BlatherWatch

Will KPTK step up to radio reality?

Seattle liberal-interest money groups have long talked up the possibility of buying a radio station to counter the overwhelmingly conservative news talk stations in a market that's overwhelmingly liberal.

That's probably not a good idea, since it's been proven many times that radio should be left to radio professionals...Oh wait, that's right, a generation of professionals put radio where it is today: in the shit.

Talk radio trashes the clunkers (who feed them)

 Their industry reaped the windfall profits from "Cash for Clunkers," yet they trashed it.

The program is over Monday.

Angry black man in the white house- get out your guns, hide your wives!

The right is dragging out the "scary black man" canard again after President Obama led with his heart by calling Cambridge police "stupid," after the Professor Gate dust-up last week.

It was the kind of foot-in-mouth the President rarely gets himself into, and he's walking it back, needful as he is to get health care back in the center of the conversation.

A peek into the obama-care future: a grim, horrifying, stupid world

Our patented Lens of Blather is an instrument which allows us to see into the fearful future as predicted by talk radio.

CORRECTION: Non-partisan? susan hutchison on right-wing radio

CORRECTION: The Dave Boze Show pulled out a tape from September 28, 2008 that had non-partisan King County Executive candidate Susan Hutchison discussing her attendance at a pricey Todd Palin/Cindy McCain fundraiser that day. She did no trashing of Obama, and was apparently not in the conversation we heard about switching out Bill Cosby for Barack Obama. We heard the Cosby remarks on the Boze Show, though, and concluded after reading the Seattle Examiner's blog, that the other speaker was Hutchison.

But it goes to our point: on the show, Peggy Boze gushes to Hutchison: "You're our Sarah Palin!"

 Wow.. Susan Hutchison slapping around Barack Obama on right-wing radio?! 

Hutchison, 55, is the ex-Channel 7 anchor who's front-running in the race for King County Executive, the office vacated when Ron Sims got an Obama appointment.

(photo: "As Seen on TV!")

The job is newly-made non-partisan, and Hutchison claims she's not a Republican or even a politician. She says when it comes down to all that mean ol' partisan divisiveness, she's like the monorail: "above it all." Her popularity comes of the familiarity of doing the 11 o'clock news for over a decade.

There's plenty of evidence that Hutchison is a conservative Republican running to lead this deep blue county. The extreme right-wing "tea party" movement supports her; she's famously given to Republican candidates. Touting her executive skills gained from presiding over the Seattle Symphony Board, she recently held a press conference in the rarified airs of Benaroya Hall. (A meet 'n' greet at The Ballet may be in the works.)

(photo: Peggy and Dave Boze)

Her can't-we-all-get-along is now, but last year she was trashing Obama, and loving up Sarah Palin in a conversation we caught on the fly last Fall in election crunch as she guested on the very conservative David Boze Show (KTTH m-f, 3-6p) with the host's wife, Peggy Oban Boze.

The conversation didn't mean much at the time. We knew it was Peggy Boze, but we didn't know it was Hutchison. We remember snorting when she said something like, (we're paraphrasing) "Why don't Obama's supporters just write in Bill Cosby's name?" The ladies had a good laugh over that and at the idea, we guess, that, if these silly people must vote for a black guy, Dr. Huxtable would be safer.

Obama's "terrorist connections," Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright were mentioned, naturellement.

We didn't realize that it was Hutchison until an earnest, if windy, Examiner blogger named Boye' A. Coker wrote about his hearing the conversation. Coker is Federal Way businessman, an MBA and naturalized American from Nigeria who takes his citizenship rather seriously. He considers himself an independent and was amazed at the conversation:

"Ms. Hutchison expressed her dismay at the candidacy of Barack Obama, saying it would be better for people who were thinking of voting for him to write-in Bill Cosby. I beg your pardon! Now, I thought my ears were actually failing me, but then she reiterated the point again saying she had met Mid-Westerners who felt Barack Obama was "arrogant" (a common Republican talking point) and that a write-in for Bill Cosby would be better than a vote for the current President of the United States. Well, who else would we need at a time when we are fighting two wars, going through the worst economic cycle in decades and struggling to keep even a semblance of the American Dream alive? A comedian of course, who just happens to be black also, now that should take care of the historical component of it I guess, going by Ms. Hutchison's highly perceptive deduction."

