Hey Mr. Levin—DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU PERSUADE BY SCREAMING SO ROUTINELY, OR DO YOU MERELY COME OFF LIKE SOME LOUT WITH SYNTHETIC PASSION !?!
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Weight of Medved's Words
Perspicacious neoconservative newstalker (and Ned Flanders doppelganger) Michael Medved is scheduled for yet another local public appearance next week. He'll be accompanying some avid Medheads and Seattle Mariners fans to the Oakland Athletics game at Safeco Field on August 26th, and I'd encourage you to attend. If f0r no other reason, it'll afford you a chance to see Medved up close and interact with his remarkable mind, and in a less stuffy environment than that of his terrific nationally-syndicated show, of which I'm proud to report he has allowed Styble into his stable of regular callers.
His well-earned celebrity aside, Medved is a fascinating person to get to know, though I'm hardly one of his pals. But he was always friendly to me as my colleague for three years at Entercom Broadcasting even when professional courtesy didn't dictate him so being, and I now cherish my continuing occasional in-person exchanges with him, which typically display his intellect and wit every bit as much as his broadcast does weekdays (KTTH 770 kHz, 12-3pm Pacific).
Of late Medved has been doing public appearances promoting his latest nonfiction book, the brief but incisive volume The 10 Big Lies About America. And in the process exposing how disrepectful his putatively loyal audience is. I say this because of what transpired at the last two such Medved appearances I've been fortunate enough to take in.
It so happens that after a University of Washington morning address, and then again a month later following a Discovery Institute lecture at the group's downtown Seattle headquarters—Medved was reduced to carrying his own box of unpurchased books back to his car after each signing was wrapped.
I'm not lamenting about poor sales here; I'm sure Amazon, Borders, et al. move more than enough Medved inventory to keep him living the good life, as you'd expect of any man of his professional station. Rather, I deplore the sight of a man of his professional station lacking adequate support staff.
Medved should have had a flunky carrying the box for him. So I became his ad hoc flunky in both instances. (Which, incidentally, is about as close as I'll ever come to working for Medved; while I can't imagine a more exciting off-air gig than the production staff of his daily national program, Medved cheerfully admits on his show that he discriminates in all hiring in favor of religious types, and RadioactiveSeattle readers—not to mention Medved show listeners—know I'm a decidedly agnostic fellow.)
I doubt I'll make the baseball game, so may I suggest that someone else volunteer at Safeco to go back to the concession stand to fetch Mr. Medved his yummy Ivar's chowder?
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
His well-earned celebrity aside, Medved is a fascinating person to get to know, though I'm hardly one of his pals. But he was always friendly to me as my colleague for three years at Entercom Broadcasting even when professional courtesy didn't dictate him so being, and I now cherish my continuing occasional in-person exchanges with him, which typically display his intellect and wit every bit as much as his broadcast does weekdays (KTTH 770 kHz, 12-3pm Pacific).
Of late Medved has been doing public appearances promoting his latest nonfiction book, the brief but incisive volume The 10 Big Lies About America. And in the process exposing how disrepectful his putatively loyal audience is. I say this because of what transpired at the last two such Medved appearances I've been fortunate enough to take in.
It so happens that after a University of Washington morning address, and then again a month later following a Discovery Institute lecture at the group's downtown Seattle headquarters—Medved was reduced to carrying his own box of unpurchased books back to his car after each signing was wrapped.
I'm not lamenting about poor sales here; I'm sure Amazon, Borders, et al. move more than enough Medved inventory to keep him living the good life, as you'd expect of any man of his professional station. Rather, I deplore the sight of a man of his professional station lacking adequate support staff.
Medved should have had a flunky carrying the box for him. So I became his ad hoc flunky in both instances. (Which, incidentally, is about as close as I'll ever come to working for Medved; while I can't imagine a more exciting off-air gig than the production staff of his daily national program, Medved cheerfully admits on his show that he discriminates in all hiring in favor of religious types, and RadioactiveSeattle readers—not to mention Medved show listeners—know I'm a decidedly agnostic fellow.)
I doubt I'll make the baseball game, so may I suggest that someone else volunteer at Safeco to go back to the concession stand to fetch Mr. Medved his yummy Ivar's chowder?
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
Friday, August 7, 2009
NEVER Be Surprised By Death
The news about suburban teen flick auteur John Hughes yesterday no doubt came as a shock to his legions of fans. After all, the famously-reclusive director and onetime wunderkind behind Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Sixteen Candles was only 59 when he succumbed to an apparent heart attack during a morning stroll in Manhattan while on a family visit to New York.
But Hughes's demise shouldn't really have been a surprise. Not because of his age, or that he hadn't experienced reported health difficulties, but rather because in a vital existential—if not also emotional—sense, we should never be surprised by death.
Let me explain.
It so happens that Hughes died on Hiroshima Day, the 64th anniversary of history's first nuclear attack, and that of course reminds everyone of Japan. And Japan, it turns out, follows a capital punishment policy which for over a decade has positively haunted me.
I first heard of this from that so-often-unreliable media realm, commercial newstalk radio. I wish I could aver that my favorite variety of media and longtime meal ticket is a dependable source of factual data, but the sad truth is that newstalk hosts often don't display absolute respect for fact. Clowns on the right like Glenn Beck and Michael Savage, on the left like Mike Malloy and Randi Rhodes, and like George Noory in the pseudoscientific mudd, er, middle—dispense all sorts of musings littered with half-truths or total misinformation. I'm not talking here about commercial radio talkers' intentional misrepresentations, which each of those reckless, if also sometimes talented, jerks are also known to promiscuously deal in. Rather, I refer to those incorrect statements they make which they honestly think to be true.
