How the crazy works

Capitalism in Bizarro world

Last month I briefly indulged my nasty habit of scanning the AM radio dial. As usual, the cesspit that is KSFO served up a memorable dollop of right-wing nonsense. The old stalwarts are gone now—Lee Rodgers to eternal silence and Melanie Morgan to the scandal-tainted Move America Forward—but Brian Sussman and Katie Green are doing their best to maintain the morning program's standard of irrational extremism.

Sussman, a weather man who thinks himself competent to pretend to be a climatologist, has apparently fixated on Hillary Clinton the way Cato was obsessed with Carthage. Although I suspect he will be disappointed with the eventual outcome, his overreach inspires a kind of head-shaking awe. Making money is usually honored by the KSFO tribe, but Sussman was willing to make an exception for Clinton's success. When Hillary makes money, it's evil and corrupt (two words you'll never hear Sussman use while discussing the excesses of the banking industry).

In this particular instance, Sussman was offended that Clinton commands top dollar for her speaking engagements:

Sussman: Hillary Clinton. Remember when she addressed the eBay summit? And we had asked this question: what did she make for this 20-minute talk? We literally asked the question. And now we find out: 315,000 dollars from eBay! Katie, that's your money and my money—because we use eBay.

Katie Green: Yeah, it is.

Welcome to the new KSFO theory of capitalism. Since Sussman is a customer of eBay, he shares ownership of the company's money. Sorry, Brian. When you patronize a company, your dollars become theirs, to do with as they please. Even if that means bringing in a nationally-known speaker to amp up attendance at one of their conferences. Your permission is not required.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a correction or clarification. That would be fatal.

Where's my money?

Teaching for dollars

San Francisco's KSFO, bastion of right-wing talking points for the poor out-numbered arch-conservatives who live in the Bay Area, has been cutting back. High-priced hosts like Melanie Morgan and Lee Rodgers have been shown the door and their erstwhile sidekick, Brian Sussman, has been elevated into the anchor chair. His feet may not be able to touch the floor as he sits in it, but Sussman is now KSFO's monarch of the morning drive time (although actual traffic reports come from “Officer Vic,” who now gets to be Sussman's yes-man).

My inner masochist occasionally takes over when I'm driving and tunes the radio to KSFO, just to see what the crazies are promoting at the moment. On Tuesday, July 27, 2010, listeners were treated to yet another paean to the wonders of running government “like a business.” This shows remarkable resilience in right-wing ranks, especially after the debacle of George W. Bush's “MBA presidency.” Yeah, another dose of the business acumen that destroyed the world economy is just what government needs these days!

During the 7 o'clock hour, Sussman started a little rant about the Obama administration's shocking lack of business people in its top ranks. While Reagan and the two Bushes had over fifty percent of their appointees coming from the world of business, the current administration's tally is only eight percent. Shocking! (While the numbers may be true, they came from one of Sussman's devoted listeners, so a block of salt might be indicated.) With Officer Vic providing sycophantic punctuation, Sussman began to rail against academia—the reputed source of the bulk of President Obama's political appointments.

By itself, this is no surprise. Right-wing talk-show hosts really don't like higher education and its purveyors. We tend to be too liberal for them. (Funny how education tends to make people more liberal, open-minded, and opposed to right-wing radio bigots. No doubt Beck University will fix that.) Nevertheless, Sussman managed to surprise me, a jaded liberal listening to a usually predictable spewing of right-wing talking points from KSFO. You might not guess, however, just how he managed to surprise me.

Check it out:

Sussman: Herein lies the problem. These people live in a parallel universe. They don't understand. How do you get ahead in academia? It's not about being the best. It's not about being— There's no competition.

Officer Vic: No.

Sussman: Basically you go out there and get a degree and maybe another degree and another degree. And then you work your way into— You get a job at a university and you publish papers that no one reads and you publish books that are unreadable and you speak [Officer Vic: You get tenure.] and your speaking can be completely boring and you teach and you can be the worst teacher on the planet but you get tenure.

Officer Vic: Yep.

I begin to suspect that Sussman has never been on a university campus. Good thing tenure is so easy to obtain, though. Practically automatic.

