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| Next Up: Nude Oil Wrestling with Daniel Zwerdling! This Is Pacifica News! |
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| Note To Guests: make sure you call him 'Danny' in that unpleasantly icky tone implying physical intimacy |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, September 16, 1998. Well. No, that's a lie. I'm really recording this on Monday, September 14 because I'm here and won't likely be here on Wednesday, even thought as a rule these screeds are done early in the morning of the day they are inflicted upon you. I'm here because existence confounds, at the moment, and I am crashing on the station's sofa but don't tell them because they'll try to bill me for deloussing the furniture again like they do once a week with the studio stool and why reopen all that again with the Pledge Drive only a month away, know what I mean? Our little secret, although I did find $135 in quarters under the pillows so it isn't all that horrible. Of course I gave it to charity, which begins at home. But money is of no moment right now. I have just been listening to Pacifica Radio's call-in show about the Clinton-Lewinsky horrendoplasty and am still on the aesthetic high only known to those of us who cherish world class, letter sweater, self-serving, hypocritical garbage of such pellucid beauty that, well, only Pacifica covers it. I realize my naturally giddy mood of contagious good humor is somewhat under the weather, but how to describe these two hours? Well, since I am listening to three people long past their physical prime giggle about being able to say formerly banned words, my attention is drawn to physical sensation - supperating goiter comes close, and yet, not close enough. Let me be fair, all coverage by everyone of this has been prissy, salacious, and icky, but it is a real descent for Pacifica to do the same thing as Geraldo and throw leftist gossamers of social importance over the sleeze with ethically superior arched brow of distant revolutions. Reduced to squalid fact, Pacifica is presenting us with the Progressive slant on Presidential quickies. To begin with, if the terms mean anything, that's an oxymoron. While commercial networks have the galling habit of presenting people as experts, a favorite term, Pacifica calls a lot of their guests geniuses in their field, and they do again tonight. I hate that. If you call someone a genius, you imply that you recognize it, which means you must be as well. And just like NPR's Daniel Zwerdling and his guests have the annoying habit of lowering their voices and expressing heartfelt, passionate farewells to each other's nick name, Pacifica's Larry Bensky extols his guests IQ to the point you'd think radio was passe and they could just use thought waves even when discussing something as annoying as this. What a crock. They have a two hour call in where their callers insist they haven't actually read the Starr report - it's beneath them - but they have informed opinions about it, and their hosts wait for the mention of cue words to try and connect all this to Clinton's policies and, of course, weave a fabric connectiong all that to their favorite themes. Commercial networks are known sleazemasters. Pacifica aspires higher. I did learn from this show, however, that there is now only one banned word remaining, and with that glaring social stride made, let me suggest Jung should have said: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but in the hands of arrested adolescents and their paramours, it’s a soggy one." A hah. Of course, that went right over your head. But what do you expect? I'm on progressive radio. I am a genius. |
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