Intended to buttress their ideological arguments, these pieces of misinformation are believed or assumed to be accurate by hosts even though they've never taken the trouble to nail them down for accuracy before incorporating them into their ideological acts. Whatever my shortcomings as a commercial newstalker, I can go to my grave with the consolation that every moment of my 19 years of on-air hosting I considered my principal role to be that of a broadcast journalist, and thus subject to every constraint legitimate newsmen must work within in order to ensure factual integrity. It's true several management types in newstalk radio, and many more of my fellow hosts, counseled me that "you take this all too seriously, Bryan—this is just entertainment," but I'm proud I handled myself like a newsman, not a court agitator, or jester.
No it wasn't "just entertainment". Rather, my beloved—and, alas, former—profession was always about reliably providing information and perspective on the news and the society (and for scientifically-literate shows like my own, the universe). The fact is that probably fewer than a third of my colleagues recognized this journalistic responsibility to maintain the highest possible standards of factual accuracy.
Knowing how rare my shouldered burden was amongst my colleagues made me leery of something I heard a guy say on WXYT, a scrappy Detroit newstalk outlet competing with my onetime home, WJR. In 1994, I heard him claim that Japan employs a novel approach to the death penalty: upon receiving a death sentence for some capital crime, the condemned is not assigned an execution date, either immediately or even on a deferred basis after appeals and other bureaucratic considerations had been fulfilled. Instead, the predicament that at least some Japanese death row residents face is, oddly enough, both a certain and uncertain future.
The host claimed in passing to his caller that the policy in Japan was to let death row prisoners contemplate their fate while awaiting the inevitable, never knowing until the day of the event when their sentence would be completed. Thus each day, when the guards came around to deliver the breakfast meal, they could actually be there to accompany the prisoner on his last long walk.
Now this also came into play on my own Detroit show—as well as all my subsequent broadcasts in Chicago, Albuquerque and up here in Seattle—whenever the capital-punishment issue came up. And as every newstalk listener knows, it's a frequent topic of speed-of-light conversation on just about every station. I'd invoke this supposed Japanese policy typically in response to a caller's familiar argument that the death penalty is too easy on the worst of the worst. Isn't life without parole possibility a more fitting fate for mass murderers, they'd often posit, since obviously you can't equate the condemned's sole corpse with the multiple bodies he left in his wake at the crime scene? Well, I argued, if true, that unusual Japanese approach would have offered something of a solution to that problem, for in effect, it made every day on death row an execution date.
If that Japanese policy was indeed the case. Something which I never could confirm, despite considerable research on the question. I never got the chance to meet my competing colleague, else I would have questioned him as to his source for this elusive supposed fact. So for the ensuing decade, I kept periodically delving through Japanese crime stories or just asking acquaintances whom I thought might know about this, without success.
Still, whenever I used it on the air, I was always scrupulous about qualifying this in "Well, I've heard that..." terms, never once leading my audience to believe it definitely was true. Besides, even if the story regarding the policy in Japan was spurious, my point still was valid, and thus at least arguably possible for some U.S. state to institute. (When advancing that, of course I also observed it would be immediately assailed as unconstitutional on cruel-and-unusual grounds, and probably wouldn't pass Supreme Court muster unless the high court was then impanelled by Antonin Scalia and at least four of his clones.)
Now it so happens that late last year an article ran on the AP International wire which established that, for at least four current male residents of Japanese death row, the Detroit newstalker was correct! The way the AP covered the story, it was unclear whether the policy was also still applied to every male death row inmate, much less for condemned women as well. But of course the important part was that nearly a decade and a half after hearing of this, I finally had it confirmed. The AP copy concerned a review of their cases to see if the policy would be lifted and specific execution days set.
When I read this I was naturally relieved at having never dealt in misinformation on the question, and also looked at my former WXYT competitor with newfound retrospective respect. But mostly I was enjoying the pride I felt in having endeavored to invariably qualify my passing on hearsay as something yet unconfirmed. My hunch is that's a consideration very few of my colleagues honor beyond an initial basis. After that, the wording tends to morph into "it is said" or some other such consensus phraseology, and soon enough it's simply misremembered as fact.
But Hughes's demise shouldn't really have been a surprise. Not because of his age, or that he hadn't experienced reported health difficulties, but rather because in a vital existential—if not also emotional—sense, we should never be surprised by death.
Let me explain.
It so happens that Hughes died on Hiroshima Day, the 64th anniversary of history's first nuclear attack, and that of course reminds everyone of Japan. And Japan, it turns out, follows a capital punishment policy which for over a decade has positively haunted me.
I first heard of this from that so-often-unreliable media realm, commercial newstalk radio. I wish I could aver that my favorite variety of media and longtime meal ticket is a dependable source of factual data, but the sad truth is that newstalk hosts often don't display absolute respect for fact. Clowns on the right like Glenn Beck and Michael Savage, on the left like Mike Malloy and Randi Rhodes, and like George Noory in the pseudoscientific mudd, er, middle—dispense all sorts of musings littered with half-truths or total misinformation. I'm not talking here about commercial radio talkers' intentional misrepresentations, which each of those reckless, if also sometimes talented, jerks are also known to promiscuously deal in. Rather, I refer to those incorrect statements they make which they honestly think to be true.
