that free speech is a ruse;
The corporations run the country
and then they make the news.
Is it media or mind control
heroic victories or crime?
Who will tell the people...
that we are living in these times.
~Song by Willie Nelson
In his essay on "Character" Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "A chief event in life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us." I've had such days, many of them through encounters with Emerson himself, but never have I been startled or even remotely surprised by anything belched out by the Barbie and Ken assembly line of today's corporate mind-control media.
George Orwell wrote that people who neither read nor ask questions will ultimately lose all desire to question "Big Brother." What is so frightening as we descend into the new world order fascism is not that we no longer read -- it's that we no longer can read.
Researchers estimate as many as 30 million Americans -- many of them college graduates -- cannot read. They're unable to comprehend news stories or even instructions. They said they were "stunned," but could offer no explanation for the steep drop in literacy. I don't know what's more depressing -- that Americans can't read or, after studying the phenomenon, researchers lack the critical skills to discern why.
I had almost come to the sad conclusion that Orwell was right when, late one September night in 2004 as I was surfing for something "soothing" on the radio, the door of my mind was unceremoniously bashed in and I was startled by...
"I'm pissed off -- and I'm Mike Malloy."
Malloy, clean-up guy for Air America Radio (10pm-1am), rode in on the strident vibrations of Pink Floyd's Run Like Hell and, for the next three hours, relentlessly hit both spineless Democrats and Republican "sonszabitches" with the truth about the Bush crime family, pummelled them with the truth about spineless and quivering democrats, b*tch-slapped them with the truth about where we're headed if we don't wake up, stand up and speak up...
Then, with a friendly and quiet "watch your back," he was gone. I just sat there, grinning. Maybe we aren't doomed to slip-slide into fascist hell after all. By sheer luck, I had stumbled across a guy with the ability to see the truth and the courage to tell the people...
Who IS this guy?
Mike Malloy is the canary in the political coal mine -- the bane of the Bush administration and of hypocrites of all stripes. He is a liberal gadfly whose light shines so brightly on the truth that even Air America struggles to keep him hidden under its late-night barrel. Far from being a "loose liberal cannon," Malloy has a solid background of writing, reporting, editing and broadcasting. He is a former news writer and editor for both CNN and CNN-international, and a former publisher of Atlanta's Creative Loafing newspaper.
But it was in radio broadcasting in the 90's that Malloy literally came into his own. Malloy has been named "One of the Heavy Hundred" three times by Talkers Magazine, an honor given to only the top 100 radio talk show hosts out of more than 4,000, of which all but a handful are right-wing blustering liars like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, et al.
Malloy has worked for WSB in Atlanta, WLS in Chicago and the now defunct I.E. America Radio Network. So, some may ask -- if Malloy's so damn good, why did WSB, WLS -- let him go? Why is Air America Radio afraid to stick him in prime time so more people can hear the truth?
Because he is so damn good, that's why. Because the truth Malloy tells is raw, straightforward, stripped of all spin -- every word shoved right in the faces of those who have seized power to destroy the democratic safeguards of the U.S. Constitution, to steal elections, to abandon society's most vulnerable, and to slaughter their own citizens as a pretext for war. But even Air America knows that not everybody can handle the truth, especially in prime time. Malloy can be heard each night on Air America affiliate stations, the Internet, and on XM Satellite Radio, Channel 167. Missed programs are available at the White Rose Society website.
Each night, Malloy exposes the Bush administration for what it is -- a murderous, evil, lying, fascist regime. Each night, I am amazed that he has somehow managed to slip through enemy lines yet again to shout truth to power. He asks no quarter, and gives none, regardless of the consequences.
"I'm like a cork," Malloy says with a laugh, "You can't submerge me. You push me down and I pop up somewhere else. That's a given."
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