He also recalls, as we do, how Hutchison (and Peggy Boze) considered Sarah Palin a victim of Obama and media slander but also that Todd Palin is a hunk.

"..., the most significant other contribution she made to the discussions had to do with the color of Todd Palin's eyes and how she could see right through them (much like George W. Bush could see into Putin's soul and her mentor could see Russia from her balcony in Alaska)."

Coker asks, "Susan Hutchison? Why not just write-in Sarah Palin?"

The Boze Show isn't some lifestyle talker, it's hard right. Peggy Boze is not just Dave's ever-lovin', she's a conservative activist and was the McCain-Palin Chairwoman For King County. She was a member of the laughable Palin Truth Squad, a sock puppet front to "set the record straight" after "false attacks, rumors and smears " against Sarah Palin. It amounted to no more than a list of national Republican women they wanted to hitch to Palin to help gain independent women whose votes were going for Obama. (Deluded Minnesota Rep. Michelle "Boycott the Census" Bachmann was on the list). There was a website to keep on top of the smearing but it was never maintained. (Palin's smears, you recall, were self-inflicted).

There are no podcasts, unfortunately, of this radio exchange, though KTTH certainly has it in their vaults somewhere.

Meanwhile, Hutchison keeps running a no-details, low-content campaign a la Palin, and refuses to answer way too many questions. Not telling voters in this pro-life county where she stands on abortion is political cowardice and intentional obfuscation.

After such a friendly appearance defending Palin and attacking Barack Obama on arguably the most right-wing talk show in town, Hutchison's claim that she's non-partisan and has no partisan past, again just makes her look like one of those politicians she claims she isn't.

Teleprompter is disastrous for obama's future

As the slow-leaking facts mount up at our feet like cherry pits, Congressional Republicans believe President Obama and his unpopular administration will face impeachment or resignation.

Rush's approval depends on disapproval, says ppm study

It's no surprise: A little-reported study of PPM data last year starkly shows that Rush Limbaugh's ratings go down when he approves of something!

When Limbaugh was expressing disapproval, he got a 5.71% share of listeners, but when he expressed positives on people oir issues, his share went down to 5.43%.

Rush gets it (he's a genius!) so he rarely approves of much of anything.

Rush to democrats: payback "will be hell!"

We've never heard him so pissed.

But despite all Rush Limbaugh and right-wing radio's Sturm und Drang, they lost another big one today as an agreement was reached in congress to pass the Stimulus Package in President Obama's time frame.

With his leadership, popularity, ability to talk, and the bully pulpit, he was able to speak over the nasty little chorus of Congressional gripers and their much louder talk radio surrogates.

And Congress actually did something decisive and quick.

Rush "I hope he fails" Limbaugh who, with his recent, precipitous weight gain is puffing like a Briggs & Stratton (we worry about his ticker) is fit to be tied.

Monday oddems: If KUOW is number one, and KIRO is number two - does that mean does mean steve scher is king and dori is queen?

~~ KUOW, not KIRO is No.1 in the ratings in Seattle as P-I's Bill Virgin has reported. We hope Dori Monson (KIRO m-f, 12-3p) has made a correction, after the strutting, crowing segment he did, taking the credit for KIRO's success. Has Steve Scher (KUOW m-f, 9-11) usurped Dori as the new "King of Seattle Talk Radio?" We doubt Dori would agree, and this is all very beneath the Very Public Radio Steve. We admire his kingly professional decision NOT to be an asshole on the radio. Of course he comes from the confident place of a man whose hairline didn't come out of a box or bottle.

President Barack Obama -- despite you, talk radio!