Intended to buttress their ideological arguments, these pieces of misinformation are believed or assumed to be accurate by hosts even though they've never taken the trouble to nail them down for accuracy before incorporating them into their ideological acts. Whatever my shortcomings as a commercial newstalker, I can go to my grave with the consolation that every moment of my 19 years of on-air hosting I considered my principal role to be that of a broadcast journalist, and thus subject to every constraint legitimate newsmen must work within in order to ensure factual integrity. It's true several management types in newstalk radio, and many more of my fellow hosts, counseled me that "you take this all too seriously, Bryan—this is just entertainment," but I'm proud I handled myself like a newsman, not a court agitator, or jester.
No it wasn't "just entertainment". Rather, my beloved—and, alas, former—profession was always about reliably providing information and perspective on the news and the society (and for scientifically-literate shows like my own, the universe). The fact is that probably fewer than a third of my colleagues recognized this journalistic responsibility to maintain the highest possible standards of factual accuracy.
Knowing how rare my shouldered burden was amongst my colleagues made me leery of something I heard a guy say on WXYT, a scrappy Detroit newstalk outlet competing with my onetime home, WJR. In 1994, I heard him claim that Japan employs a novel approach to the death penalty: upon receiving a death sentence for some capital crime, the condemned is not assigned an execution date, either immediately or even on a deferred basis after appeals and other bureaucratic considerations had been fulfilled. Instead, the predicament that at least some Japanese death row residents face is, oddly enough, both a certain and uncertain future.
The host claimed in passing to his caller that the policy in Japan was to let death row prisoners contemplate their fate while awaiting the inevitable, never knowing until the day of the event when their sentence would be completed. Thus each day, when the guards came around to deliver the breakfast meal, they could actually be there to accompany the prisoner on his last long walk.
Now this also came into play on my own Detroit show—as well as all my subsequent broadcasts in Chicago, Albuquerque and up here in Seattle—whenever the capital-punishment issue came up. And as every newstalk listener knows, it's a frequent topic of speed-of-light conversation on just about every station. I'd invoke this supposed Japanese policy typically in response to a caller's familiar argument that the death penalty is too easy on the worst of the worst. Isn't life without parole possibility a more fitting fate for mass murderers, they'd often posit, since obviously you can't equate the condemned's sole corpse with the multiple bodies he left in his wake at the crime scene? Well, I argued, if true, that unusual Japanese approach would have offered something of a solution to that problem, for in effect, it made every day on death row an execution date.
If that Japanese policy was indeed the case. Something which I never could confirm, despite considerable research on the question. I never got the chance to meet my competing colleague, else I would have questioned him as to his source for this elusive supposed fact. So for the ensuing decade, I kept periodically delving through Japanese crime stories or just asking acquaintances whom I thought might know about this, without success.
Still, whenever I used it on the air, I was always scrupulous about qualifying this in "Well, I've heard that..." terms, never once leading my audience to believe it definitely was true. Besides, even if the story regarding the policy in Japan was spurious, my point still was valid, and thus at least arguably possible for some U.S. state to institute. (When advancing that, of course I also observed it would be immediately assailed as unconstitutional on cruel-and-unusual grounds, and probably wouldn't pass Supreme Court muster unless the high court was then impanelled by Antonin Scalia and at least four of his clones.)
Now it so happens that late last year an article ran on the AP International wire which established that, for at least four current male residents of Japanese death row, the Detroit newstalker was correct! The way the AP covered the story, it was unclear whether the policy was also still applied to every male death row inmate, much less for condemned women as well. But of course the important part was that nearly a decade and a half after hearing of this, I finally had it confirmed. The AP copy concerned a review of their cases to see if the policy would be lifted and specific execution days set.
When I read this I was naturally relieved at having never dealt in misinformation on the question, and also looked at my former WXYT competitor with newfound retrospective respect. But mostly I was enjoying the pride I felt in having endeavored to invariably qualify my passing on hearsay as something yet unconfirmed. My hunch is that's a consideration very few of my colleagues honor beyond an initial basis. After that, the wording tends to morph into "it is said" or some other such consensus phraseology, and soon enough it's simply misremembered as fact.
At this point, and at the risk of sounding colossally impertinent, it should be mentioned that the ever-determined Wile E. Coyote, in his perennial pursuit of the vanishing-point Roadrunner, usually enjoyed an advantage I didn't have working for me that day last year when I read the AP dispatch. And that's my own fault, a simply egregious lapse of forethought. For remember, I'd been wondering about all this for well over a decade, and thus had had ample opportunity to contemplate its consequences. (And you also have had as long as it's taken to read the previous six paragraphs for this sober realization to dawn on you.) For whenever his latest plan involving a special-ordered Acme anvil somehow backfired and Wile E. found himself about to crushed instead, he still typically had three or four seconds staring aloft to brace himself for the impact. Sure, that never did much good for the hapless but crafty cartoon critter once the plummeting iron made impact, but at least he usually saw it coming.
Unlike me. For while wallowing in professional pride about tirelessly upholding journalistic standards, a profoundly disturbing truth pulverized me. For the reason this whole business had been haunting me—rather than merely piquing my curiosity—all these years is that it was focussed on conjuring the worst possible fate any human might endure.
So this condemned guy awakens every morning knowing it could be the day of his painful death. And given the extraordinary variety of ways today, Friday, August 7, 2009 may calamitously prove to be the final day of my life, I also constantly face this reality, even while not thinking about it. And so do you.
So we're all on Japanese death row. Anvil flattens.
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Styble Has NOT Suffered a Coronary !
Though I bet I very nearly did a few minutes ago.
But not because of my vigorous exercise regimen of a daily two- or three-mile jog pretty much seven days per week. (No, my cardio condition seems pretty decent for a 54-year-old heartbroken-by-career-evaporation guy. Or so my physicians report, I hope reliably.)
