The Boy who cried World is a fable attributed to Aesop. The protagonist of the fable is a bored sheperd boy who entertained himself by calling out Wolf”.  Nearby villagers who came to his rescue found that the alarms were false and that they had wasted their time. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and the wolf ate the boy.

Around April 2009 the public was told to fear the coming outbreak of H1N1 Swine Flu.  First the Center for disease Control told there was an EPIDEMIC looming.  Then the World Health Organization told of the coming PANDEMIC.  Schools closed when a single kid got the swine flu.  Citizens jammed emergency rooms fearing for their lives when they contracted flu-like symptoms.

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President Lincoln shown as an ape

During Barack Obama’s recent State of the Union Address, a Republican Congressman named Joe Wilson shouted “you lie” after the President said:

“That we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Now such a charge would be laughable if it wasn’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie plain and simple. There are also those who claim reform would insure illegal immigrants, this too is false. The reforms I am proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. (Wilson then shouts “you lie”) 

I have a few things to say about Mr. Wilson’s actions.  First and primarily, Wislon was wrong to have shouted the words he did. He has been rightly vilified for his actions and apologized. America does not have a parliamentary system like Britain, where Prime Ministers are often subject to such outbursts. Instead, in the United States our President is both the head of the government as well as head of state.

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I’ve been publishing this blog for about six months now. There are a few hundred people who read it on a fairly regular basis. THANK YOU.

Me and Lyn. Or, is that Lyn and I?

I’m hoping you act upon my request for help. I’m trying to increase the number of readers at randygoldring.com. I’d very much appreciate if you send a sentence to people in your email address book asking if they’d be interested in checking out an informative, reasoned blog that discusses current issues from a slightly different political perspective than what they’re probably used to. Maybe include a link in the email so they can check out this blog and decide if they want to bookmark it for a return visit.

I’m very grateful. Thank you! (Below you’ll see today’s post)

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So this morning I was listening to Air America, the struggling far left radio station.  I rarely find it interesting or funny—let alone informative. However,  I am very interested in knowing what people who are informed from only one political perspective are hearing—and thus believing.

For the umpteempth time I listened to one of their hosts sarcastically snide Sarah Palin. Then I listened to several callers who climbed on the bandwagon to chime in on how stupid Governor Palin is.

In the next segment, the show moved on to talk about how terrible George Bush was. This was followed by several callers who all agreed that George Bush was terrible and did nothing right.  If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought that the program was a replay of a show from prior to the November 2008 elections.

The third segment was about something that is currently in the headlines. The host was telling the audience how it was good that the country is planning on running trillion dollar deficits for the next decade because big problems demand big solutions. At no time did the host mention that the President’s budget included an 11% increase in discretionary spending. There was then a series of callers who all agreed with the host that huge deficit spending was a good thing.

The point of this writing is that the Air America host praised Obama’s deficits after having spent the past four years ranting how the deficits Bush ran up were bad—and why this is a perfect example of why left-of -center radio shows have such small audiences.

You see, I believe the lack of a consistent ideology on liberal talk radio is the main reason the left does so poorly over the airwaves. Whether one agrees or disagrees with conservative talk radio, it is successful because ideas are often discussed in ideological terms rather than in purely partisan terms. In other words, on conservative talk radio, budget deficits are bad whether the President is a Republican or a Democratic.

Secondly, on conservative talk radio, at least 50% of the callers disagree with the opinions of the host. This leads to conversations about the topic in question. (Or at least what poses for a conversation when a host has the ability to shut off a caller at will) Very rarely does one hear on Air America a caller  who disagree with the host. In the odd instance a disagreeing caller is put on the air, the host contemptuously makes sure listeners understand that the caller was a complete idiot.

The result is the type of boring liberal talk radio I described above—with caller after caller agreeing with the host that Republicans are indeed stupid—or agreeing with the host that “XYZ” policy is good because a Democrat is prescribing it, or that the same “XYZ” policy is terrible if a Republican is advocating it.

The question then is begged, why do left wing websites do well while left wing radio shows do poorly?  My hypothesis is that website are measured by the number of visitors it gets.  Radio shows are judged by the size of their audience.

Thus,  left-of-center websites like the Daily Kos are judged as doing very well because it receives lots of visitors.  The Daily Kos has high traffic, but my guess is the average ”stay” is for only a few minutes to read the headlines or commentary.  Reinforcing partisan rants and perspectives seem to be what online readers are looking for.

However, those same partisan rants/perspectives just aren’t entertaining enough to sustain a large radio audience for longer periods of time for people commuting in their cars.  In order for a radio show to keep its audience from changing the station, a host needs to talk about more than the stupidity of the ”other team”.  Radio hosts need to discuss WHY those with a different belief system are wrong.  Otherwise the show isn’t interesting enough for a person to spend their longish commute listening to it.

Thus I believe political radio shows thrive when the reasons behind a perspective are discussed. Because listeners find hearing different viewpoints  interesting, they are willing to stay with a radio show for long periods of time.  Visitors to left-wing blogs are quite satisfied reviewing one dimensional rants because reading blog headlines requires much less time than listening to a radio show.