Friday, November 07, 2008

The big blowhard

This fellow whom I know fairly well, has abruptly lost his weekly radio show. It was an hour which he paid for by providing advertising and web service to the station. Easy for him, as he owns a successful Internet design and hosting business. I understand that he prefaced each broadcast by saying the content was his opinion and in no way represented the views of the station or it's advertisers. Pretty standard free speech fare. Along with the show the man also did some sports related thing with a local HS football team where he was a big booster. Well, he wants to know why he was chucked off the air. The station in question is a tiny AM that you can barely get in some parts of the county, however; with atmospheric skip it is often picked up in Norway and other points in the great Atlantic Ocean Sea.
After digging around a bit, I have come to the conclusion that the broadcaster in question was dumped for trying to emulate blowhard talk radio. You know that Rush Limbaugh thing. Now I would like to be 100% certain about this, but I have to admit to never tuning in his show. Here's why. When I was doing some much needed work for his company, he began to needle me a bit about being a "liberal musician" well I fired back that I was a damn war vet, and I could run down an impressive list of fire arms. The guy was a gun nut. I also took my brother in law, Cabbage, to see him and Cabbage knows more about guns than anyone, so there. Well that was before the elections got in gear, but once the did, everyone on the general employee list, and don't forget this is a design company with and African American male as head designer, everyone started getting the most egregious anti Clinton and Obanma "stuff". I mean all the time and the real crap, plus once the nomination went to Obama it was a constant stream of Obama's the leader of Arab terror and all that other scare crap that was prevalent here in the south. And this is going out to customers and friends and employees. More than a few did not care for it.

Now I said in a recent post that I though people were pretty much over that. Well my buddy Mr. X just didn't see it and while that two bit little station will broadcast other right wing stuff, they are doing it for green money, while the tangible dollar worth of Internet presence is definitely undergoing a reevaluation in these troubled times.

I guess it all comes down to the fact that if you want to push the limit of free speech in the name of the mean spirit, you are just going to have to blow a little less BS if you want to get on the air. Oh, I'm a free speech guy alright, but my ears are just tuned to a frequency of polite discussion at the moment. It's good to be an officer in the realm of reason.

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