America has elevated shooting rampages to the level of a sacred religious rite and the only proof that is needed to prove that contention is the article in the Wall Street Journal that asserts that the media is doing the exact opposite of what the psychologists say they should be doing when a new instance of shooting strangers to become a celebrity unfolds on the cable news networks and the big networks' evening news shows. The Armstrong and Getty radio show invited listeners to go to their website to get a link to the story. It's just a remarkable coincidence that their show in the San Francisco Bay Area is preceded on a Fox radio station by the Wall Street Journal radio show.
Is it ironic to note that in the last week of May of 2014, in the land famous for Freedom of Speech, the hot topic was arguing over what can and can not be said about a wide variety of topics?
Is there anything about the shooting that hasn't been said? Reading "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People," we couldn't help but imagine that if he were still alive, Lenny Bruce would find a way to say something which would offend both Liberals and Conservatives. Such as? It isn't too difficult to imagine that Bruce would attempt to elevate the debate to new levels of vitriol by saying: "If prostitution were legal in Cali, those victims would still be alive."
It isn't difficult to imagine Bruce noting that if a good looking young man driving a new Mercedes Benz can't get laid, then America has become a very sick nation.
On Wednesday May 28, 2014, Getty and Armstrong continued their criticism of the news coverage of the shootings (and stabbings) but fell short of going balls to the wall with their point of view. Should they push things to the limit by urging (in an egregious example of irony) people to send in money to start a Shooters' Hall of Fame to raise the glorification of the shooters to an excessively high level of adulation?
The Wednesday edition of the Getty and Armstrong Show included one of the sidekicks telling a personal anecdote about bypassing the waiting phase at a Sushi bar and when the fellow was asked to explain why he got preferential treatment responded: "Because I'm white." On Thursday morning that radio show quickly mentioned that the guy who told that anecdote was no longer working for the show.
Since Rush Limbaugh loves to goad the Liberals by uttering ideas that come perilously close to taking the concept of edgy off the deep end. Hasn't conservative radio come to resemble (metaphor alert!) the chickie run sequence in "Rebel without a Cause"?
How would Liberals react if Uncle Rushbo read some old Lenny Bruce routines on his radio show? Bruce did use the "n-word" and if Limbaugh read the transcript of a Lenny Bruce rant that included the use of the "n-word," would Liberals condemn that as a reprehensible way to sneak that word on to his radio show or would they then resurrect the old "freedom of speech" arguments that were (was it fifty years ago?) offered in defense of Lenny Bruce?
The national debate over gun control has morphed into a state of stalemate. Neither side will even listen to the other team's points and (much to the relief of politicians caught in the middle) as a result nothing will ever be done about it.
Mass shootings are a very effective wedge issue and on Wednesday a law maker in California was proposing that citizens who think that a neighbor is mentally unfit to own a gun should be given veto power over any legal attempts to purchase a firearm.
The concept of a wedge issue is to take a dispute and get a wild exuberant political diversion going, ultimately do nothing to change things, and then get on TV and explain how and why the opposition political party thwarted the will of the majority of voters.
Bill Mahr said something that was deemed unacceptable by the
patriotic conservatives and he was marginalized for his attempt to think
outside the box. Don Imus was
discredited by a conservative news organization and then hired by them when the
value of his services fell to a much more affordable price.
Do you have an extra coupla billion dollars sitting idle and want to buy a NBA team cheap?
We have been reading "Death of a Pirate," by Adrian Johns, which is about the phenomenon known as Pirate Radio as practiced in Great Britain during the last century.
The Liberal point of view on the publicly owned radio airwaves is as extinct as the Wolfman Jack radio show.
Sometime ago, the World's Laziest Journalist predicted that
when Liberal philosophy on radio becomes extinct, it would be necessary to
resurrect the concept of pirate radio and offer clandestine programming being
broadcast from beyond the borders and which could be heard inside the USA. Some folks say that the Internets fills that
need but can a person in a car listen to a show being streamed on the
Internets?
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