Franken More Boring Than Baseball
So there was a Red Sox game on the radio the other day, which means I had no Howie Carr to listen to on the drive home. The only thing more mind-numbingly boring than watching baseball on television is hearing it on the radio. My back up in such instances is to listen to Sean Hannity, who I can stomach in small doses, until he mentions God one time too many or plays an awful song and it sets my teeth on edge, and it's about that time in the drive that I lose reception anyway.
But this time was different. I switched over to hear Hannity, and found the same baseball game on THAT station (grrrrr). I started scanning, and found that a local station was broadcasting the Al Franken Show. Last I knew no one in the area had it, so I was surprised. And I listened for about 40 minutes.
I was shocked to hear something more boring than baseball.
First of all, the woman Franken's with comes across like a total bonehead. Not quite as annoying as more famous insufferable sidekick Robin Quivers, but not half as entertaining either. But more importantly, Franken had no chops. He had the "Bush lied!" bit down, but that's hardly original, or even interesting. The focus of the segment I heard was alot of tape from Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, taken (presumably) from recent shows. He was trying to refute specific things each had said or claimed. You might think that would be worthwhile to hear, you know, refuting the haters point by point, but it wasn't.
Franken was the sonic equivalent to the old Saturday morning PSAs about reading and pollution and crying Indians. Sounds like it should have something behind it, but it's just more background noise. I should care about it, but its sandwiched between cartoons so how serious can it be? Franken is sandwiched between other hippy-friendly programming, so how seriously can I take him?
I think Al missed the point of this whole thing. People respond to right wing bombastic broadcasting because it's entertaining. Not for the insight into politics listeners get, but for the entertainment they get. Franken went into this equal parts debate team captain and "Bu$h Lied" giant puppet head driver, and it fell completely flat for me.
I'd expected more from a comedy writer.
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> People respond to right
> People respond to right wing bombastic broadcasting because it's entertaining. Not for the insight into politics listeners get, but for the entertainment they get.
I think I have a minor point of disagreement, GL. People respond to bombastic broadcasting because they hear what they want to hear. The world is a more comfy place if one never, ever, ever has to hear a dissenting point of view or worse yet an inconvenient fact that might unsettle one's preconceived notions.
GP,
GP,
Well, I can see how that would be true. But I don't think anyone can listen to a radio program and NOT hear an inconvenient fact or a point of major disagreement with one's own belief system. I mean, no one agrees with someone all the time, whether the bloviator is in question is Hannity or Franken.
Is it possible that my preconceived notions of Al Franken colored my first experience of his show? To be honest, I don't know that I had any. All I know for certain is that my only radio choices that day were baseball or Franken, and neither was remotely entertaining.
And I know how dear baseball is to certain fellow ministers and loyal readers, and look forward to the talking of shit that my carefully crafted headline will surely generate.
GP:
GP:
I'm with GL on this one - I can only stand to listen to Rush Limbaugh about once every couple of weeks, because there's no information there that's both true and not available elsewhere. Why, then, do I listen to him? Because he's entertaining. Do I believe there's an actual Limbaugh Wing at the Museum of something or other? No. Do I believe that, hour by hour, tapes of the show are sent there? No. Do I respond, rabidly or in fact at all, to much of anything he says of a political nature? Not even.
Do I sometimes enjoy listening to a bombastic and enthusiastic huckster telling me these things? Embarrassingly, yeah, I do. But only periodically.
Oh, and yeah - baseball's boring as hell, with the exception of playing it or, in certain circumstances, watching it in person. Franken, on the other hand, wasn't even interesting to watch, even in his supposed salad days.
GL, Ha ha! See, that's what
GL, Ha ha! See, that's what you get for shutting me out of listening to a baseball game a few months ago.