My girlfriend rolls her eyes. My friends don't like to ride with me. But, like millions of Americans, I find myself tuning in to conservative talk radio as I tool around town, a habit that led to this week's cover story on firebrand talker Darla Jaye.
Since I'm an English teacher and a theater critic, this makes sense: Talk radio is all about rhetoric and performance, the two topics I spend my life thinking about. (Crap Archiving helps, too.)
As a minor public service, here's my current thoughts on three local talkers.
2 to 6 p.m. weekdays on KMBZ 980
The only old-school mass-media format as intimate as blogging, radio depends on creating habits and relationships. As listeners grow to know the on-air personalities, and tuning in turns into the more habitual checking in, often with anticipation: What will my radio buddy (or enemy) say about today's outrage? Somehow, KMBZ's Shanin & Parks show has achieved this without resorting to Rush Limbaugh's anti-liberal bloodsport or Glenn Beck's theatrical paranoia.
Instead, the show has achieved significant ratings success by being pleasant. Often, it's even substantive, especially in interviews with local (and sometimes national) political figures. Trust me, a dedicated S&P listener is as up-to-date on civic affairs as Steve Kraske's.
The schtick: Courtly conservative Mike Shanin crabs gently at moderate Scott Parks for four hours each weekday afternoon. Shanin proudly voted for George W. Bush; Parks never did once. Shanin adores Frank Sinatra; Parks is the world's biggest Thin Lizzy fan. They actually listen to their callers, especially the ones who disagree, and Shanin is adept at a Comp 101 requirement that is all too rare in talk radio: presenting opposing viewpoints fairly, without resorting to strawman attacks. Listening to their pleasant bickering, you can hear, in real time, the crack-up of the Kansas Republican party.
This afternoon, the show celebrates its third anniversary.
Pleasant as it is, I do have some quibbles. First, Shanin and Parks can be too polite, at times, coming off like Chip & Dale (or NPR hosts) rather than talk-radio entertainers. Also, that tendency to actually listen to their callers means they too often let local folks regurgitate the exact points they heard on Beck and Limbaugh.
980 Live . .. With Darla Jaye:
6 to 9 p.m. weekdays on KMBZ 980
For liberals, Shanin & Parks is a more dangerous show than Darla Jaye's. Scrappier, more fiery, and every bit as reckless as S&P are polite, Jaye is much less likely to convert a listener to her cause. But she is a lot more fun to listen to. What makes her habit-forming is her dishy asides about her personal life, the phone-calls from her mom and lots of jokes that are a little dirtier than you might expect from a possible congressional candidate.
When she turns to local issues, especially crime, the radio crackles with life, and when she attacks the Obama administration with her customary snap and sarcasm, she manages something that even Limbaugh can't: She works me up enough to argue back.
Less concerned with persuasion than she is getting you shouting at the radio, tea-partying Jaye dedicates much of her show to topics chosen to agitate the blood rather than to foment serious debate.
Recently, she blew an hour on the case of the Medal of Honor winner whose Virginia homeowners association ruled he can't stick a flagpole in his lawn. Yes, a war hero ought to be able to plant a flag where he pleases, and I know no liberal who would dispute that, but for Kansas Citians what in the hell does this story matter? And why talk about it for so long when nobody knew the specifics of the story?
So, Jaye's show is a cracker barrel for conservatives to gather around and bitch. But it's also a radio-diary where a funny, ribald woman carries on about whatever strikes her. She might not change your mind about issues, but if you can't stand her at first she'll likely change your mind about her.
Even for me, life's too short to spend my mornings with Chris Stigall. I've never lasted 10 minutes listening to his off-the-rack outrage. My longest exposure to him came last year, when I suffered through his introduction to an anti-evolution documentary at the Glenwood Arts.
For several awkward minutes, Stigall rehashed a Limbaugh rant about how science must concern itself with "facts" rather than "consensus" and "theories," both of which are apparently liberal plots to win Al Gore an Oscar.
To his credit, Stigall cited Limbaugh as the author of these opinions, a necessary admission but a sad one -- even Chris Stigall would rather listen to 980.
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