Shock jocks and the American political system

[beetiger]

I wouldn't say I'm a regular listener of Howard Stern's. I don't really know a lot of the celebrities he features, homophobic humor doesn't go too far with me, listening to yelling in the morning doesn't generally soothe my mood, and there's only so much discussion of breast implants that one can hear.

However, I listen to a little bit of everything my radio gets in on my long commutes and trips, including NPR news, Christian talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, alternative, folk, weird college radio, and top 40. Sometimes, especially during NPR pledge drives, I listen to Howard Stern.

He had a marvelous bit of satire on today. Four of his regulars, three of which are mentally disabled people he's made into sort of cult celebrities and the last of which is an active promoter of the KKK, became the panelists for an episode of "Politically Incorrect", with Bill Marr who was guesting on the show. Stern said he was featuring the opinions of "the real, everyday American people". They talked about immigration, eliciting answers ranging from "send all the filthy Mexicans home" to "I have some Hispanic friends, they are really nice". They tried to talk about stem cell research, but since none of the panelists knew what that was, they talked instead about abortion, for which the general opinion was a confused "We shoudn't kill babies, but everyone should get to do what they want.", except for the Klansman, who insisted that abortion was a plot (by whom, I don't know) to kill white babies so minorities could take over. After being told, "You should support stem cell research" by Bill Marr, though, the panelists firmly agreed.

The thing is, this "debate" really was just about as sensible as a lot of the political debate I hear elsewhere these days, the answers just as well-reasoned. It left me thinking that perhaps I'd better get my act together and find out more about who's who among the Democratic hopefuls for 2004, and get myself voting in some primaries.

Comments

[elven-wolf.livejournal.com]

Your country is indeed in a sad state.
Personally I like Howeard Dean. I could look into more of the other hopefulls, but it's not like I get to vote so I'll leave that to you.
But yeah, more USA citizens should vote.

[pobig.livejournal.com]

nihilistic_kid has pointed out repeatedly that you get much more for your political effort by making yourself heard to the people already holding office. The constitution (not that he has much patience with that, either) doesn't talk much about voting, after all.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

This I already do, regularly. I just found myslef thinking I don't want to be in a position in 2004 where I'm just setting myself up to vote for Mr./Ms. Not-George-Bush purely on that basis.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'm supporting Kucinich at this point. I like a lot of what I've heard about him. Although he's likely to get knocked out, at which point I'll probably switch to Dean.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

It's actually shaping up to be interesting. The large numbers of chickensh^H^H^H moderate Democrats who largely gave Bush whatever he wanted during 2001-2002, and who really don't have much political identity these days ("What Bush says, only maybe a little less of it") are facing a serious insurgency from the anti-war, if not always progressive, wing of the party. None too soon for my tastes.
Lieberman doesn't impress me at all -- he's the DLC candidate par excellence, Bush Lite, with a long tradition of shilling for the big corporations that contribute to his campaigns, to the detriment of actual citizens. Kerry seemed like a more centrist version of Lieberman, but he seems to have wobbled into the antiwar camp. Then there's Kucinich and Dean and a number of others who don't seem to have much of anything going on -- Edwards, Graham, Gephardt.
Kucinich is my favorite, a fire-breathing old-time lefty who hasn't got a hope in hell of getting elected, but will hopefully at least make the primaries interesting. I like him despite his fiddling on abortion and Postvixen's distaste for him -- apparently he isn't well liked or trusted in his home city. Dean, on the other hand, seems electable, but he's pretty conservative for my tastes. Someone made this interesting comparison of their respective policy platforms. The ugly truth is that Dean is probably the best a progressive lefty can hope for in this election -- a guy who won't make things any worse than they are. The political state of the union is so terrible that I resent that fact bitterly, but at least it looks like there'll be a real fight, rather than just Bush cakewalking to a ruinous second term.
Just two cents from an _extremely_ biased observer. :)