BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
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Wednesday, April 28, 2004
AIR AMERICA'S GROWING PAINS.
Ridiculous though it may be, it appears that the death watch has
already begun for Air
America Radio. The
Chicago Tribune reported
yesterday that two of the liberal network's top executives, Mark
Walsh and Dave Logan, have left the building - Walsh under his own
power, Logan possibly not. This comes on the heels of a legal and
financial dispute that has left Air America without stable homes in
Los Angeles and Chicago.
The New York Times
follows
up today. And Michael
Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, tells
the Washington Post the obvious: "Chaos is not a good sign." A
nitwit named Corey Deitz goes so far as to argue
that Air America hosts Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo should emulate
Gordon Liddy. What, by going to prison?
Needless to say, Air America can't
be heard in Boston, either, unless you're paying for satellite radio
or listening to the live stream over the Web.
Obviously Air America is going
through growing pains, or maybe something rather worse than that. But
the network is still only a month old. The unanswered question - and
the key to the whole operation - is how much money its backers are
prepared to spend to get this thing off the ground. If they're
willing to spend whatever it takes for a year or two, then the
current chaos doesn't matter. If they were hoping to break even
within months after launching, then one suspects they didn't know
what they were getting into in the first place.
Air America continues to add
affiliates, including WMTW Radio (AM 870) in Portland, Maine. The
station is changing its call letters to WLVP, which veteran
radio-watcher Scott Fybush guesses
stands for "Liberal Voice of Portland."
One thing I wonder about is whether
the liberal audience that Air America has targeted really understands
how bad talk radio is most of the time. Everyone talks about how
successful Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are, but they host
dreadful, almost unlistenable shows - smug, boring, unentertaining
agitprop that is nearly impossible to listen to unless you've been
lobotomized. Air America wants to rise above that, but it's
hard to do so hour after hour after hour. Conservatives may be
willing to listen to such crap, but that's one of the reasons that
they're conservatives.
Time will tell whether Air America
is going to succeed, and money will determine how much time there is.
Everything else is irrelevant.
THE SILENCE OF THE LEAKEE.
There is a magical moment laying bare the media-political axis
toward the end of today's James Risen New York Times
story
on Defense Department neocon conspiracy theorist Douglas Feith ("the
fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth," according to
General
Tommy Franks).
Risen writes this about Michael
Maloof, one of several deep thinkers Feith brought in to concoct ties
between Iraq and Al Qaeda:
Mr. Maloof's Pentagon
career was damaged in December 2001, when his security clearances
were revoked. He was accused of having unauthorized contact with a
foreign national, a woman he had met while traveling in the
Republic of Georgia and eventually married. Mr. Maloof said he
complied with all requirements to disclose the relationship.
Several intelligence professionals say he came under scrutiny
because of suspicions that he had leaked classified information in
the past to the news media, a charge that Mr. Maloof denies.
His lawyer, Sam Abady says that Mr. Maloof was a target because of
his controversial intelligence work and political ties to
conservative Pentagon leaders.
Today's question: is there any
chance whatsoever that Risen doesn't know whether or not Maloof
had leaked classified information to the news media?
posted at 9:06 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
