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Moonbats curse Air America after shabby on-air treatment
Hat tip: Tim Blair. This is what happens when pacifists attack. It's not pretty.My friend Nikki Miller and I were on Air America Radio this last Saturday evening, supposedly to talk about how we resisted military shipments being used by the Port of Olympia. Going up to Seattle and being on Air America was a total waste of our time. They didn't give a damn about one word of what we had to say. They certainly didn't want us talking about how we resisted the military shipments. "I mean, I Spoke Truth To Power! I Stuck It To The Man, man! Yet they didn't seem to admire my Brave Dissent." They just wanted us to sit there so they could sound like they're on top of the antiwar movement, when in fact, they wouldn't know the antiwar movement if it had a die-in on their doorstep. I double dog dare you to all die in on Air America's doorstep. Liberal talk radio is a corporate, profit squeezing enterprise, just like right wing radio, just like NBC, just like Fox News. Except for the lack of actual, you know, profits. They have their niche. It's a place for rich liberal pundits who don't feel comfortable being full-fledged Republicans to sit and be waited on and eat fancy foods and feel good about themselves, ... Dang! The boy sure got that part right! ... and NOT a venue to convey any actual information, share meaningful viewpoints, build up the disenfranchised, give a voice to the voiceless, or disrupt the true status quo in any way. In fact, it is especially dangerous, in that it adds to the establishment's illusion of satisfying these needs without actually doing one lick of good. It satiates peoples' natural desire for such diversity of knowledge while withholding it. . . . . . . Nikki and I drove up there in her car, all the way from Olympia.
We started to think, Maybe they won't be nice to us. Maybe they'll try to skewer us for going too far, tearing a gate off the fence and stuff. For not being nice and liberal enough. It turned out Nikki didn't have a cell phone either. I didn't get to call in sick to work until we got to Seattle, like 45 minutes after my shift was supposed to start. :D . . . "Lucky for me my boss don't read my blog. He only reads right wing stuff like Rantburg, and this'll never get quoted there! Never in a million years." . . . I could kind of hear the music that was playing on Nikki's and Laura's headphones. Something from the new Dixie Chicks album. Laura told us what the deal would be. Our half hour would consist of about 17 minutes of us talking, and about 13 minutes of commercials and music. Laura admitted that she had read almost none of the preparatory stuff, and was just brushing up on it right then. Nikki and I, sitting on different ends of the massive radio contraption that Laura was encased in, exchanged smirks. Laura got on the air and talked, and talked, and talked. She got our stories completely wrong. She said Nikki was a member of "Resistance to Port Militarization" and a founding member of the newly formed "Port Militarization Resistance," or something like that. She said I was a Navy Veteran that was inspired by Camp Casey to become a part of the peace movement, or something like that. (I was, in fact, a peace activist for more than a year before my trip to Crawford.) It was a little amusing when it started out, and Nikki and I would look at each other and chuckle, but it kept happening and happening, and soon reached ridiculous lengths. Now, what she said was a simple misinterpreting of what I said in the pre-interview, but geez, could we just tell our own stories and get them really right? . . . Then came the questions. Laura barely stopped to take a breath from her own telling of our stories to go into question mode. She asked very, very, very specific questions. "How did you feel, Wally, about your time in the Navy immediately after you were discharged?" Things like that. I got to answer two questions, and I think Nikki got three. When we answered, Laura would make hand motions to tell us we needed to speak quicker. Less verbose. Sound-biteier. . . . "Remember, stay within the comprehension level of your audience, such that it is." We didn't get to tell any of the cool stories from the demonstrations. We didn't get to talk about the guy from the Stryker brigade that told my buddy, "Thank you," when he found out we were the port protesters. We didn't get to talk about how Ultimate Fighting champion Jeff Monson single-handedly made the Stryker convoy turn around just because "Or about the time we put Maynard's pet frog in an Estes rocket and launched him at Widow Krupnik's house, an' the wind caught the parachute an' he came in through the window three houses down landed in Mrs. Wilberry's bathtub when she's takin' a bath an' she like starts screaming. Dudes, we were so totally wasted that day." We didn't get to talk about how, when the sheriff's department was beating and pepper spraying people, telling them the public was not allowed on port property, members of a local neo-con group called Operation Support Our Troops (regular citizens who are pro-war) were secretly given a tour of the USNS Pomeroy. "It's not fair. The neocon Zionazi fascist election-stealing Christers who wanna take away a woman's right to choose an' kill everybody an' stuff all get to go on the ship an' see the boilers an' the turbines an' the Close In Weapons System an' all that kewel stuff, an' we don't! I mean, that's just wrong! I'm 'way cooler than them; I got more Green Day albums than they'll ever see! I'm gonna stamp my tiny feet in impotent rage an' hold my breath 'til I turn blue--that'll show 'em" . . . Yeah, it was kinda cool to have been on national radio, and I don't ever regret anything, but it was a fucking waste of time, money, and energy. "Which I don't regret. Even though I do." Nikki spent a bunch on gas to drive up to Seattle. I skipped out on five hours of work, or about $35, and risked losing my job altogether. We both spent our entire evening on this. . . . Posted by: Mike 2006-06-16 |
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