Talk Radio's End-of-Auction Shipwreck Voices

I'm trying to listen to Air America, 1400 on the AM Dial as I drive through Northern New Mexico looking for plastic tabs to correct mistakes on a typewriter. During the run up to the election, I listened to the barking pundits of the right on 770 KKOB, optimistically assuming that if I could hear their side, I would understand more.

KKOB last fall was also the only station in New Mexico that provided a version of news throughout the day, and even if it was their news told in their way, it was better than hushed, sincere interviews with ladies who'd had revelations on a mesa and who were sharing them through the massage practice, soul chart readings, hypnotherapy, past life regressions or watercolors that they were there to promote.

But the men on KKOB shouted so much that the car radio ran wet with spittle. The rants came out in voices hoarse with shouting, you could hear how parched the membranes were at the back of throats, which is perhaps why the speaker's noses had to do all the work. Nasal, guttural, fraught, hoarse, and most of all, defensive, croaks reiterated the accepted wisdom of the right, interrupting themselves to act out ads for mattresses that adjust differently on each side, so that you and your wife can each get the kind of sleep you like. And then they returned to selling the same two or three ideas in the same end-of-auction shipwreck voices.

When Air America was unrolled over New Mexico I rejoiced. I would hear news and the opinions of my own tribe in the tones of my tribe: measured cadences, husky perhaps with regret, imparting facts and figures as transparent and painful as the truth. Instead, there is the voice of Randi Rhodes: screaming, squawking, screeching, selling, alas, what appear to be the same two or three ideas of what is called the left by the right. She too has the end-of-auction shipwreck voice, but instead of defensive, its mode is aggressive. Today I heard the mattress ad on Air America. It's adjustable on each side, so you and your wife can each get the kind of sleep you like. I thought I was coming back to America to hear some discourse, some perspective. Is it possible that the only mode for political radio is the screeching hard sell? Is it acceptable? What kind of sleep do you prefer?