Sussman: And then, you're in! That's it. You're in the club. It's nothing about being the best. There's no competition involved to move up the ranks of academia. It's not like in the real world. And that's who Barack Obama's surrounded himself—a bunch of propeller-heads, who have never produced anything. They've never produced a job. They've never managed large numbers of people. But it's all unraveling for these guys.

It's true. Competition is anathema in academia. We don't compete for choice assignments, office space, grant money, promotions, or anything else. Never, ever. It's contrary to our communitarian nature.

Officer Vic: Payroll.

Sussman: Never had to make payroll, never had to balance a budget. Never had to manage a profit-and-loss statement. Oh, they'll write about profit-and-loss statements, they'll write about how to manage people, they'll write and write and write and write, they conduct all this research. And again, I think it's hilarious. You read some of the books that these people write and they are unreadable. You hear some of the speeches that they give and you can't listen to them. You go to their classes and you listen to them teach and they're awful. But they've got their jobs and they're millionaires.

I don't think Sussman actually goes into classrooms to listen to professors and deem them awful. He strikes me as a class-skipper. But that last sentence? Yeah, that's the part when Sussman took me by surprise. Millionaires? I think I need to talk to my union rep. I may be getting cheated! (Of course, I'm not a university professor, so perhaps I shouldn't quibble—except that I know plenty of university professors who earn less than me.)

So Sussman thinks professors are millionaires who never have to make payroll, never create jobs, and never balance a budget. What an ignoramus. One of the problems at universities is the management of research teams, the budgeting of grant monies, and the allocation of lab space. One jumps through all kinds of hoops to get the funding the first place and then gets to do further mountains of paperwork to document its expenditure on personnel and resources. We even have similar challenges at my community college, even though on a smaller scale. (We seek external funding more frequently now that the state budget is such a mess, but it all comes with strings.) Maybe we have to deal with the NSF instead of the SBA, but many of us can commiserate with the entrepreneurs who deal with the latter.

KSFO's morning oracle continued:

Sussman:I get a kick out of— You go to UC Berkeley, you go to Stanford, you go to these various campuses and these students are out there protesting, “We need more money for our schools!” And standing next to them are the professors. “We need more money for our schools!” Hey, have you ever asked that professor how much money they're making every year? These professors are all millionaires. They're millionaires with big, big salaries and big, big retirement packages. And yet they dress like little schmoes, you know, with their crummy jackets [Officer Vic: Patches on the elbow.] that are twenty years old, yeah, and patches on the elbow. And their ties are askew and their hair's kinda crappy and they drive crummy little cars and they're millionaires. They're all millionaires! And they actually have the gall to stand next to the kids who are protesting because their fees are too high. “We need more money for our schools!” So you can pay these millionaires!

Oh, good. Fashion advice from a radio jockey. Nice hair, Brian. What training academy does it for free just for practice? As a millionaire professor, I shell out $14 for each of my haircuts.

A good day for paranoia

Carefully contextualized

Yesterday I witnessed an amusing confluence of right-wing angst. In the early morning, Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan of KSFO commiserated over the their exposure to the baleful eye (or is it ear?) of Media Matters for America. In rather subdued tones, they groused over the attention that Media Matters gives to their broadcasts, recording each word and reporting Rodgers and Morgan's more egregious statements on the Media Matters website. They were casting anxious looks over their shoulders, furious at the way that self-anointed media watchdogs were taking their comments “out of context.”

That turned out to be the meme of the day. Later, on the same radio station, Rush Limbaugh decried the way that Media Matters monitored his broadcasts and then took his remarks “out of context.” (Is Karl Rove still faxing daily talking points to Fox News and other right-wing media outlets?) One wonders, of course, just how much context is necessary to properly construe Morgan's remark that “We've got a bull's-eye painted on [Pelosi's] big, wide laughing eyes” or Limbaugh's thoughtful conclusion that the Virginia Tech mass murderer “had to be a liberal.” Both Morgan and Limbaugh also continued to flog the false notion that Media Matters is funded by the wealth of George Soros, one of their favorite bogeymen from the left.

It was deeply satisfying to listen to Rodgers, Morgan, and Limbaugh trying to deal with the fact that they are being held responsible for their words. Ever since the Spocko incident a few months ago, Rodgers and Morgan have been—if not exactly subdued—noticeably anxious and preoccupied with pre-emptive ass-covering. They know they can no longer simply deny having said the things they spout on the air (those words are no longer evaporating into the ether), so they intermittently wring their hands, abruptly check themselves on the verge of launching into a full-throated spate of hate speech, and mewl about “free speech” and “context.” How nuanced they are now!

