Q: Is covering former Air America hosts covered by our charter?
In a comment on an earlier thread, "MrTed" asks, "why is this site obsessed with people no longer on air america?"
I've thought about that question myself, and I've debated over whether our mandate includes discussing former Air America Radio hosts. And, I'm now here to respond with a resounding, "yes!"
Let me respond to that question with a frank confession: I started this site in a misbegotten attempt to "get to know" one of their former hosts, who I will not name. See, my thinking was that this site would gain reknown as the yang to Air America's yin: that I would become known as the anti-Air America. Eventually - my thinking went - I would be invited onto a panel somewhere in a "face off" with the AAR host I wanted to "get to know", and - despite our differences - we'd "hit it off" and maybe go on to establish a meaningful, long-term relationship.
Almost all celebrities aren't interested in getting involved with someone who's simply a fan; my idea was that I could escape the fan "purgatory" by elevating myself into the pundit class, from which I would be considered a possible relationship choice. You might think it sounds far-fetched, but our fellow VRWC member Brian Maloney has become somewhat of a "radio pundit" due to his reporting on this issue, although as far as I know he's never tried to take advantage of his pundit class membership in order to achieve what I wanted to achieve. Stranger things really have happened and anyway it was worth the little effort I've put into this site.
However, the scales have long since fallen from my eyes, and I now realize I've been wasting my time all these months. I harbor no illusions, as I have now fully realized that Mike Malloy is really, really nuts.
BoreAmerica/Air America Third Anniversary Meetup Los Angeles: March 31
This year, we'll be helping celebrate Air America's Third Anniversary - and the same event for this site this year in Los Angeles.
This will most likely take place on Saturday, March 31, but that's open to change.
The exact location is also open. Perhaps we'll picket AAR's Burbank headquarters, demanding that they give Noam Chomsky or Ramsey Clark their own show.
Or, perhaps it will be at one of the local socialist bookstores, such as one near Alvarado and Sunset.
Other locations are possible; perhaps one of the local housing projects, or Florence and Normandy. Or, perhaps I could encourage their listeners to help make booster antennae for the poor so that the Great Unwashed may learn from those who so stridently seek to help them. Perhaps we could all get together and make tote bags for the starving citizens of Guatemala.
Leave your suggestions in the comments.
So, aren't you creeped out or something?
As regular readers may have noticed, the center background is currently an endlessly repeated picture of Al Franken. In part this is an homage to the Bush fan site "pardonmyenglish.com", which at one time had a huge picture of America's best-ever president as its background graphic. And, in part, this is a sacrifice I'm making for the greater good. My feeling is that while many people will be completely turned off to this site because of the graphic, they will also be likewise completely turned off to any Senate campaign by Stuart Smalley.
Posted at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)
Citizen Journalist Assignment Desk: which are still AAR stations?
Calling all investigative journalists, citizen journalists, malcontents, homeless people with internet access at local lending libraries, and bloggers! Here's a fun assignment that will earn you fame and possibly even fortune.
Your assignment: find out how many of the "Air America Radio outlets" on this list are actually still broadcasting some or all of AAR's programming. (For instance, the Chattanooga station they list stopped broadcasting AAR almost three months ago.)
Since some of those stations might only be running a few hours of AAR per day, a scoring system might be useful, perhaps using icons. For instance, there could be one to five small KoolAid icons, depending on how much AAR their listeners are forced to consume. A tiny little icon of Screech could be used to indicate how much Randi Rhodes content there is; a tiny little icon of a flying chair for Al Franken; and so on.
Posted at 05:36 AM | Comments (0)
Thanks for stopping by
Now, please explain what the hell you were thinking:
Posted at 07:52 PM | Comments (5)
This blog is good enough and smart enough
First of all, I'd like to thank the twenty or thirty people who voted for this site in its Weblog Awards category. Unfortunately, BA ended up in penultimate position with around 1.5% of the vote. Which, come to think of it, is quite similar to the ratings for almost all of AAR's stations. But, despite that crushing loss, I will persevere in my campaign to spread the truth about Air America Radio.
Posted at 11:22 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Vote for this site in the Weblogs Awards
Please vote for this site here.
And, please also vote for our sister site Lonewacko.com in this category.
More suggestions here, but those are the most urgent.
Posted at 10:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Al Franken gets splogged
A "splog" is a spam blog consisting of programmatically-obtained bits and pieces from other sites, which are reconstituted and extruded into posts on the splog. Blogspot is full of these type of things, including a whole chain dedicated to Stuart (for some reason). Here are eight of them, all apparently from the same person (or machine). Put blogspot.com after one of the words and type it into your browser bar to see what it looks like:
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xr7p25alf
lwaa32alf
alf8pq
xr7p25alf
alf251zrc
lwaa32alf
Congrats to Al on the honor.
