I Don't Care About Randi

Covered more fully elsewhere (see the earlier posting which includes a link to LTR), because of the crisis at Nova M Radio, talker Randi Rhodes has been off the air for a while, and a great deal has been made in radio circles about it.

As you've guessed from the title, I don't care.

I agree with her politics but I can't stand hearing her on the air. You may not feel the same way, but I thought "talk" radio is more than tuning in and listening to the host talk and talk and talk. I grew up on talk radio, and I confess the first talk radio show I listened to was hosted by Joe Pyne out of L.A. I didn't agree, even then, with Pyne's politics, but he was terrific at what he did.

Most talk shows for decades afterwards followed Pyne's pattern. They took calls and sometimes interviewed guests who were either authors of then-new books or folks who were active in local or national politics.

Randi Rhodes and some of her fellow hosts don't do that anymore. The other two who come to mind are Rush Limbaugh and Ed Schultz. In all three cases they rarely take a call and never or rarely have guests. The only reason for the "rarely" is that I've heard Schultz interview someone occasionally. But all three and their similar numbers mostly just talk to us in hours-long monologues.

I should add that I'm not a hide-bound traditionalist. I like a lot of the newer hosts who've come along. Stephanie Miller's show is a hoot and Tom Hartmann is almost always interesting as is Lionel (who's also very funny), but they all take vastly more calls than the other ones mentioned.

Talk radio's a lot of things, but the best of it involves interaction and challenges to and from the host.

What Rush-Randi-Ed and their bretheren (and sistern?) are doing isn't talk radio. It's public intellectual masturbation.

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