The relationship of low-brow talk radio and the GOP is not a symbiotic one but a parasitic one, with the parasite being low-brow gargoyles like the relentlessly smear-mongering Sean Hannity and the devoured host being the GOP.
Full Disclosure: Being in the same business, I’ve had the misfortune of knowing Hannity for the last few decades. For the past five years I was privileged to occasionally fill in for his former partner Alan Colmes on Alan’s Fox Radio program. Recently, however, I called Sean at Fox and unburdened myself to the effect that I considered him to be a vicious creep whose lies have contributed to the death and misery of Americans, Iraqis and others. In light of his phony penchant for playing the Jesus card at the drop of a cheap hat, I asked if him if he thought that Jesus gave him his media platform so that he could lie and smear the populace into penury and death. A few days later I was informed that Hannity had successfully commanded Fox management to no longer employ me as a substitute for Alan Colmes. It should be noted that it was because of Alan’s personal intervention that I was originally invited to substitute, and Alan expressed his earnest regrets that Hannity had me expelled.
Here’s why talk radio is such a magnet for humanity most vile. If 4 out of 100 people listen to Hannity/Limbaugh/Savage et al., then these bastards (and their myriad knock-offs) are heroes because a “4 share” in talk radio land is considered to be a major success. And there will always be at least 4 or 5 out of every hundred people who have the consciousness of a scarecrow, so talk radio thrives and tacky vipers like Hannity….AND HIS SPONSORS…. make bushels of dough by corroding civilization for the rest of us.
It’s a much different story for the GOP though, because The Party of Talk Radio, ie., the host to the parasitical radio scumlords, needs a lot more than 4% of the population to survive, let alone prosper. But the low-brow talk radio ghouls will, ironically, continue to stoke the dangerously inflammatory coals of intense political hatred because it makes for a “hot show”; notwithstanding that by igniting the viral hatred of the GOP base, they’ve hacked that base down to its wicked core by chasing any sane American out of the pathetic GOP nucleus that low-brow talk radio ginned up in the first place. They’ll always be able to lucratively populate Palin rallies and Tea Bag cotillions with their beastly followers, but the great news is that they’re slowly but very surely destroying the Republican party.
And that, my fine GOP friends, is why you find yourselves where you are today…..stooped in your bunker as, one by one, your former safe houses and redoubts are raided and overwhelmed by normal Americans while you crouch beside your wind up radios, aroused as in yore, as Hannity talks his shit and you wonder why it all went away. Good f-ing riddance!
JAY DIAMOND is a veteran NY broadcaster, and the Godfather of progressive talk radio. He can be reached at jaykdiamond@aol.com .