Radio wars

The first thing you notice about Air America radio is its novelty: Liberal talk radio? In America? How whacky!

But yesterday, for the first time since we got liberal talk in Charleston, I turned it off. I had two teenagers in the car and there were callers prattling on about conservatives this, Republicans that, and it dawned on me that the whole thing was giving me the same indigestion that conservative talk radio always has. Did I want my boys listening to breathless leftwing fantaticism? Did my silence equal endorsement to them?

This morning's schtick on "Morning Sedition" actually made me wonder if there's much long-term hope for talk radio. It's fun, but I can't help but imagine Karl Rove sitting there, with a digital recorder collecting all this verbal detrius, cracking his knuckles.

And then there's Ed Schultz, in an ad, boasting that he's bringing the "unfiltered truth of what's really happening" to America. Geez. Cringeworthy. If he were REALLY aware of the unfiltered truth, he'd stand in awe of the labor-intensive complexity of the task before him.

Can't "the reality-based community" find SOMETHING out there?