BlatherWatch

Air America dot com gets new direction; sam seder & marc maron get a teevee show

Press releases barely out last week announcing the hiring of Beau Friedlander as website Editor-in-Chief, and already new content, expansion and improvements are showing.

"The goal," Friedlander told BlatherWatch, "is to be a place for people to go when news is happening if they want a progressive spin on it."

It's to be a real-time, live stream of progressively-bent news, video, and opinion.

There's not much video up yet on the site, but Sam Seder and Marc Maron's new video show, Maron v. Seder will start up Oct. 1. Here's their interim site with some toothsome videos.

"The on-line part will be talking to the radio part, and the radio part will be talking to a video part all three parts will be creating dynamic content," Friedlander said.

What do you want from rachel maddow?

When it was announced that Rachel Maddow (KPTK m-f, 3-6p) was to have her own MSNBC show, she asked the audience to shout out suggestions. We've been so busy, what with the conventions, Vacation Bible School, and the zucchini harvest, we've not been able to think about it much.

Next Monday is the day: so here are some suggestions, and advisements jotted on a scrap of paper we found in a bathrobe pocket:

1. Kent Jones ...now!
It would be so lovely to have his comic writing and off-beat voice on your show again. You did so well together before he was rif-ed by Air America from radio show. He could help make The Rachel Maddow Show de MSNBC sparkly.

KPTK forum fills hall, bill

Saturday night's KPTK forum headlined Rachel Maddow, Thom Hartmann, Sam Seder, Stephanie Miller, Randi Rhodes, and Mike Malloy, with cat herding by Ron Reagan.

If measured by crowd size and enthusiasm, was a great success. The Flowmax crowd dominated in sheer numbers as they do the audiences of talk radio in general.

KPTK's line-up was hot with the top of the heap of liberal radio talent ...plus Rachel who's the election cycle's hottest property on the teevee. This she's done, she told us, with the help of Keith Olbermann's advocacy.

A talk with sam seder

"If this guy was found in his apartment with say, a bunch of Iron Maiden albums -- there'd already be congressional hearings."

We were talking to Sam Seder Tuesday as the news was breaking in Knoxville that the crazed shooter of Unitarians hated liberals, had the collected works of O'Reilly, Hannity and Savage by his bed, and was on food stamps.

The story didn't have much in the way of legs outside Tennessee, but surely that was because there was no mention of it by Fox News stars Billo or Hannity. Michael Savage had another more pressing fire to put out.

"It's obviously an extreme case." Seder said "He was a major head case. Right wing media foments this kind of anger at the world, and at liberals. It lays bare that the conservative ideology really has nothing to do governing -- it really has to do with an anger that there's a whole world of people who are not you."

Friday oddems: honky whitesville; slime at the water's edge; neville chamberlain plays hardball; tiny, sick children; zucchini de ron; shrimp cocktails hired at KIRO; absolutely nothing about dori monson

~~ Unfortunately for KIRO fill-ins Frank Shiers and David Goldstein; these shrimp cocktails were hired during Passover to fill in for Ron & Don (m-f, 3-6p). "They're not kosher," said PD Rod Arquette, "but few in the R&D audience knew the difference." 

~~ "You don't know what you're talking about." We've been trashing MSNBC's Chris Matthews lately because he gets spittle on his jaw when he talks, and what he's usually talking about generally reveals him to be a supercilious ass. But Thursday, we gotta hand it to you, Chris: you done good. KRLA talk host Kevin James came on to discuss Bush's pointed attack on the Democrats in the Knesset today, where he accused Barack Obama of the "appeasement" of terrorists, comparing him obliquely to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, British Conservative appeaser of Hitler. James, who's a blabbermouthed fool his own self, kept referring to Chamberlain until Matthews could take it no more. "What did Neville Chamberlain do wrong in 1939?" he demanded. James motored on without answering the question. Then Matthews went after him like a school marm on meth until he got James to finally admit he didn't know what the hell Chamberlain actually did in the hideous history he was trying to hang on Obama. "He's as bad as the White House Press Secretary that doesn't even know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was," Matthews said later. Kevin James is an attorney, and the exchange was utterly satisfying. The incident, which can be viewed here, was added almost immediately to James' Wikipedia entry found here.   

Friday the 13th oddems: knives to our foreskins; the live womb concert; rosie pistola & lesbian street gangs; the styble papers; t-rex at the t-dome with frank; mullets that kill; floyd brown will shoot your dog

~~Talk radio spent days bitching about Live Earth, Al Gore's 24-hour, 7-continent, concert series to raise public awareness about global warming over the weekend. Everybody attacked- U-2 wasn't there; Gore did not announce his presidential candidacy; it didn't reach TV billions as hyped, (only 10's of millions) and Madonna said, "motherfucker," on the air. But if the awareness to the issue was raised 6 inches, that's good enough for us. Two years ago, the issue was little more than a title of an Al Gore speech. That the good guys can do such a massive musical outreach is a great strength. Can you imagine a conservative cause or effort even coming close to rallying people on this scale? S'pose they could have Live Womb, a global anti choice concert with  MC Hammer, and the Mormon Naberclacle Choir- we'd watch that... at least until Top Chef came on.

~ That's gotta be a pistol in your pocket! Violent gangs of lesbians? what a great idea! Certainly an upgrade on the usual, tawdry groupings of street thugs who typically lack self-awareness and gym memberships. Billo Reilly shot off his big mouth about this culture war atrocity which had a nationwide underground network of urban street dikes recruiting our little girls for violent sapphic street crime. We were getting all het up about this on several levels, but turns out- o darn- it was only the wet dream of a Christianist homophobe and "Fox News Analyst" and... apocryphal. Orcinus' Dave Niewert has the video, and the rest of the story.

Lionel to replace sam seder

Air America announced today that syndicated talker, Lionel will move from the WOR Radio Network to Air America Radio for 9am-noon beginning May 14.

We reported Friday that Sammy was being replaced; today comes the official pronouncement.

(In general, BlatherWatch distrusts people who go by their first name only- like Bozo, Bono, or Beyoncé. Lionel's real name is Michael William LeBron, he's 48, a former Florida prosecutor, and is known politically as a centrist- another classification of people we distrust...)

Air America pulls the plug on Sam Seder

Sadly, it's true this time: Friday the 13th of April is the last day for the Sam Seder Show as we know it.

Seder's been at the troubled Air America from the beginning. A close-in source says he'll probably take a Sunday afternoon show as a consolation prize.

"It's like a gold watch," she said. "Besides, they'd owe him a shit load of severance."

Who's next in the 9a-12p (East coast) time slot? Mark Green told the staff Thursday that the person hadn't been locked in, but should be by Monday or Tuesday.

"We think," he said brightly to the troubled assemblage, "you'll love the replacement."

Marc maron speaks: "sam has not been fired."

The end of this story hasn't been told; but Marc Maron gave his side to BlatherWatch tonight. "They [Air America] made me an offer. Initially it was unclear what time slot I would fill."