Talk Radio and Whatnot

Re: Don Imus. Why would anyone be surprised when a professional jackass makes a jackass of himself? Truth be told, I had no idea that Imus was still on the radio until a few months ago. I was at the gym late at night and they had one of the TVs turned onto MSNBC. There, I saw this mummified crankypuss wearing a cowboy hat, hunched over a microphone. "What the hell is this?" I wondered. It looked like the exact opposite of an infomercial, some sort of program where the ostensible goal was to make the viewer change channels as quickly as possible and never, ever come back. (I felt this passionately about the show, and the sound wasn't even on.) Well, it was Don Imus. At the very least, I'm glad he's gone so that I'll never have to worry about him stealing my soul through the television. Take that, Don Imus!

In general, I don't really like talk radio. I like NPR and I like Alex Jones's show, but that's because the first is news and the second is unadulterated craziness; I don't have time for anything in between those two.

Well, I'm lying. I have one other weakness and it's crazy right-wing radio. Boj taught me this strategy a long time ago. If you're ever making a long car trip late at night and you want to ensure that you stay awake, find yourself some crazy right-wing radio. By crazy, I don't mean Rush Limbaugh, I mean the uncle that David Duke disowned for his outrageous racism. It's hard to snooze when you're exclaiming, "Wow, this guy really hates him some Jewish people!"

In fact, that strategy works so well that I use it on my alarm clock each morning. The show I listen to isn't all that strange, but I listen for the callers. I've timed it so that each morning, I get about 5 minutes of friendly banter between the hosts, and then they take some calls. I like that, because by then, I'm just alert enough to lock all the doors and pray that none of those people live on my street. I don't even know how to describe what these callers are like. Maybe 25% of the time, they're reasonable, decent folk exhorting the listeners to support the troops or the President. The rest of the time, it's like they're reading from a Mel Gibson Mad-Libs book. Nothing like a little wide-eyed terror to get your lazy ass out of bed.