Rather, I nearly ended up on a Harborview Hospital cardiac gurney today after I was shocked by a new posting on the BlatherWatch newstalk radio blog. RadioactiveSeattle readers know that that particular competing site is not merely hugely left-leaning, but downright despised The Bryan Styble Program on KIRO 2005-2008 pretty much as much as Holocaust survivors hate Himmler.
Which is fine, by the way, since the blog serves a critical function, after all. (For the record, even though the proprietor of BlatherWatch may very well wish me a fate similar to another of his targets—my murdered KIRO colleague, Mike Webb—I always volunteer that Mr. BlatherWatch is a witty and trenchant if repeatedly vulgar newstalk critic.)
Sure, I wish BlatherWatch , an often angry blog where ideology is everything and the sort of broadcast standards I labored to uphold are disdained and even scorned, had at least occasionally credited me with what other Styble-never-shuts-up-but-at-least-he's-an old-school-broadcaster critics have always granted: That my work featured an all-but-extinct newstalk style radio nowadays—not merely all-open-lines-all-the-time (on the audience-respecting premise that callers need not be spoon-fed host-selected subjects, which often aren't what most energizes them anyway), whenever I wasn't conducting an occasional Radioactive interview with a nationally-prominent figure. But also taking those open-line calls unscreened for content, a risky show format which few of my former colleagues ever attempt at all, much less routinely. But everyone wants to be loved, or at least appreciated, right? But those nasty BlatherWatch writers and posters never liked me, nor were ever polite in their critiques, something I always endeavor to be.* Again, fine.
But inexcusably, BlatherWatch also engaged in relentless character-assassination against me, and once even tried to stage a campaign lobbying KIRO management to fire me and thus destroy my newstalk hosting career which had spanned four timezones, eight radio markets and 19 years, likening me to fecal canine product soiling Seattle newstalk listeners' footwear. (Never mind that neither that one, nor my other alleged crimes against Puget Sound listeners, was an accurate charge. All of which is, uh, not fine.)
Ironically enough, just as RadioactiveSeattle is largely apolitical, so my KIRO work was, though the BlatherWatch proprietor never seemed to realize that self-evident fact, which in turn suggests he never listened to my show closely anyway. And I guess there's no reason he should have, since he for literally years displayed professional and personal vitriol toward me; for my part, I'm a polite guy, so I won't return his sentiments. And besides, I wish good health even to people whom I don't like, or even are trying to ruin my career. (The preposterous charge that I had defended chattel slavery was an accusation management laughed off, and the credible ensuing death threat I received through the mails—that Federal authorities insist remains an open and active investigation—obviously came from someone who doesn't return my good-health wishes.)
Anyway, in answer to a question BlatherWatch posed ("Which talk shows would you pay to have on the air?"), someone using the screen name "Bill" wrote, "Bring back Radioactive and Bryan Styble[;] I'll kick in the initial $10..." And he—or she?—even spelled my name correctly, something BlatherWatch posters often got wrong in their frequent complaints about how pathological or stupid or just unlistenable my KIRO efforts were.
I swear on my beloved Father's grave that I didn't post that startling statement of "Bill"; I don't anyway have nearly the cyber-skills to do so without anyone determining it came from this screen, the Batcomputer here in the Styble Batcave. Besides, I never post anonymously anywhere, least of all on BlatherWatch, where previous posts of mine attempting to correct falsities alleged against my broadcast or me have been deleted or corrupted by the site's owner. Neither will any of my friends I've telephonically queried over the last few minutes own up to posting that. (Few of them tell me they read the often well-written but vulgarity-dense BlatherWatch critiques anyway, much less the respondent reader postings thereto.)
Again, I've absolutely no idea who wrote that, and it doesn't seem to be sarcastic in tone either, much as the BlatherWatch vitriol against Styble almost always has been. But I do expect that "Bill" will be accused of being either a pal of mine, or me. (Again, I can barely turn on my computer; how on earth does one hide one's Internet identity from tech-sophisticated bloggers like the BlatherWatch operator?)
So all I can say is, "Thanks", Sir Bill, whoever and wherever you are. Actually, make that THANKS!
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
*No Seattleite has ever heard me utter a word less polite than "heck" or "darned"...on or off the air.
But not because of my vigorous exercise regimen of a daily two- or three-mile jog pretty much seven days per week. (No, my cardio condition seems pretty decent for a 54-year-old heartbroken-by-career-evaporation guy. Or so my physicians report, I hope reliably.)
Rather, I nearly ended up on a Harborview Hospital cardiac gurney today after I was shocked by a new posting on the BlatherWatch newstalk radio blog. RadioactiveSeattle readers know that that particular competing site is not merely hugely left-leaning, but downright despised The Bryan Styble Program on KIRO 2005-2008 pretty much as much as Holocaust survivors hate Himmler.
Which is fine, by the way, since the blog serves a critical function, after all. (For the record, even though the proprietor of BlatherWatch may very well wish me a fate similar to another of his targets—my murdered KIRO colleague, Mike Webb—I always volunteer that Mr. BlatherWatch is a witty and trenchant if repeatedly vulgar newstalk critic.)
Sure, I wish BlatherWatch , an often angry blog where ideology is everything and the sort of broadcast standards I labored to uphold are disdained and even scorned, had at least occasionally credited me with what other Styble-never-shuts-up-but-at-least-he's-an old-school-broadcaster critics have always granted: That my work featured an all-but-extinct newstalk style radio nowadays—not merely all-open-lines-all-the-time (on the audience-respecting premise that callers need not be spoon-fed host-selected subjects, which often aren't what most energizes them anyway), whenever I wasn't conducting an occasional Radioactive interview with a nationally-prominent figure. But also taking those open-line calls unscreened for content, a risky show format which few of my former colleagues ever attempt at all, much less routinely. But everyone wants to be loved, or at least appreciated, right? But those nasty BlatherWatch writers and posters never liked me, nor were ever polite in their critiques, something I always endeavor to be.* Again, fine.
