machine in the basement, which will be replaced in a few years. Just as there is a finite circuition on the great wheel of life for air america--the long awaited, highly advertised, liberal media colossus, which bestrode the airwaves in direct competition to those lightweight conservative talk hosts like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Snow and Ingraham, which were to be so easily displaced.
air america. The name itself conjures up those far off radio stations of yore, like the fabled transmissions monitored out of those small traces of america once under siege--Bataan, Corregidor, Guam, and Wake Island. Places where the valiant words and deeds of far flung heroes came drifting through the ether into our homes, military camps and businesses. Unfortunately, with today's air america, the picture is far less buoyant, heroic or truthful.
Sometime back around, oh, say the spring of 2004, it seemed like a really good idea to put the kibosh on all those stupid and superannuated fuddy-duddies who constantly sing the praises of capitalism, the rights of free expression, the truth, the inherent problems with socialism, the difficulties encountered by anybody that makes any money at all paying for everything that the folks who just plain don't like working want, the problems with totally open borders, the knavery of al-Qaeda, al Gore's multiple personalities and the like on the radio.
The best and brightest liberal minds in america hatched a plan to inaugurate a coast to coast liberal talk radio network. This brainchild would sweep the conservative charlatans from the airwaves in a flash, splash the workings of the finest liberal minds everywhere for everyone to hear and to feel, entwine the pillars of capitalism with the Kudzu vines of Lenin and pull the rotten edifice into the mud, raise the bankability of names like Franken and Garofolo to untold heights, reap fabulous riches for progressive causes, serve as a catalyst for approved products and services, and blanket america with a thick rich firefighting foam to squelch the fire of conservative thought forever.
Unfortunately, these magnificent ideals soon clashed with the somewhat base human elements drawn to the management of this altruistic and precocious cabal.
First there was a problem with an $800,000 loan from a director of the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club of New York, a Mr Evan Cohen, to another Mr. Evan Cohen, the co-founder of air america. Which of course then blossomed into a problem of conflict of interest, the same man loaning himself a lot of money under his own name, the loan being made from a non-profit corporation to a radio station and all. Suddenly Mr Cohen was no longer a co-founder and the loan was suddenly re-paid, and Mr al Franken-- a key player in the formation of the network and an executive privy to the most minute aspects of its operations--fully and spontaneously announced that he had not a whit of an idea about the earlier loan and was completely shocked by the whole sorry affair.
Other management issues began to crop up with alarming frequency. Chicago staffers were unnerved to find that they had been dunned for a health plan that had never existed. Paychecks were recalled due to their alarmingly high level of pure latex. Mr Franken related that he had “loaned” the financially strapped outfit some dough. Key managers began to take extended vacations from which they never seemed to return. Morale problems began to crop up. Unhealthy rumors multiplied.
Questions of plagiarism began to arise from the murky depths of air america. Ward Churchill was said to be incensed that air america had stolen one of his premier lines--that Don Rumsfeld, “ought to be tortured.” Then problems with the NaaCP arose when Rush Limbaugh was accused of, “being a Nazi,” a popular liberal line, though later found not to be trademarked. The leading disc jockeys, including Randi Rhodes and Rachel Maddow, were begged to begin writing original material and to stop lifting lines directly from TV shows, Belafonte tapes and the suspect works of Carlos Castaneda.
Their original material resulted in a backlash as well, when Randi, feeling her oats and perhaps her peas, beans and barley, too, did a “comedy” schtick featuring a gunshot warning for President Bush. although this was viewed as the pinnacle of liberal knee-knocking slapstick by the listeners and her producers alike, it dragged the Secret Service, additional bloggers and Mr. Limbaugh into a closer examination of the show and its particular fibs, foibles and fallacious twaddle.
Luckily, for air america, their friends--sporting the prescription lenses commonly found correcting the retinopathy afflicting the liberal mainstream media--have only churned out stories of limitless success, which have been broadcast and printed incessantly. The gross failures, illicit loans, steady market loss, shady business dealings, off color skits, banking irregularities, staff turnover, spurious imputations, outrageous claims, lunacy, sheer demagoguery and blatant smear tactics, on the other hand, have been glossed over as merely the growing pains of the newly hatched, if mentioned in passing, or missed altogether.
and now we learn--flush with the news of the heartbreaking loss of the Missoula, MT, and Phoenix, aZ, stations--that air america's flagship station, New York's WLIB-aM, may canter out of the liberal radio's stable for new ranges in the near future --a stunning blow to a network reeling from a prolonged spate of bad news.
Is it possible that the greatest minds of liberal thought have failed in this, the greatest progressive radio experiment since Marconi's debut and Gracie allen's scathing critique of Fibber McGee? Or is it the people, the hoi polloi, and the mob who never understood dialectic theory? and who now have failed to grasp the molecular structure of liberal thought and humor?
But as air america soldiers on--perhaps a poor metaphor given the distaste with which the network holds our gallant military--in the growing twilight of a dismal market, they still have their outposts in Crystal Lake, IL, and Karnes, TX, to fall back on.
Places where their programming are said to pay the bills on the few hours of shows they still fling into the airwaves in the great big empty and where you can hear the stations reach their vanishing points in the soft static as you drive in the vacant darkness of a moonless prairie night.
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