Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Location Location
Posts: 26420

Transcript of Randi Rhodes interview of Ralph Nader on her first broadcast on Air America's first day:

quote:

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Audio Clip
President Carter: [speaking to an audience]: I have a friend named Ralph Nader. He was trusted enough by my family to have been permitted in Plains, Georgia to umpire a softball game where I pitched on one side and my brother pitched on the other side. That's a lot of confidence. When I was president he gave me a lot of advice. And tonight I want to return the favor by giving him some advice.

[Audience applauds]

President Carter: Ralph, go back to umpiring softball games or examining the rear end of automobiles, and don't risk costing the Democrats the White House this year as you did four years ago.

[Audience applauds louder]

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Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:

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Originally posted by Paint CHiPs
Well, if what they're going for is an answer to right-wing talk radio, they've got it.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: USA
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Yep. Synhronize your watches and and enter the when you think Air America will take a dirt nap in the Dead Pool.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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http://tinyurl.com/36uwq

For the mp3.

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Registered: May 2002
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quote:

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Originally posted by Paint CHiPs
I still think the anger and fear of Ralph Nader by the left is completely overblown and absurd.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: b0ulder
Posts: 5130

What's happening to the idea of being normal people? I was listening last night. Bill Maur(whatever) was being interviewed and you could hear the "WTF?!" in his voice. Janeane Garofalo and her co-host were spinning the Leftist anger out way too aggressively. No wonder US citizens are getting ripped apart in the street.

There's just no chance for Dems to survive this kind of talk. We're not going to turn any Elephants this way. I think Al Franken gives an interesting outlook, but the quality isn't there. It doesn't feel true.

I read this quote from Condi Rice about her not testifying in the 9-11 deal that basically said, "I can spin and not say anything I truly believe as everyone else has done in this inquiry...," which applies here. It's doubtfull the people on this station really agree, when confronted with facts, that what they have said on the air is truthfull and factual. That's disheartening. We have no chance of replacing Bush with media like this in the forefront, speaking for lefties. It would be nice if we--Democrats--could just use the truth itself to make a difference rather than spewing all over an audience because we now have a voice.

It's sad really. Moving to Spain at this point sounds like a real option for me. I like this Socialist guy. SEXUAL REVOLUTION BABY! Fuck AIDS. Lack of oil will take the population out. Fuck all you want. It won't last long.

Last edited by memdink on 04-02-2004 at 04:01 AM

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: b0ulder
Posts: 5130

Oh. And if I were to vote for when the station goes off the air, I'd say May '04. It will give them time to lose quality listeners and attempt a come back. If they don't turn it around by May it's definately over.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: is futile
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Ralph Nader has a lot of leftist views.

Air America seems to be more a democratic party channel than a liberal one.

Cheers

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Registered: Dec 2002
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nice how they managed to fuck up the sound clips and started to play one from bush first.

--listening--

"im a very open-minded liberal" -- if you redefine open to mean closed, and liberal to mean democrat ... sure. but with an unmodified english language? naw.

she's just shouting over him the whole time.
holy shit, she's a bitch. she's "angry" so she will just shout over him.

"real patriots have to stand up and question your candidacy" FUCK YOU

holy shit. she just can't accept anyone else to talk. she asks a question, he begins to answer, gets two words out, and she's shouting over him. the transcript doesnt even get into how bad it is.

"who are you caucusing with"
"all kinds of people, i'm --"
"NAME THEM! besides that group of people you started to name when I cut you off..."
"kennedy, --"
"KENNEDY!"
"you have a very poor interviewing technique, you dont let people talk ... " *click*

"Naders problem is that he doesn't answer questions ... "

WTF?

fucking bitch.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

Air America is the sort of imbecility one would expect from the American left. Republicans ask whether there's a market for something, and use every available tactic, fair or foul, to cash in on it if it's there. Democrats ask whether there SHOULD be a market for something and then attempt to reshape the consumer into somebody who'd buy it.