But inexcusably, BlatherWatch also engaged in relentless character-assassination against me, and once even tried to stage a campaign lobbying KIRO management to fire me and thus destroy my newstalk hosting career which had spanned four timezones, eight radio markets and 19 years, likening me to fecal canine product soiling Seattle newstalk listeners' footwear. (Never mind that neither that one, nor my other alleged crimes against Puget Sound listeners, was an accurate charge. All of which is, uh, not fine.)
Ironically enough, just as RadioactiveSeattle is largely apolitical, so my KIRO work was, though the BlatherWatch proprietor never seemed to realize that self-evident fact, which in turn suggests he never listened to my show closely anyway. And I guess there's no reason he should have, since he for literally years displayed professional and personal vitriol toward me; for my part, I'm a polite guy, so I won't return his sentiments. And besides, I wish good health even to people whom I don't like, or even are trying to ruin my career. (The preposterous charge that I had defended chattel slavery was an accusation management laughed off, and the credible ensuing death threat I received through the mails—that Federal authorities insist remains an open and active investigation—obviously came from someone who doesn't return my good-health wishes.)
Anyway, in answer to a question BlatherWatch posed ("Which talk shows would you pay to have on the air?"), someone using the screen name "Bill" wrote, "Bring back Radioactive and Bryan Styble[;] I'll kick in the initial $10..." And he—or she?—even spelled my name correctly, something BlatherWatch posters often got wrong in their frequent complaints about how pathological or stupid or just unlistenable my KIRO efforts were.
I swear on my beloved Father's grave that I didn't post that startling statement of "Bill"; I don't anyway have nearly the cyber-skills to do so without anyone determining it came from this screen, the Batcomputer here in the Styble Batcave. Besides, I never post anonymously anywhere, least of all on BlatherWatch, where previous posts of mine attempting to correct falsities alleged against my broadcast or me have been deleted or corrupted by the site's owner. Neither will any of my friends I've telephonically queried over the last few minutes own up to posting that. (Few of them tell me they read the often well-written but vulgarity-dense BlatherWatch critiques anyway, much less the respondent reader postings thereto.)
Again, I've absolutely no idea who wrote that, and it doesn't seem to be sarcastic in tone either, much as the BlatherWatch vitriol against Styble almost always has been. But I do expect that "Bill" will be accused of being either a pal of mine, or me. (Again, I can barely turn on my computer; how on earth does one hide one's Internet identity from tech-sophisticated bloggers like the BlatherWatch operator?)
So all I can say is, "Thanks", Sir Bill, whoever and wherever you are. Actually, make that THANKS!
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
*No Seattleite has ever heard me utter a word less polite than "heck" or "darned"...on or off the air.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Why? 'Cause I Swore Off* Football Postings !
Okay, it seems a couple people—or household pets, conceivably; forget at your own peril that widely-reprinted New Yorker cartoon with the keyboarding canine explaining to its peer, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog"—are mystified as to why RadioactiveSeattle has remained so deafeningly silent about the fascinating tableau represented by Rush Limbaugh's recent insinuation of his hefty political and cultural presence into the national political process.
Oh sure, Limbaugh's always been ideological, not to mention hugely influential. But until quite recently, Rush has mocked only from the sidelines. Among so many other things, the Obama Era may be remembered as what prompted the hands-down greatest talent in the history of the newstalk radio genre to get finally into the game.
A request: if RadioactiveSeattle e-mailers would kindly cease confusing prose like that "greatest talent" phrase in the previous sentence—variations of which have appeared in probably a half-dozen Limbaugh-loving essays archived herein—with this next declaration, which of course I would never seriously write because, seriously, it's never been generally true: I agree with Rush Limbaugh.
Heck, Rush isn't even usually correct on the issues, as far as I'm concerned.
I so admire Limbaugh's broadcast work because I love brilliantly-executed radio, not because I happen to vote similarly to him, which I certainly don't.
I mean, could I be the only guy in the country who never immediately thinks "political" whenever I hear the words "newstalk radio"? Am I the only American radio fan who faithfully listens to various quality shows whose respective political philosophies I happen to nonetheless dismiss or even detest?
And therefore, might I be sole individual in this society who understands how employing such simple-minded evaluative criteria inevitably leads to reflexive adoration of those hosts you happen to agree with, while only fostering contempt or worse for those, however talented, on the other side of whichever fence it is which defines your worldview?
Nah. There's at least one other guy who surely understands this: my fellow Show-Me State native, Rush Hudson Limbaugh III. After all, he's often pointed out over the years that his unprecedented success is no function of his conservatism, but rather of how immaculately he upholds sterling broadcast standards.
I realize the vast bulk of his audience surely doesn't buy that for a second, but hey, they're not broadcasters. And besides, they're anyway understandably way more interested in being dazzled by Rush's radio illusions than in dwelling—or rhapsodizing, as RadioactiveSeattle does—on how seamlessly he pulls off those verbal tricks.
For my part, I'd still be just as big a fan of the sole program on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network were my politics to the left of Trotsky, instead of being a secularlist whose various stances tend to fall roughly where Rudy Giuliani's and David Brooks's do.
