blatherWatch

Junkyard dog tales: Obama's a druggy!

Sean Hannity got a knee-up with his shrinking listening audience, and the Fox Radio marketing department scored big Sunday night when Morley Safer, a Grand Lizard of CBS' 60 Minutes, referred to him as a "a junkyard dog."

They referred to him, are the operative words, here; and cause for high fives and endless mentions throughout his radio and teevee shows Monday.

(Whenever Hannity, or O"Reilly are named in the real media, they bump it with a trumpet for days, even when they're called something as unflattering as a irritable canine. Billo was as jealous  today as a poodle of Hannity's great 60 Minutes triumph. Hannity rubbed it in by shitting on Billo's hat).

Talk radio: do you have the stones to admit you were punked?

Can right-wing tools like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Dori Monson, Michael Medved, Glenn Beck even acknowledge that their so-called war coverage and commentary has been so severely compromised?

What are we talking about?

Sunday's New York Times took a little of the complex out of the military-industrial complex with David Barstow's lengthy, detailed exposure of how Bush and Rumsfeld's Pentagon used retired generals to serve as "objective" media military analysts while actually carrying administration's rosy interpretations of a failing war effort to talk radio, cable blab-shows and thenews outlets they work for.

(For an interactive overview, click here. Read the whole piece here.)

Even more despicable is how these alleged military heroes we've seen every day since 9-11 on teevee or on the radio have used the influence and access gained by playing in this farce.

These are the fat-assed militarists who accused the rest of us of dispatriotism, cut-and-run mentality, and not supporting the troops. In these documents we see all that patriotically correct self-righteousness is actually a collection of bullet-points they picked up from a Secretary of the Defense losing a war he never should have got into.

Can illegal immigration save talk radio?

Until the likes of CNN's Lou Dobbs and talk radio's Sean Hannity took it up you could swing a dead salmon by the tail and never hit anyone outside the Southern border states who was mad about the illegal Mexican coolies we deign to let pick our broccoli for pennies on the dollar.

(We'd heard previously only such rantings from The Minutemen: those raggedy, fraggedy, middle-aged, beer-gut militians who'd briefly got some headlines before their ranks caved in after an intense, internecine gnashing of gums). 

When the Immigration Reform bill came up in Congress last Spring, all of right-wing radio took it up with full throat. Of a sudden, these previously benign peasants who fetched us our avocados became rapists and thieves and cutthroats, and even worse: welfare cheaters!

Wednesday oddems: tina bites the big apple; billo in a pig's eye; infamous ambushes; anne bremner joins the fahloofah follies; larry nelson news; hannity! and hannity's special needs; lou dobbs; dog the bounty hunter

~ And that's the way it is... Tina Nole, Dave Ross's longtime producer who left KIRO last summer is now working at in New York. She's put up a blog chronicling her travails as a small town girl settling into the big town of New York City called The Only Livin' Girl In New York. She works at CBS Radio where she goes to get away from the cockroaches and hang out with Walter Cronkite. It's a funny read and a great way to catch up and keep up with Tina. 

~ Billo isn't letting up on the Pig's Eye: He again went after P-I columnist Dorothy Parvaz and publisher Roger Oglesby on his radio show and on the Tee Vee Monday for that passing comment in a blog post he and the right-wing blogosphere has conflated as something onerous. Billo hinted that Oglesby might be in for one of his infamous ambushes- he's been sending a pushy aggressive producer to confront people who won't appear to be yelled at on The Factor. No matter who you are, you look like a headlamped Bambi when jumped by a cameraman and a Fox News thug pushing a microphone in your face in a parking lot or picking up your kid at kindergarten. (Note to Rog: the best defense if this happens is to start chanting, "Loofah," Falafel," "Andrea Mackris"  like a horny monk- your appearance will never air).

Michael savage takes to the mattresses

"I'm sleeping behind locked doors with a shot gun," says Michael Savage.

It's just the latest crisis manufactured by the bellicose San Francisco talker to enhance his profile and give him victim coin to spend in the outer edges of the right-wing.

