Senate candidate Mike "Squeaky" McGavick phoned in to the Ron & Don Show (KIRO m-f, 4-7p) Monday, as they were squirreling around (the way they do) on the issue of the Mark Wilson flip saying that he'd been bought off.
McGavick came on doing his Dino Dance and the Big Dopes, like the fuzzy, muscle-bound puppies they are, licked him to death as he told them he was going to run a clean campaign "on the issues."
("Doing the Dino" is the local Republican strategy for getting elected statewide. It hasn't worked yet, but the theory is that, like their 2004 gubernatorial also-ran, Dino Rossi, a candidate should be an empty suit with great hair, photogenic, personable, hard to pin down on issues like abortion; unavailable for comment on George Bush; and above all, really, really, nice. He can let his conservatism out later, like flatulence after a date).
Of course "running a clean campaign on the issues," is what every challenger must say, but it's pretty lame coming out of Squeaky Mac. If the KIRO drive-time jarheads had any depth, experience or passion for politics and policy, (or studied up at all) they'd have learned that the candidate was the architect of former Senator Slade Gorton's nasty, Seattle-bashing, hardball, negative campaigns. Squeaky ran Slade's campaigns; was his chief of staff and was in on the ground floor of shit-flinging campaigns in modern Washington politics.
"I like to say I was born in Seattle when you weren't embarrassed to say you were from Seattle," McGavick said to a Dryside audience last January.
But how would the Big Dumb Shits know that?
That's our complaint about the news talk KIRO promotion of FM music shock jocks. The station seems to be weighing the hire of Bob Van Dyne, (KIRO fill-in, m-f, 9p-1a) another shocker who is the former DJ NoName bumped from Entercom rocker, The End (KNDD FM) when Howard Stern flew away.
We're not saying these guys are stupid (no we're not, yes we are, no we're not) but they're dumbing down radio political talk (if that's possible).
If, in order to survive in news talk, they need to study politics and policy, we question whether they're in the right job. They've got a lot of catching up to do, unlike news talkers who have an organic passion for news and politics; love it like other people love sports, and have never not.
We doubt there's that many talkers who've made the transition from FM music jock to first tier AM news talker. Ron Reagan, John Carlson. Dave Ross, Kirby Wilbur, Dori Monson, David Goldstein, etc., know the news and politics at the cellular level and are steeped in AM radio talk. We're not sure if these FM talkers can be successful without changing KIRO's format in the process.
(We were impressed that McGavick was talk radio savvy enough that he actually called into a show! He painlessly reached 100,000+ people, got a handjob by R&D, all at no cost to his campaign. Maria Cantwell, on the other hand, wouldn't take listeners calls Sunday when she appeared on Goldstein's show).
If they knew shit, Ron & Bomb might have asked him a question or two that he'd have had a little more trouble hitting over the fence.
It could have been a good radio moment and a political discussion with some traction, but it was a boring circle jerk that let a politician have his way with them and was of little lasting interest to a radio audience.
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