friday night's alright: open thread
I woke up early for a 6AM call time today.
As usual for me in that situation, I woke up way too early. There's something about setting my alarm for well before dawn that makes me wake up well before well before dawn...and then vainly try to fall back asleep at 3:30 AM.
I don't know how I ended up listening to Bill Bennett's Morning in America on AM radio, but there you go, it happened. Some things a single guy can indulge in from time to time...letting the dishes and laundry sit for a week, enjoying the occasional beer and frozen pizza, wasting half a day on a computer game...of these vices, however, listening to AM radio of any sort is probably the most pernicious and least forgiveable.
Bill Bennett's show was insane. He's clearly fighting to hold onto the oblivion of the "pre-dawn" hate jockey circuit...and his racist remarks of a few weeks ago threaten his stakehold there. But that situation, if anything, made the show fascinating...like a train wreck featuring only the truest-of-the-tried-and-true conservatives.
Bill's first caller was from Salt Lake City, Utah...on a cell phone...on an hour long jog in the dark at 5AM. That was pretty funny. He was really serious about discussing...heavy breathing...fairly articulately, while jogging in the dark...huff, puff...tax policy and underpopulation: Americans aren't having enough kids.
Bennett's second caller, I shit you not, was calling from a deer stand in Georgia. A deer stand. Even in my half-oblivious state I cracked a smile at that one. And this guy in a deer stand on his cell phone, wanted to thank Bill Bennett for sticking it out and attempting to prove that he wasn't racist just because he said something stupid. He then went on to say that there's a really good conservative Black candidate for statewide office in Georgia who "walks the walk"...and that "race" in Georgia is not what folks think it is, and white conservatives like him would happily vote for black conservatives who "walked the walk." He also said that Harriet Miers was a weak candidate for the Supreme Court precisely because she could not "walk the walk" on conservatism...she didn't really have well-thought out conservative values and hence wouldn't articulate them as a judge. And then he went back to hunting deer.
Now, I have to confess, as a liberal, I disagree with the guy in the deer stand for a myriad of reasons...but that call made my...uh...early morning. It's good to know that as an East Bay liberal like me groggily tries to fall back to sleep in my far-left-stronghold here in California that my conservative brothers and sisters are keeping busy, doing what they do best, around the country. Bill can rest assured that pre-dawn joggers in Utah and Georgia deer hunters are still avid fans of his program.
I must have fallen asleep for a bit, because I was awoken by a blaring sixty-second ad for a biography of James Dobson, an ad that seriously made it sound like he was Jesus. I mean, the man has done more for family values than the Waltons, I guess. I'm no Dobson specialist...but that commercial could have been written by the 1978 cast of Saturday Night Live. Cue the angelic music and, bass-voiced narration....trumpets!!...trumpets!!...choir...now tympani...the heavens...cue the heavens!! Irony, I guess, is not an evangelical value.
At that point, I rolled over and changed the station.
At any rate, I've been working a ton, and though I follow the issues and news every day at worthy blogs like firedoglake...I can't pretend to always write full-on essays worthy of your readership when I am utterly exhausted and sleep-deprived...which is par for the course in my line of work.
Even moreso when I've sufferered through thirty minutes of half-asleep AM radio...and...shiver...ads for James Dobson biographies...
Cheers, from Oakland!
As usual for me in that situation, I woke up way too early. There's something about setting my alarm for well before dawn that makes me wake up well before well before dawn...and then vainly try to fall back asleep at 3:30 AM.
I don't know how I ended up listening to Bill Bennett's Morning in America on AM radio, but there you go, it happened. Some things a single guy can indulge in from time to time...letting the dishes and laundry sit for a week, enjoying the occasional beer and frozen pizza, wasting half a day on a computer game...of these vices, however, listening to AM radio of any sort is probably the most pernicious and least forgiveable.
Bill Bennett's show was insane. He's clearly fighting to hold onto the oblivion of the "pre-dawn" hate jockey circuit...and his racist remarks of a few weeks ago threaten his stakehold there. But that situation, if anything, made the show fascinating...like a train wreck featuring only the truest-of-the-tried-and-true conservatives.
Bill's first caller was from Salt Lake City, Utah...on a cell phone...on an hour long jog in the dark at 5AM. That was pretty funny. He was really serious about discussing...heavy breathing...fairly articulately, while jogging in the dark...huff, puff...tax policy and underpopulation: Americans aren't having enough kids.
Bennett's second caller, I shit you not, was calling from a deer stand in Georgia. A deer stand. Even in my half-oblivious state I cracked a smile at that one. And this guy in a deer stand on his cell phone, wanted to thank Bill Bennett for sticking it out and attempting to prove that he wasn't racist just because he said something stupid. He then went on to say that there's a really good conservative Black candidate for statewide office in Georgia who "walks the walk"...and that "race" in Georgia is not what folks think it is, and white conservatives like him would happily vote for black conservatives who "walked the walk." He also said that Harriet Miers was a weak candidate for the Supreme Court precisely because she could not "walk the walk" on conservatism...she didn't really have well-thought out conservative values and hence wouldn't articulate them as a judge. And then he went back to hunting deer.
Now, I have to confess, as a liberal, I disagree with the guy in the deer stand for a myriad of reasons...but that call made my...uh...early morning. It's good to know that as an East Bay liberal like me groggily tries to fall back to sleep in my far-left-stronghold here in California that my conservative brothers and sisters are keeping busy, doing what they do best, around the country. Bill can rest assured that pre-dawn joggers in Utah and Georgia deer hunters are still avid fans of his program.
I must have fallen asleep for a bit, because I was awoken by a blaring sixty-second ad for a biography of James Dobson, an ad that seriously made it sound like he was Jesus. I mean, the man has done more for family values than the Waltons, I guess. I'm no Dobson specialist...but that commercial could have been written by the 1978 cast of Saturday Night Live. Cue the angelic music and, bass-voiced narration....trumpets!!...trumpets!!...choir...now tympani...the heavens...cue the heavens!! Irony, I guess, is not an evangelical value.
At that point, I rolled over and changed the station.
At any rate, I've been working a ton, and though I follow the issues and news every day at worthy blogs like firedoglake...I can't pretend to always write full-on essays worthy of your readership when I am utterly exhausted and sleep-deprived...which is par for the course in my line of work.
Even moreso when I've sufferered through thirty minutes of half-asleep AM radio...and...shiver...ads for James Dobson biographies...
Cheers, from Oakland!
Comments
I find myself in the same place these days. SO much happening and life's work and a family illness taking up so much time...so little left to opine and consider via the web.
But thanks for the radio listen. It's personal main course offerings like this that bring me to k/o...I stay for the dessert.