Tomorrow, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval's non-binding resolution which "condemns defamatory language used by radio personality Michael Savage against the immigrant community."

This is what dreams are made of for a talk radio host such as Michael Savage (KSFO's Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan must be so jealous).  

Seattle arbitron ratings: liberal talk sucks, so does KVI- has everybody gone satellite?

The Spring '07 Arbitron ratings book in the vital 25-54 demo for the Seattle market are in. And yikes!

~ Liberal talk KPTK is tanking across the board- down 66% overall.

Stephanie Miller (6-9a) lost 40%; Thom Hartmann (9a-12p) plunged 63%; Ed Shultz is in the bucket 68%; our Rachel Maddow is down 50%, and Randy Rhodes lost 33% of her audience. The only host who got over 1% of the audience was Mike Malloy- and even he dove 64%. Has everyone taken to reading blogs?

Talk radio blows it for western politicians; j.d.hayworth, however, merely blows

Ablaze over President Bush's immigration and legalization bill, talk radio is helping Democrats win back the West. 

Or so says Tim Egan, Seattle author and former correspondent for the NY times who wrote convincingly in Wednesday's Times that the talk radio hot-air sucking up media oxygen is killing Republicans-and wacking those Western politicians running on keen anti-Mexican anima.

(author's note: yee ha!) 

Global warming reality mugs bush, murdoch- when will the true believers catch up?

It ain't easy to be green- especially if you've been a red-meat denier of global warming for lo these many. 

Well-ingrained in the conservative consciousness is driving SUVs and other fat-ass gas guzzlers. Not only has it been stylishly politically incorrect, but there's the too-delicious to-pass-up message: "I can afford this- you whiners can't!"

Rush Limbaugh (whom James Wolcott has called, " a massive blockage endowed with the gift of gab.") blarted only last week: "I can't emphasize enough, folks, that this whole thing is a hoax. It's nothing more than the latest way to push the big government, liberal agenda."

Winter of our discontent: the Arbitron losers

The Winter Arbitrons in the all-important, 25-54 "money" demographic show pretty much a break-even period for local newstalk stations in tight competitive formation.

In the hallowed tradition of our half-glass, half-assed style of reporting, here are the losers and low points that you've come to expect from us:

~ KTTH was the lowest of the newstalk stations in the overall ratings going from a 2.9 (%) share to 1.6; ranking #22 out of 30 stations! KIRO barely lost to KOMO; 16th and 15th respectively).

~ Morning Drive's (5-9a) biggest losers were Sytman & Boze who dove into the dumpster with a startlingly dank 1.5 share, down a full point. KIRO morning news barely lost to KOMO; but KVI's Kirby Wilbur regained a little of his past glory at 2.5.

~ The biggest 9 ta noon loser was KTTH's Rush Limbaugh who went from an impressive 5.4 share to a 3.1, but still beat an improved (1.8 to 2.6) Dave Ross, and KVI's The Commentators who did better this time, splitting Rush's lost points with Ross. But no cigar to the high-priced, weekdaily KVI tofu wrestling with Carlson & Schram.

Friday oddems: KIRO news with speedy gonzales; jeff dahmer eats the white house dog; coulter, the crack whore; big pants stays classy; sean refused communion; styblehead drinks liberally

~ The man in the middle, Attorney General Antonio "Speedy" Gonzales will be on with Jane and Tony on Newsradio 710 KIRO's Morning News at 7:50 on Friday morning. He's a great get, kids, but we're thinkin' he must be history if he's doing the morning news in Seattle...

~ We're loving the feud, the kiss, and makeup of Rush and Arnold. Rush called the Governator a sellout, then Arnold said, "Rush Limbaugh is irrelevant. I am not his servant." Then it was all on-air kissy-lips; Arnold espousing his liberal views on health care, and immigration while Limbaugh made nervous nice-nice with the see-gars, which are just about all they have in common. It's a cameo shot of the '08 race when the GOP will explode like a $2 suitcase. Rush later told listeners: "I want to remind all of you people in California, from the get-go I have told you he was not a conservative. He's a good guy, but he's not a conservative. He's a Republican." (author' note: hee, hee.)