It was all creamy for all us Blue Islanders today as Al Franken and Katherine Lanpher brought their national live show to the genteel auspices of Town Hall, on Seattle’s First Hill.
BlatherWatch attended with David “Goldy” Goldstein, activist/blogger from horsesass.org and superblogger, Andrew of the NW Progressive, check them out--both have blogged smartly on the day.
The Franken Show is the flagship on Air America’s local station KPTK, which would rather be known as AM1090, its location on the dial.The station gained an impressive half share in the local winter ratings book and everyone's pretty excited about the prospect of building an infrastructure for truth to counter the Republican noise machine.
A frisky, friendly SRO crowd was packed with stylish progressives dressed in our stylish progressive suits and imbued with the healthy optimism, quick humor, and the stunningly attractive irony we’re known for.
In a presser after the show, Franken said that he and his wife have bought a house in Minneapolis and plan to move in around the first of the year. He’ll do radio from there and figure out next year whether he'ill take a run at Republican Norm Coleman, the opportunistic sack of poo who cynically manipulated the media around Paul Wellstone’s funeral to get himself elected to the Senate from Minnesota in 2002.
Read Franken’s, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right for a never been challenged eye witness account of those sad days and how the "party of values” took the tragic October deaths to the political bank.
(It's thoroughly disgusting, and Coleman owes an apology to the human race, if not God. There's some pretty awesome karma in all that and we wouldn't want to be in Coleman's neighborhood when it comes down).
First District Congressman Jay Inslee matched wits with Franken and was eloquent in his pitch for his upcoming House bill that would fund a program modeled after the Apollo mission, (JFK’s inspiring successful to-the-moon-in-10 years program). His plan will strive to wean us off fossil fuels by inventing and developing our way out of this greasy and dangerous state of affairs.
Inslee is a great Democrat who was an impressive voice campaigning for Kerry last year and who we hope will be a long-lived public servant in our state and the nation. He has the brains, the personal political skills and the hair to be national material.
County Exec. Ron Sims in shirt sleeves and laid-back demeanor spoke about his encouragement of gay and lesbian couples to sue him and King County in order to send the issue of marriage equality to the courts. Sims grew in our eyes with his unsuccessful run at the governership and sticking out his formidable neck advocating for an income tax, and gay rights. Those principled and courageous stands assure him of never being elected to a statewide office, and that’s probably why he seems so relaxed and comfortable.
(Rev. Ken Hutcherson says that Ron Sims (and Mayor Greg Nickels) inspired him to get active in the anti-marriage rights campaign and claims that he and his cultish followers were responsible for Sims primary defeat. BlatherWatch is looking forward to the days when Hutcherson's opposition will be a political plus for a politician. That day is coming sooner than you'd think, but, of course, not soon enough).
Republicans are after Sims with tooth and claw, offering up County Commish Dave “Big Woody” Irons who is “more than magnificent – he's mediocre," as Sam Goldwyn would've said.
Stranger editor, sex pundit, soccer dad, and celebrated sodomite Dan Savage, (blatherWatch readers’ number one pick to be a local Air America talk host) was his usual hilarious, politically spot-on self, though he was somewhat hampered by not being able to say fuck.
Franken loved Savage’s ass (though not, we were assured by his people, in the biblical sense). When Savage said that fearful gays, (he and his partner among them) had seriously considered moving to Canada, Franken said: “We don’t need you in Canada, we need you here. And we need more Canadians to move here.”
Sen. Maria Cantwell was scheduled to phone in to the show, but was waylaid (again not, reportedly, in the biblical sense) in the Senate. That’s unfortunate, she could use a little of the kind of juice that Franken & Co. has to offer. The R’s are tooling up to get her in 2006 and she’s widely thought to be vulnerable; what with her grasp of the issues, and lack of smarm. She was elected in 2000 by a tiny margin and was seen as only a couple of degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the reptilian Sen.Slade Gorton.
Cantwell has grown into her job, is the go-to person in the Senate on high-tech issues, and is heads-down, elbows-up, hard-working senator. Watch them smear her as cold and wonkish. They haven’t been able to hang the tried-and-true Hillary “bitch” label on her yet, though we won’t be surprised when they begin.
BlatherWatch sat down with AM1090 Program Director Jim Trapp, who again assured us the station will be hiring local talk hosts. A major problem, he said, is that the bench for liberal talk hosts is nearly non-existent. “Au contraire,” we cried with great alacrity (and extra mayo) and referred him to our recent and definitive opus, Air America Staffing Nearly Complete.
Another piece of good news gleaned from Trapp is that they’re planning a national shoe like Monday’s with Big Eddie Schultz, the Fargo-based liberal talker with a red state twang who is doing well both nationally and in Seattle.
On Savage: his pro-war stance probably disqualifies him for AA palatability.
Posted by: Scrilla | May 10, 2005 at 06:02 AM
Amazing that Al drew 800 people in a sold out show yesterday. I don't see how that's possible given the fact that we have Scrilla on record here saying "NOBODY" listens to him! Must really burn the righties to see AA have such great success.