To do them justice, I should not dismiss their concerns as being nothing more than paranoia. As someone once said, “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.” Rodgers and Morgan are right to be worried. It's not a matter of free speech. They have the right to climb up on their soapbox any old time they want and rant to their hearts' content. I, for one, would prefer that it be an actual soapbox, perhaps turned upside-down on a street corner in San Francisco's famous Tenderloin district. Appreciative listeners and passers-by could toss them pennies.

You see, freedom of speech has nothing to do with guaranteeing that Rodgers and Morgan continue to enjoy a platform on a five-thousand-watt radio station that blankets northern California. KSFO is a commercial undertaking and is therefore subject to the market forces that its talk-show hosts purport to idolize. If their right-wing rants chase away advertisers and listeners, that's just too bad. Whining about “context” is just making excuses. In the meantime, the Media Matters dossiers on Rodgers and Morgan and Limbaugh just keep getting longer and longer and longer. You'd think they would be pleased that people are listening so closely, hanging on their every word.

We shouldn't be under any illusion that the monitoring of right-wing hate media is likely to drive any of its major exponents into penury. Rodgers is doing well enough to cut back his work week at KSFO to four days. Morgan hawks her book (a sliming of Cindy Sheehan) and uses her radio platform to promote Move America Forward, her vehicle for nonstop fundraising and publicizing the “good news” from Iraq.

Limbaugh continues to be the behemoth of talk radio, even if his ratings have ebbed from their earlier peaks. His acolytes seem capable of forgiving him for anything. Drug abuse? Well, that's understandable for someone in such a high-stress job. Multiple marriages and dalliances? Be reasonable: how can marriage survive when Rush has to work so hard? And do as he says, not as he does. Caught at an airport customs checkpoint on his way back from a visit to the Dominican Republic with a Viagra prescription not in his own name? Okay, everyone needs a little recreation. And we already dismissed any concerns about drugs, right?

We don't have to worry about Rush's survival, even as he moves into his declining years under the burden of constant observation and the specter of continuing difficulties with drug dependencies. His future is secure. One day soon an attractive young thing will look across the room at a GOP fundraiser and what will she see? An anxious, half-deaf, OxyContin-perfused multi-millionaire who has trouble getting it up.

Priceless.

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Update

Media Matters has posted a partial transcript of Limbaugh's remarks on April 20. Here's a pertinent excerpt:

Media Matters, whatever—that website, the front organization for the Clinton campaign, bought and paid for by George Soros and the Clinton people. Media Matters for America, which takes everything that we say here out of context and puts it up there

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Go check it out and decide for yourself how “out of context” Limbaugh is being taken.

An explanation of science

By someone who doesn't know any!

Since I am within reach of KSFO's Bay Area radio signal, I sometimes sample snippets of the programming at HotTalk 650. Most of it is rancid, of course, but it's good to keep an eye on what the wacko right is up to. For fringe rhetoric and incendiary hate speech, KSFO is hard to beat.

Thus it was on Friday morning, March 16, 2007, I was treated to a discourse by Lee Rodgers on the nature of science. He was heaping abuse on one of his favorite topics: Al Gore and global warming. His equally nasty co-host, Melanie Morgan, was instantly ready to chime in.

What follows is my own transcript of the on-air commentary. A few interjections and false starts were omitted to improve the readability, but all of the words were spoken by Rodgers or Morgan:

Rodgers: Got an e-mail from Nevada, Chuck in Fernley, and he raises a point that Al Gore and the poor gullible dupes who follow him can't seem to get through their thick stupid heads. He says the term “scientific consensus” is an oxymoron—regarding global warming or for that matter anything else. In science something is either so or it is not so. Taking a vote doesn't change the reality of it.

It's like saying that there is consensus among mathematicians that two plus two equals four. Those who believe otherwise are not outside the consensus, they are simply wrong.

Morgan: Exactly!

Rodgers: How hard is this to figure out? This is the first thing I learned in, I don't know, seventh grade science or whatever it was.

Morgan: What scientists do is they try to take a premise and prove it to be false. I mean that's what their job is.

Rodgers: Sure! Questioning.