Even during those portions of my newstalk hosting career when I was fairly described as solidly neoconservative—that would be 1989-1998, in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Detroit—I still then didn't agree with Limbaugh's rock-rib conservative positions more than about 65% of the time. (Since I've been in Seattle, and thus throughout the 2005-2008 run of KIRO's Bryan Styble Program, it's been more like 25 percent, centrist libertarian I've been ever since my Radioactive Albuquerque with Bryan Styble days in New Mexico, 2000-2004.)
But whatever Limbaugh's underlying rationale here may be—and I've been pondering a couple theories—what a kick it is for this disappointed Cardinals fan in the wake of the thrilling Super Bowl XLIII to witness that pro football geek Rush finally donning his helmet and running with the ball. It's a political pigskin earlier in his historic two decades of national radio syndication he's always been content to let other, far less-mighty ideological fullbacks carry.
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
* A pledge made in the headline of the January 18, 2009 posting
Oh sure, Limbaugh's always been ideological, not to mention hugely influential. But until quite recently, Rush has mocked only from the sidelines. Among so many other things, the Obama Era may be remembered as what prompted the hands-down greatest talent in the history of the newstalk radio genre to get finally into the game.
A request: if RadioactiveSeattle e-mailers would kindly cease confusing prose like that "greatest talent" phrase in the previous sentence—variations of which have appeared in probably a half-dozen Limbaugh-loving essays archived herein—with this next declaration, which of course I would never seriously write because, seriously, it's never been generally true: I agree with Rush Limbaugh.
Heck, Rush isn't even usually correct on the issues, as far as I'm concerned.
I so admire Limbaugh's broadcast work because I love brilliantly-executed radio, not because I happen to vote similarly to him, which I certainly don't.
I mean, could I be the only guy in the country who never immediately thinks "political" whenever I hear the words "newstalk radio"? Am I the only American radio fan who faithfully listens to various quality shows whose respective political philosophies I happen to nonetheless dismiss or even detest?
And therefore, might I be sole individual in this society who understands how employing such simple-minded evaluative criteria inevitably leads to reflexive adoration of those hosts you happen to agree with, while only fostering contempt or worse for those, however talented, on the other side of whichever fence it is which defines your worldview?
Nah. There's at least one other guy who surely understands this: my fellow Show-Me State native, Rush Hudson Limbaugh III. After all, he's often pointed out over the years that his unprecedented success is no function of his conservatism, but rather of how immaculately he upholds sterling broadcast standards.
I realize the vast bulk of his audience surely doesn't buy that for a second, but hey, they're not broadcasters. And besides, they're anyway understandably way more interested in being dazzled by Rush's radio illusions than in dwelling—or rhapsodizing, as RadioactiveSeattle does—on how seamlessly he pulls off those verbal tricks.
For my part, I'd still be just as big a fan of the sole program on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network were my politics to the left of Trotsky, instead of being a secularlist whose various stances tend to fall roughly where Rudy Giuliani's and David Brooks's do.
Even during those portions of my newstalk hosting career when I was fairly described as solidly neoconservative—that would be 1989-1998, in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Detroit—I still then didn't agree with Limbaugh's rock-rib conservative positions more than about 65% of the time. (Since I've been in Seattle, and thus throughout the 2005-2008 run of KIRO's Bryan Styble Program, it's been more like 25 percent, centrist libertarian I've been ever since my Radioactive Albuquerque with Bryan Styble days in New Mexico, 2000-2004.)
But whatever Limbaugh's underlying rationale here may be—and I've been pondering a couple theories—what a kick it is for this disappointed Cardinals fan in the wake of the thrilling Super Bowl XLIII to witness that pro football geek Rush finally donning his helmet and running with the ball. It's a political pigskin earlier in his historic two decades of national radio syndication he's always been content to let other, far less-mighty ideological fullbacks carry.
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
* A pledge made in the headline of the January 18, 2009 posting
Monday, March 23, 2009
Obviously Styble suffers from a Medved Complex !
[ initial five paragraphs drafted and posted at 12:41 pm PDT ]
Okay, let's see if we can get this available online before The Michael Medved Show returns from commercial break:
The erudite radio newstalker and Ned Flanders doppelganger, explicating how the Obama political honeymoon has so suddenly ended, just seconds ago promoted his program's next segment—an "audience tease", as they so callously call it in the broadcast biz—and concluded with a patently false statement. Medved claimed, "...The Hundred Days—people don't know where that [term] comes from; I'll tell you about it, comin' up!"
Make that some people, Michael.
That is, I anticipate that when Medved returns, he'll explain that while most folks presume it originated with FDR's first term, the phrase actually dates to Napoleon on his way to Waterloo.
Now I shall post immediately, and then soon enough learn if I've nailed this prediction...
12:46:44 pm PDT
As Flandersian* neighbor Homer Simpson might fist-thrustingly put it, Woo-hoo!
Sure enough, resuming after break, Medved indeed pointed out that this hundred-days thing didn't start with Roosevelt but rather with Napoleon.
It's said that the serially surly, short-statured sovereign has the distinction of being history's most-written-about figure, so let RadioactiveSeattle pile a bit higher the copious corpus of prose probing the provocative potentate. (Lincoln also, by the way, has his partisans on that always-fun most-covered question, as does Christ—but really, why might anyone ever want to read about a President who never even once guested on The Tonight Show, or some eccentric-if-charismatic rabbi of antiquity whose historicity remains unconfirmed anyway?)
For his part, Medved inexcusably provided almost zero detail as to how the guy afflicted with the original Napoleon Complex came to so spectacularly, as the familiar Tin Pan Alley lyric put it, "meet his Waterloo". Yeah, I know, I know: Medved was just "focusing like a laser beam". That's the cloying admonition with which Medved chides those callers who disdain corrupting or diluting their sole shot at a contribution merely to conserve seven or eight seconds of the host's airtime that afternoon.