Posted by: Scott | May 10, 2005 at 06:20 AM
Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony--excerpts from an article by John Walsh, Counterpunch--
Al Franken is a shrewd guy, which is why he can write some good comedy... Franken certainly knows that one of the most insidious forms of prevarication is lying by omission. And on the subject of rapid and total withdrawal from Iraq, that is precisely what Franken and most of the rest of Air America Radio do day in and day out omit any mention of the topic. Their attitude to grass roots opposition to the war is the same - bury it...
...Franken himself is full of praise for "the troops." He does not say that these troops are being used as cannon fodder in a criminal war simply that they are doing "a great job." There is no systematic tracking of either U.S. or Iraqi casualties. Each week the conservative, John McLaughlin, on his PBS program tracks the Iraqis killed and the Americans killed and wounded in Iraq. No such segment exists on Franken's program - nor on any other Air American Radio program as far as I know. It speaks volumes that the conservative McLaughlin provides a more biting critque of the war than Franken and his cronies can muster...
...Franken reached a nadir of sorts with the appearance on his show of Democratic Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher of the House Armed Services Committee who is proposing legislation to expand the military by 36,000 troops. She has argued in a press release: "Iraq is a two-year engagement that could go on for at least five to seven years." So her solution is to scare up more cannon fodder for Iraq. Franken has a son in college and a daughter just out of school whom he mentions often. Do you suppose he will allow them to be among the 36,000 troops that his guest Tauscher wants to mint?...
...Most of Air America Radio is only marginally different from Franken who is little more than a shill for the Democratic Party establishment. Franken faithfully parrots its pro-war line. Fundamentally. he is just like Rush who is a Republican partisan, not a principled conservative. Franken is simply a Democratic partisan, a pitiful hack at heart. A progressive he is not. And disappointingly, Air America has turned out to be little more than a mouthpiece for the DNC and one more way to divert the anti-war movement to DNC-approved "issues" like DeLay, Bolton and the other trivia that are like so many straws in the wind compared to the carnage in Iraq...
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh05042005.html
Welcome to Seattle, Al Franken. Now go home. And take your fellow DNCers with you.
Posted by: Stewart Smelley | May 10, 2005 at 07:13 AM
Oh please, please please fellas, do not hijack yet another thread with your testosterone-fueled chest thumping...take it to email, or the alley or SOMEWHERE where you can get it out of your system.
Posted by: Sparky | May 10, 2005 at 07:20 AM
Hey smelly, got any opinions of your own or are you like most right wing hateriots? You have to find someone else to do your thinking for you?
Posted by: Scott | May 10, 2005 at 08:29 AM
Hey, I think AA's a great idea. But, until they get a 3 share or greater in the 12+ numbers, then yes, nobody is listening.
While it's true that advertisers do not buy the 12+ demo, they do pay attention when you haven't cracked 3% of the total audience. AA is doing well with 25-54, but they'll keep using their own airtime as help wanted space until they get a 3.1
Does anyone here know the audience overlap of AA and say...NPR,KVI,KTTH ?
I do. It SHOULDN'T surprise someone who knows something of the SeaTac market.
However, in some people's dream world, AA puts all Rightdio out of bidness and Al Franken becomes King of the World and Ron Sims flies about on a magic cloud dispensing clean water and smiting SUVs (starting with his own) while Patty Murray sprinkles diversity dust on bullies until they accept fat kids on the jungle gym because she's the senator for salmon and did you know Osama Bin Laden built daycare centers because he's comitted to working moms.
I think it goes something like that.
Posted by: Scrilla | May 10, 2005 at 10:44 AM
Enlighten us Scrilla. What is the overlap between AA, NPR, KVI, KTTH? What is your source? And please do all you can to convince us that AA is a non-factor. That's why you spend so much time attacking it right?
Posted by: Scott | May 10, 2005 at 12:54 PM
"Attack?"
"So MUCH time?" (emphasis added)
Yeah, that's all I do.(sarcasm added)
hmmmmm. Discuss.
My source? Arbitron. Got access? What would Al Franken say about people who make up facts? That they "pull them out of their butt", probably. Well, Scott, I would reccomend befriending someone with access to the Fall04 and the upcoming Winter05 books.
p.s. "book" is radioese for "Quarterly Rating Report."
Posted by: Scrilla | May 10, 2005 at 01:25 PM
I am very familiar with Arbitron but I have no access. And it's very convenient for you to cite a source that few people have access to. Makes it easy for you to lie and hard for us to check your facts.
You have not shared any real information with us. Still waiting for that overlap number. Of course, yes you will probably pull it out of your butt since you probably don't really have access. Oh well.
Posted by: Scott | May 10, 2005 at 02:19 PM
Then I won't waste Scott's time.
Posted by: Scrilla | May 10, 2005 at 02:32 PM
I'd like to believe that Scrilla is a liar, but I fear he is telling the truth. I never hear anything about AA ratings even though we heard all sorts of good press during the first 3 months of AA last year.
What are the ratings? We need to get some encouragement from our guys yet they never talk about the ratings. The silence is deafening...and discouraging.
Posted by: Bush Lies | May 11, 2005 at 10:19 PM