Posted at 11:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Scandal counter retired; AAR scandal continues
What a strange, strange journey it's been. However, I figure it's about time to remove the scandal counter from the right sidebar.
Posted at 08:52 PM | Comments (1)
Another reason to distrust Wikipedia
[4/9/05: final (?) update: CalicoCat (mentioned in the update) suggested I create a new category to put this blog in. After I did that, he deleted the new category I created and put this blog in the "External links" section. OK, fine. I'm willing to compromise. Since he put it there it might stay there, but I'll keep a watchful eye peeled just to make sure no one else comes along and removes it.] I added BoreAmerica to the Air America Radio entry at Wikipedia, and it was promptly removed. Let's see if this message I posted to their talk page suffers a similar fate:Earlier today I added BoreAmerica.com to the "Fan sites: Message boards, archives, chat rooms" section, and it was removed by ClockworkSoul with this message: "Remove POV anti-blog. This contributes nothing notable or informative to the article." If BoreAmerica doesn't add anything, then neither do the fan sites. Or, are only sites that support AAR allowed? Is a critical discussion of AAR not allowed? Since I've covered negative information on AAR - information that you probably won't find at the fan sites - don't you think those coming to this page might not get the complete picture?At post time, here are the links in that section:
- Unoffical Air America Message Board
- Unofficial fan site
- Air America Links Unofficial link and streaming site
- Air America Place audio archive
- White Rose Society, The Mike Malloy Show archives in MP3 format
- The Randi Rhodes Show, archives in MP3 format
- Archived Radio shows
- Independent Air America Radio IRC Chat channel (chat room) on Undernet
4-07-05: There's an update below... 4-07-05 UPDATE: "CalicoCat" responds to the comment I posted at the talk page with the following. I think everyone will agree that he amply demonstrates his biases. Nevertheless, I'm going to do as he suggests and add it to a new section.
You might open up a sub-category in External Links for right-wing nut-job sites that are critical of AAR, but not just any old blog that has some ad hominem screed about "that nasty, commie, pinko, anti-american, stupid liberal joke of a radio network, ditto, ditto, ditto" thing. Also, the category is "fan sites, message boards, blogs, etc." so adding that there would not be appropriate, to my way of thinking, since they obviously are not "fan sites."I responded:
In general, I'd caution againt turning this article into some kind of horrible "debate" page, or quasi-editorial, that's not what wikepedia is. See what wikipedia is not. As it standands, this is an article about the entity air american radio. That said, you might draft some other section about Criticism of Air American, however, it would have to be drafted with care to make it neutral and factually supported. For what it's worth, I've noticed more reversionism (censorship)of information criical of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and so on; but, on the other hand, some of the better pages on -- to quote Mike Malloy -- "flying monkey right-wing talkshow hosts do stick to the subjects of the articles and are presented in an accurate and neutral fashion. For example, I added a site showing some the gross distortions and lies factually documented about Bill O'Rielly and no one's removed it, just an external link. It was a good source, brought out another point of view in a neutral, factual way. Wikipeidia is not for editorializing, even weasel-worded editorializing. "some peple think" kind of phrases. See weasel words. I'd keep the focus as it is, on the -- who, what, where, when, why, how -- of Air American Radio itself. Hope this helps... Calicocat 14:46, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
"right-wing nut-job sites"? Quite an interesting way of looking at things. In any case, my blog BoreAmerica.com (http://boreamerica.com) has been online for over a year and, except for housekeeping entries like this one (http://boreamerica.com/archives/2005/04/another-reason-to-distrust-wikipedia.html) it's all about Air America, their hosts, and their outside projects. And, I cover the things you won't read at the fan sites currently listed at the entry. As it stands now, this entry has a great deal of pro-AAR information, but not very much about their various problems.
Quoting from the NPOV: "The policy is easily misunderstood. It doesn't assume that it's possible to write an article from a single, unbiased, objective point of view. The policy says that we should fairly represent all sides of a dispute, and not make an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is correct."
So, I just created a new category as you suggested. LonewackoDotCom 11:45, 7 Apr 2005 (PST)
Posted at 07:14 PM | Comments (0)
Welcome to BoreAmerica!
BoreAmerica occasionally monitors AirAmerica (a.k.a. "liberal talk radio") so you don't ever have to listen to it.
Sponsored by The Lonewacko Blog, BoreAmerica will be a group effort.
If you want to be a contributor, contact abuse [at] tolstoy [dot] com.
We'll also be holding a contest to find a logo. Something like a radio listener falling asleep or something.
Posted at 08:44 PM | Comments (8)
