The Right, the Radio, and the Reaction

One of the stranger aspects of publishing a book these days is the satellite radio tour. Basically, you sit in your home from early in the morning until late in the afternoon, talking on the phone to one radio station after another, Minneapolis to Spokane to Tampa. Sometimes you're on for five minutes, sometimes it's a half an hour. Sometimes they do all the work, sometimes they let you talk.

This is my second radio tour in the past sixteen months; the last was for a book called The Bush Survival Bible, and this one is for Duck! The Dick Cheney Survival Bible. Both books are (ostensibly) funny. The idea is to get people to laugh at the president and vice president, because laughter is often the first step to unveiling the shroud of dignity (ostensibly) surrounding the office. The books also have serious content hidden among the jokes.

The struggle on the radio, however, has been to find this liberal media about which the rightwing endlessly complains. While discussing the Bush book, at least three-quarters of the radio hosts were openly hostile. What a terrible thing, they complained, to write a book unsympathetic to the president; what an act of cowardice and cruelty. When reminded that there was an entire library of hostile books written during the Clinton years, they explained this was different. Clinton deserved those books. Bush doesn't.

Like many arguments of the right, there's nothing you can do it. It's like that ultimate nightmare: a debate with Sean Hannity. Facts don't matter. Truthiness is more important than truth.

Worse was the other tack taken by many other radio hosts: everything unflattering to the administration is a liberal lie.

For instance, a show in blue-state Maryland, where the host, after a polite introduction, proceeded to attack the idea that Dick Cheney has misstepped. Worst, the host said, was this idea that the recent shooting incident was anything other than the victim's fault. Liberals, the host explained, aren't smart enough to know the rules of hunting; if they did, they'd understand that Dick Cheney behaved with a moral integrity few mortals have ever displayed.

There's not much you can do with that argument either.

And so it goes, interview after interview, five minute segment after twenty minute segment: Liberals are destructive, liberals are fools, liberals hate the country, liberals this, liberals that, liberals lie.

The radio, it appears, is not liberal.

Radio is a powerful force. The right figured this out long ago. With some exceptions, such as the newly created Air America, or syndicated programs such as Barry Lynn's Culture Shocks, the airwaves belong to the right. If all your news came from the radio, you'd never know that the president's approval ratings have fallen into the 30s. You'd never know that Iraq is a quagmire. You'd never know much.

Strangely, these days it's not just the radio. The media has been slowly morphing into a rightwing monolith. The Washington Post is becoming increasingly conservative, the dark empire of Rupert Murdoch seems to know no bounds, television news is dominated by the rightwing. Yes, as the right points out, a majority of the reporters and writers are liberals. But the owners -- the ones who make the decisions, the ones who write the editorials -- are conservative.

There has been much hand-wringing by the rightwing that the left has found such success on the Internet. And the mainstream media complains bitterly about its loss of readers to the Net. But where else in America is the left made to feel so welcome? It the only port in the rightwing storm where a progressive voice has a chance to be heard. If you don't believe me, try turning on your radio. Read the paper. Watch the news. More and more it seems like all news, from the right, all the time. Except on the web.