Talk, Talk, Talk

Here is yet another reprint of one of Alex Bennett's monthly columns from Hustler Magazine and as always edited by Bruce David.

I’m a talk show host. I like to think of it as the lowest wrung on the show business food chain. We’re paid to act like we know what we are talking about, but truth be known, the only reason we are experts is because someone gave us a microphone. Take that microphone away from us and we are nothing more or less than anyone else, just another asshole with an opinion.

For years my peers have really been bothered by my inclination to demystify the talk show host mystique, but I’d be dishonest if I didn’t. 

One night I was on the Alan Colmes radio show on Fox debating Sean Hannity about the California Governors race. He was going crazy at one point and I said “Sean, calm down, we’re just tap dancers, you know just entertainers at best”. He went Ballistic “I’m no tap dancer” he yelled at me and during a break he told Alan never to put him on with me again. I suppose I should be proud of that. But what amazed me was how seriously he took himself.

I suppose that the most well known and most popular of the political talk show hosts is Rush Limbaugh. Among the lefties he is the most vilified of the right-wingers. In many ways it is unjustified. Not that his opinions aren’t a piece of shit, but that right wing radio isn’t really his fault.

Talk hosts with strong opinions were nothing new when Rush hit the scene in Sacramento, California in 1984. The difference was that there had to be balance because of a rule called the “fairness doctrine” which meant that when Rush editorialized an opposing position had to be given airtime. But in 1987 President Ronald Reagan ended that rule and to Rush’s credit he saw an opening to go where no other talk show host had gone before. You’re going to wince when I say this, but as one radio guy looking at another, Rush is a talented, entertaining and savvy radio professional. Best of all, I never thought for a moment that Rush took himself seriously. At his best he is self-mocking and funny. The bad part is that he is an asshole right-winger. I say all this to distinguish him from the “wannabees” that capitalized on his success.

Those that came after him and tried to copy his formula were the real jerks. As an example I like to cite Stepin Fetchit. He was a black comedian in the early 1930’s who invented a shuffling, slow-witted, bug eyed black man that became a negative stereotype. But it wasn’t his fault. He was only doing an original comedic character. It was the literally dozens of actors that copied him that created the stereotype. Everybody blamed Rush for the copycats like Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck and the lot rather than the copycats themselves.

Sean Hannity is number 2 and basically a man who takes himself way to seriously. One gets the idea that he feels he can use his “bully pulpit” to change the world. Hannity would be harmless if it weren’t for the fact that crazed neo-cons listen to him in the millions to have their cockeyed anti-social opinions validated by this egotistical megalomaniac on a daily basis. Added to all of this is the rumor that he has political ambitions for the next decade. I honestly believe there should be a law prohibiting a person in show business from running for political office before taking a 5 year hiatus from the world of fame so as to not trade in one notoriety for another. By the way, that includes yours truly.

The final talk show on the hit list is number three in the ratings, Michael Savage. By the way this is the only one of the weasels I have actually met and to call him a weasel is probably a slight to weasels everywhere. This guy is a truly nuts. Yes he’s entertaining but only because of his Brooklyn accent and because he is so off the wall that you pay attention to him as you would a car wreck. He’s anti-immigrant, a misogynist, psychiatry (which he sorely needs), puts down autistic kids and really has a hard-on for the left. 

What makes Savage particularly onerous is that is that he is syndicated by a right wing cult out of Grants Pass, Oregon called “The Foundation of Human Understanding” founded by radio apostle Roy Masters who for years preached the same kind of garbage that Savage seemed to adopt. The FHU was listed as a cult by “Cult Awareness” after he started urging people to move with him to Grants Pass because America was coming to an end. Masters then created “Talk Radio Network” to syndicate himself and later turned it over to his son Mark who hired Savage and runs it to this very day. Among the others they syndicate are Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley and Others.

In the end today’s talk show constitute nothing more than a place where people can come to have their half-assed feelings in life validated by some host who is always willing to accommodate them instead of challenging their pre-conceived ideas with new ones. So take us down off a pedestal and put us in the toilet where we justly belong.