Bringing up the volume on the left

Hi, this is Janet in Hoboken, New Jersey: longtime listener, first-time reviewer (and, incidentally, a former radio talk-show host in a very different place and time).

I've been listening to Air America since its inception yesterday at noon -- not nonstop, of course, but enough to offer a review based not on the pre-launch press releases but hours and hours of actual listening.

As you've probably heard from the established media, Air America is a fleeting novelty, doomed to fail because it's liberal and trying to be funny and everybody knows liberals are too serious to be funny, always doing math and stuff like that, and/or it's doomed to fail because it's a commercial (i.e., profit-seeking) venture and everybody knows that profits are the realm of the right. Or it may be doomed to fail because the only people who'll tune in are liberals already so Al Franken and all those other lefties are just preaching to the choir.

Although Air America is available on XM Satellite Radio and in streaming audio online, so far only a handful of actual broadcast stations have picked it up. That might lend some credence to the preaching-to-the-choir argument, since people in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minnesota and Portland, Oregon, who can tune in on AM are likely to be lifelong left-leaners. The same might be said of online and satellite listeners.

And it's true that so far, most of the callers (and presumably, the listeners) have agreed with the on-air personalities on just about every point. But this is not exactly preaching to the choir. They're preachy, all right, but more important, the voices of Air America ARE the choir. And the choir is singing. In harmony. Can they drown out the cacaphonous crap spewing from the right side of the radio dial? Who knows. But at least the left has cleared its throat, broken its silence, and given us a chance to have a national dialogue once again instead of a national monologue.

The first item on Air America's agenda is to reclaim the word "liberal" and the dignity it deserves. Those who prefer to say "the L-word" can go right ahead; on Air America, the L-word has a new meaning: "liar." As in Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken himself. Which reminds us that like Air America, Second-Day Lede is an advertising-supported, profit-seeking enterprise:






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