The Nose: Jon Stewart, Rowland Radio And Why We're Gaga For Lady Gaga
Jon Stewart's rallying cry, Rowland's new radio show and Lady Gaga in Hartford!
Earlier this week, WTIC-AM announced that ex-governor John Rowland and his pastor would take over the afternoon drive time slot I had at that radio state for 12 years.
I've been told repeatedly that I should be outraged by this, but I'm just not. Yesterday, I happened to be driving to New Haven in the afternoon and caught a big chunk of Rowland's new show, which is called "Church and State." I found it kind of intriguing, but mostly I thought: he's struggling with the same issue a lot of broadcast personalities have. What part of your media act should be you real personality, your real thoughts, and how much shtick do you drape over that? It's the same question faced, I assume, by Glenn Beck and, one of the other topics of this week's show, Jon Stewart.
Stewart himself says he's a serious person doing an unserious thing. Whether you're Jon Stewart or John Rowland, that's an interesting tightrope act.
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One-sided?
I love Jon Stewart but I think he missed the boat on this one.
The sample video was fairly representative of the issue, and it was full of false equivalencies between the left and the right. And there are plenty of polite people on the right advancing the falsehoods that Obama is a (take your pick) Fascist, un-Consititutional, Muslim, Kenyan, and raising taxes like nobody ever has before.
Millions of people who couldn't tell you what FISA means, and thought that everybody the FBI went eavesdropping on in the middle of the last decade must have done *something* to be suspected, are now frothing at the mouth, led by a top-down bunch of corporate money-laundering Astroturf groups. But those groups are polite and civil!
I will respond to "Take it Down A Notch" the same way I do when polite people in the media whine about "excessive partisanship": Great idea! Right wing, you go first!
E-mail from Tanya
At some point during your show today (in my life, it was between the Danbury Library and the Post Office) you responded to a comment characterizing John Rowland as a nice, affable guy who did not do anything much wrong. You said that while he personally may not have profited much, the damage he did to the state was real and immense. Your clear and eloquent description of this corruption, which apparently is negligible--or invisible--to many, was wonderful to hear.
E-mail from George
The "Return to Sanity" march is NOT a Liberal reaction to the Glen Beck's of the world. It is a reaction to the conservative AND liberal "knee jerk" extremists.
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