Fine, so Medved wanted to talk Obama, not Bonaparte. But what Medved surely well knows—and might well have thoughtfully sequestered a couple or three broadcast-seconds to highlight for the benefit of his history-appreciating or misnomer-collecting listeners—is that this now-legendary Hundred Days actually lasted 111 days.
That's counting, as historians invariably do, starting with his Monday, March 20, 1815 triumphant return to Paris three weeks after escaping Elba with his cadre, through to and including Saturday, July 8th, the restoration of Louis XVIII. Waterloo itself occurred on Sunday, June 18th, day 91 of the sequence, incidentally. A doff of the RadioactiveSeattle cap—not to mention posterity's!—is of course due here to the Duke of Wellington's battlefield leadership that long, momentous afternoon.
But don't let history obscure current events here: my point is that Medved—like every good newstalk radio host—needs to strive for habitual scrupulousness about uttered absolutes. You know, NeverSayNever and all that.
In this instance, Medved was just lacking the word "most". Had he instead said, "Most people don't know about the Hundred Days...", he'd have not merely skated exclusively on thick declarative ice, but also avoided annoying we persnickety types who desire neither our intelligence nor our knowledge insulted.
I mean, some of us lowly listener/caller nerds actually paid attention sometimes in class, Michael! And fewer yet still many of us also have been regularly burnishing our historical perspective—American and World, modern and ancient and Middle Ages, Western and Oriental—ever since graduation. In my case, I'd gauge that over 95% of everything I know about Napoleon I—perhaps a magazine piece's worth, should I ever get around to expansively writing about him—was picked up on my own after college, rather than prompted by any coursework imperative.
Mind you, that certified intellectual hero Medved is hardly the most egregious offender in this seldom-considered aspect of the radio newstalker's craft. For instance, The Michael Savage Show, a shameful—and shameless—production, is exponentially worse about cynically underestimating what the informed listener already knows.
That reckless jerk thunders in monologue assertions as arrogant—and ignorant—as, "You don't know who Khalil Gabran was—that's why you have to listen to the Savage Nation!", thus condescendingly treating his ever-suffering listeners like under-educated half-wits.
Something which Savage's ardent fans, whenever they make air, often sound as if they indeed are, granted.
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
* I realize grammar and parallelism dictate it be "Flemish", rather than Flandersian. But would anyone then still get the joke?
Okay, let's see if we can get this available online before The Michael Medved Show returns from commercial break:
The erudite radio newstalker and Ned Flanders doppelganger, explicating how the Obama political honeymoon has so suddenly ended, just seconds ago promoted his program's next segment—an "audience tease", as they so callously call it in the broadcast biz—and concluded with a patently false statement. Medved claimed, "...The Hundred Days—people don't know where that [term] comes from; I'll tell you about it, comin' up!"
Make that some people, Michael.
That is, I anticipate that when Medved returns, he'll explain that while most folks presume it originated with FDR's first term, the phrase actually dates to Napoleon on his way to Waterloo.
Now I shall post immediately, and then soon enough learn if I've nailed this prediction...
12:46:44 pm PDT
As Flandersian* neighbor Homer Simpson might fist-thrustingly put it, Woo-hoo!
Sure enough, resuming after break, Medved indeed pointed out that this hundred-days thing didn't start with Roosevelt but rather with Napoleon.
It's said that the serially surly, short-statured sovereign has the distinction of being history's most-written-about figure, so let RadioactiveSeattle pile a bit higher the copious corpus of prose probing the provocative potentate. (Lincoln also, by the way, has his partisans on that always-fun most-covered question, as does Christ—but really, why might anyone ever want to read about a President who never even once guested on The Tonight Show, or some eccentric-if-charismatic rabbi of antiquity whose historicity remains unconfirmed anyway?)
For his part, Medved inexcusably provided almost zero detail as to how the guy afflicted with the original Napoleon Complex came to so spectacularly, as the familiar Tin Pan Alley lyric put it, "meet his Waterloo". Yeah, I know, I know: Medved was just "focusing like a laser beam". That's the cloying admonition with which Medved chides those callers who disdain corrupting or diluting their sole shot at a contribution merely to conserve seven or eight seconds of the host's airtime that afternoon.
Fine, so Medved wanted to talk Obama, not Bonaparte. But what Medved surely well knows—and might well have thoughtfully sequestered a couple or three broadcast-seconds to highlight for the benefit of his history-appreciating or misnomer-collecting listeners—is that this now-legendary Hundred Days actually lasted 111 days.
That's counting, as historians invariably do, starting with his Monday, March 20, 1815 triumphant return to Paris three weeks after escaping Elba with his cadre, through to and including Saturday, July 8th, the restoration of Louis XVIII. Waterloo itself occurred on Sunday, June 18th, day 91 of the sequence, incidentally. A doff of the RadioactiveSeattle cap—not to mention posterity's!—is of course due here to the Duke of Wellington's battlefield leadership that long, momentous afternoon.
But don't let history obscure current events here: my point is that Medved—like every good newstalk radio host—needs to strive for habitual scrupulousness about uttered absolutes. You know, NeverSayNever and all that.
In this instance, Medved was just lacking the word "most". Had he instead said, "Most people don't know about the Hundred Days...", he'd have not merely skated exclusively on thick declarative ice, but also avoided annoying we persnickety types who desire neither our intelligence nor our knowledge insulted.