Morgan: Yes, so the fact that they would try to come to a consensus—that's not how the scientific community works.

Rodgers: No. No.

Morgan: And Al Gore is an idiot. He's a big fat idiot, I believe would be the correct term.

Rodgers:Well, we don't want to get personal about this, do we?

Morgan: Yes, we do. We enjoy that.

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Thanks to Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan (and good old Chuck in Fernley), we now understand that science is about what's right. Rodgers, however, can't tell the difference between right and extreme right. Heck, he can't even tell the difference between right and wrong—and his description of science is just plain wrong.

Morgan gropes around for the germ of the idea of falsifiability, which is indeed one criterion for a scientific hypothesis: can you think of an experiment which would invalidate it? (That's why intelligent design is merely one more version of creationism and not, as noted in the Kitzmiller decision, any version of science.) She completely misunderstands, as does Rodgers, the role of consensus in establishing provisional scientific truth. All scientific truth is regarded as fundamentally provisional—as opposed to absolute—although different aspects of the scientific consensus vary dramatically in their likelihood of being overturned. (No one is talking about discarding the theory that the earth is roughly spherical.)

Consensus is one of the keystones of modern science and not the simple-minded true/false dichotomy espoused by dim thinkers like Rodgers and Morgan. They should mind their own business (right-wing radio ranting) and let the scientists take care of science.

And scientists, by the way, agree with Al Gore in a broad consensus about global warming and climate change. Sorry about that.

Update: Thanks to the kind assistance of Spocko, I was able to create a detailed transcript of last week's babbling by Rodgers and Morgan. This post was then revised to reflect a more complete version of what was said on the air. I'm pleased, however, that my original post turned out to be quite true to the sense of the comments I originally heard on my car radio (with a certain amount of disdainful gnashing of the teeth).

I saw it on the Internets

Reportage 101

Would you like to be a journalist? We who blog aren't journalists, you know, but we can always learn from the example of one of today's highly paid professionals.

This morning on KSFO's Morning Show, Lee Rodgers showed how it's done. Since I have a rather delicate stomach, I never listen to San Francisco's “Hot Talk” radio station for more than a few minutes at a time. Nevertheless, Rodgers is a consummate professional who can always be relied up to deliver some priceless bit of reportage—pronounced in the French manner, of course—so he must be dishing it out nonstop.

Today he was trying to pump some life into the limp story about Pelosi's supposed demand for a castle in the sky. Or was it a stairway to heaven? In any case, Rodgers waxed indignant that Pelosi was allegedly demanding special treatment from the military authorities who provide secure transportation to the Speaker of the House. After all, Speaker Hastert was given a plane that flew him nonstop to Illinois any time he wished. Why should Speaker Pelosi expect more?

Well, maybe because she's from California? Last I heard, that's a little farther from D.C. than the Land of Lincoln. If the current Speaker is to be accorded the equivalent privilege of a nonstop trip to her home district, deemed advisable by the House Sergeant at Arms, it seems reasonable that a slightly more robust plane than Hastert's might be required.

Perhaps Rodgers is weak on geography.

But no! Rodgers sneeringly explained to his listeners that Pelosi was making unreasonable demands and he could prove it. I pricked up my ears. Right-wing radio prefers to offer blatant assertions and specious allegations, so the announcement of forthcoming evidence suggested a new era was dawning for KSFO. Rodgers was eager to tell the radio audience exactly how to examine the proof for itself.

His secret weapon was Google: “Type in ‘Gulfstream,’” Rodgers said. “Type in ‘specifications.’”

He then read from one of the references provided by Google. Rodgers chortled that the Gulfstream III jet previously assigned to Hastert has a range of nearly 4000 miles, providing “proof positive” that Pelosi was demanding special treatment, California being less than 4000 miles from Washington, D.C.

As we all know, information provided by the many tubes of the Internets is carefully vetted, completely reliable, and utterly unambiguous.

Rodgers never got to the part about how a plane's range is significantly affected by passenger load, headwinds, and other flight conditions. Since he didn't read that there are plenty of circumstances under which a Gulfstream III cannot reliably be expected to make it across the country nonstop, that concern magically vanishes.

We mustn't blame him for this. As a highly paid professional journalist, Lee Rodgers must have known that too much research would have made his story vanish, too. He couldn't have that!