This is why Republicans tend to be richer and nastier, and Democrats tend to be poorer and whinier.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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Actually, if you can make a market that doesn't exist already, you can do really, really well. I'm not sure that this is it, however. As G said, though, the transcript is reminiscent of O'Reilly, and O'Reilly has a big audience. Unless you are saying that republicans have a larger base of cretins than the democrats, maybe that sort of audience is there for stuff like this.

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Registered: Dec 2002
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oreilly is for republicans who want to nod at someone who agrees with them. this will be the same for the democrats.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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If it dies for lack of audience, that would reflect rather well on democrats, perhaps.

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Registered: Sep 2000
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Well, we'll certainly find out, won't we?

What I would contend is that the market of liberal radio listeners in the US--the head nodders, if you will--is filled by NPR. There was no similar outlet for Republicans at the time that Limbaugh got his start, which is why they were filling a market and the Dems are trying to create one.

A large part of the problem is that TALK radio tends to be a medium ill-suited to liberalism, or at any rate to the sort of person who fancies himself or herself a modern American liberal, and the attempts by the Democrats to pretend otherwise are going to fail. What works for the GOP in this case won't work for them.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Do you think that the content of NPR is similar to that of Limbaugh's show? I don't listen to that much NPR when I am in the US (although cartalk is great).

I can't think of a reason why semi-deranged ranting works better for the right than for the left that doesn't reflect badly on the right.

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No, NPR isn't similar in TONE to Limbaugh. It is similar in the sense that it fills a niche. For the record, I would categorize neither Limbaugh nor O'Reilly as semi-deranged ranting (Savage is another matter), but that's a bit off topic.

McLuhan (sp) wrote about hot and cold media and the different situations and audiences to which they cater. Talk radio is very much a "hot" medium; it is participatory in the sense that few media are, and it tends to be very visceral in its approach. For a large section of the Republican electorate, these are visceral times. I suppose that if one wanted to be pejorative about it, one could say that this section of the electorate was "angry" or "looking for simple answers"; if one wanted to be complimentary, one could categorize it as "mobilization of the disenfranchised" or "the desire for bold leadership." Either way, talk radio mobilizes a section of the Republican community that has a hard time relating to, say, National Review. It's a uniquely Conservative populism.

American Liberals have their own tendencies towards ugly populism, but talk radio isn't the venue through which it can be replicated, because the populism and the heat come fron different sectors of the electorate. Anger at George Bush tends to be more of an intellectual thing, which scorns the simplicity of his solutions and his overly moralistic, emotive approach to foreign policy (deciding to attack Iraq because it feels right and constructing reasons later). One doesn't look to talk radio for nuance or complexity. One looks, rather, to NPR.

The "popular" base of the Democratic party, by contrast, isn't angrier than usual at Bush--here we are referring to African-American voters, low income brackets, the elderly, the sort of people whose populist sentiments stem largely from the Democrats' willingness to use government to (allegedly) make their lives easier. If there were a potential talk-radio audience for liberals, this would be it. The Democrats are counting on there being enough anger in this segement of their electorate to make talk radio sustainable. I think they're wrong about that (the leaders of the party are projecting their frustrations with Bush on a portion of their base that doesn't share it, at not least with the same intensity), and I think that people like Al Franken, who primarily appeal to the upscale wine-and-cheese crowd, are the wrong people to try to rally them behind.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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I've only read transcripts of O'Reilly from the Fox site, rather than watched him, and the transcripts are vomit inducing. What I've heard of Limbaugh isn't as bad.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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mmmm... wine and cheese

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
I've only read transcripts of O'Reilly from the Fox site, rather than watched him, and the transcripts are vomit inducing. What I've heard of Limbaugh isn't as bad.

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Registered: Dec 2002
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i was watching cspan one day for several hours, flipped the channel and saw this guy i've never heard of having a political-talk-show type thing. decided to watch it.

OH MY GOD IT WAS HORRIBLE.

figured, maybe he's not always like that, so when another episode came on I watched it.

OH MY GOD IT WAS WORSE!

thought to myself, two episodes isn't enough to really be sure. so i watched another.

after he had the other guys microphone turned off so he could more effectively speak over him, I gave up.

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