I mean, some of us lowly listener/caller nerds actually paid attention sometimes in class, Michael! And fewer yet still many of us also have been regularly burnishing our historical perspective—American and World, modern and ancient and Middle Ages, Western and Oriental—ever since graduation. In my case, I'd gauge that over 95% of everything I know about Napoleon I—perhaps a magazine piece's worth, should I ever get around to expansively writing about him—was picked up on my own after college, rather than prompted by any coursework imperative.
Mind you, that certified intellectual hero Medved is hardly the most egregious offender in this seldom-considered aspect of the radio newstalker's craft. For instance, The Michael Savage Show, a shameful—and shameless—production, is exponentially worse about cynically underestimating what the informed listener already knows.
That reckless jerk thunders in monologue assertions as arrogant—and ignorant—as, "You don't know who Khalil Gabran was—that's why you have to listen to the Savage Nation!", thus condescendingly treating his ever-suffering listeners like under-educated half-wits.
Something which Savage's ardent fans, whenever they make air, often sound as if they indeed are, granted.
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
* I realize grammar and parallelism dictate it be "Flemish", rather than Flandersian. But would anyone then still get the joke?
Friday, March 20, 2009
It's Called Terraforming, Michael !
It's unfortunate, not to mention ironic, that The Michael Medved Show, consistently one of the two most intellectually-satisfying programs in all of commercial newstalk radio syndication, also so often attracts some of the genre's more knuckleheaded callers.
(I won't deny that occasional contributor "Bryan in Seattle" is arguably one of those numbskulls; I'm just grateful Medved allows me on at all, perhaps evidence he enjoyed the experience when he graciously—and perspicaciously—guested on KIRO's Bryan Styble Program in August 2007.)
RadioactiveSeattle has rhapsodized several times previously about how Medved's program is always informative and frequently trenchant. But today his "Open Mind Friday" hour had a doozy of a call.
I shan't rant on how unwise it was for Medved a few years ago to whittle down by two-thirds his weekly open-line feature, but I sure will spill that he sometimes humors wrongheaded but well-meaning contributors. But this exchange flattered neither caller nor host.
An excited conservative global-warming skeptic named Tony made air from suburban Seattle, though one of his more left-leaning fellow Seattleites might term him a "denier". Port Orchard Tony was exasperated, exercised about how downright mad and "literally insane" some scientists are nowadays. Why? Because last night he was watching a National Geographic Channel documentary, with footage of some expert theorizing about adjusting the atmosphere of Mars to make it more hospitable to human life.
Never mind that the term "insane" should be, literally, restricted to that unfortunate handful of individuals lacking the reasoning faculties the rest of us are lucky enough to possess. But it's chutzpah for a sarcastic fellow who sounds like he'd be stymied by a simple quadratic equation to render a judgment of irrationality upon a scientific professional.
Now, I missed that NatGeo doc last night--the Batvision monitor here in the Batcave is on the fritz (and Alfred the butler, who doubles as my TV-repairman, is on his annual vernal vacation). But the types who generally end up being interviewed as scientific experts on that often first-rate network tend to be people who've navigated a rigorous technical curriculum while earning their Ph.D.s. in whatever. I'm not saying no cable documentary has ever aired an interview with a crackpot, but Tony came off as one of those guys who never made it much beyond 8th grade general science class.
The host sounded bemused by his caller's earnest but simpleminded lament. But more important, Medved seemed to have never heard of what set the guy off while watching NatGeo. In fact, it's an idea that's been discussed by astrophysicists for decades, and I'd even wager was first broached by sci-fi writers sometime early in the 20th Century.
It's called terraforming, and it's a complex atmospheric process which, perhaps, man can someday successfully trigger on another body in our solar system. Or eventually, on some world in some other star system's planetary collection, if you prefer to peer far enough down the space-faring road. The goal is obvious: to effect eventual permanent atmospheric change to human advantage.
Whether we could ever end up having anything but a minuscule effect on a planetary scale is, of course, the central terraforming question...just as it remains the biggest global warming question. But many people who've looked at the chemistry and engineering challenges involved think it's feasible. While it may not ultimately turn out to be practical even should it ever be attempted on Mars or some larger planet's moon, it is an intriguing idea which might even work sometime in the distant future. Yet Medved treated the notion as if it were something which scientifically-literate people dismiss as flatly impossible, like perpetual motion or time travel into the historical past.
Tony didn't seem to understand is that this is a process that is figured to require at least a couple centuries for a planet the size of Mars. And, interestingly, that's about the same time-frame—macro by human standards but merely momentarily in the history of our atmosphere—on which global warming, which so concerns so many scientists, is theorized to work. Point is, terraforming ain't just Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory-style malarky—it's serious, if hugely speculative, science. And it's a subject callers actually raised a couple or three times on my overnight KIRO open-line broadcasts.
Of course, I really ought to go critically easy on Medved for a while. As his listeners know, he just lost his father, Dr. David Medved, an accomplished nuclear scientist whom I gather was a remarkable man in several regards; he certainly raised at least one remarkable son.
I met the senior Medved on what turned out to be his final American book tour. And I was even privileged to talk physics with him for a good while alone in a side room prior to his cosmology lecture at the Discovery Institute a couple years ago. And as it happens, what claimed him at age 83 on March 11th in Jerusalem—lymphoma—is also the disease which killed Lewis Stibal ["Rush and McNabb, Tied Intelligently" archived 11/19/2008] at 64 on February 19, 1986 in St. Louis.
Oh, and while I've got astronomy on your mind: Happy Vernal Equinox. As you may know, it happened this morning, instantaneously sometime during the minute of 4:44 am Pacific Time.
BRYAN STYBLE/Seattle
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