The Great Left Hope

Air America is up, and "airlifting entertaining, progressive talk radio to millions of Americans who for far too long have been and are being neglected by talk radio broadcasters today."

Huh?!

The words 'entertaining' and 'progressive' do not belong in the same phrase. Where are these millions of Americans who are being neglected? Most of them are listening to NPR, and they'll listen to this new outfit long enough to remember that they hate commercials and go back.

I used to have NPR on all day long. Then one day I realized that it had almost as many breaks and ads, but they were all for other NPR programs. The pledge drives kept telling me that I was supporting pure radio without that evil profit motive or advertising. But all the shows began with short bits telling us who the commercial underwriters were. So it does have advertising.

I also asked myself what was wrong with being supported by advertising. Why ask listeners for money when you can sell ads and not bother them? What I concluded shocked me. These people either think that capitalism is shameful or they want to appeal to people who feel that way. Yet they solicit underwriting from businesses and private foundations whose money came from businesses at some point! So they're either closet socialists, Marxists or just cynical hypocrites.

This left me with such a stench in my nostrils, I haven't been able to listen to NPR since. NPR is a business, pure and simple, but its business model is based on a pretense. 'We're not a business; we're a collective!"