Sunday, October 6, 2013

WBT's Keith Larson: Charlotte's Master of the Mundane



 Anyone who listens to talk radio in the Charlotte/Mecklenburg County area is well aware of the slim pickings.  Many of us who don’t care for music have a choice between NPR, WBT, sports, or gospel stations.  Many times I can’t even get NPR.  That leaves me with 1110 WBT.

Keith Larson has the 9:00 – 12:00 slot.  Basically, he’s the warm up, or should I say filler until Rush Limbaugh comes on.  And he knows it.  A day doesn’t go by without this minor leaguer taking potshots at his better.  It really is unbecoming; even worse, is when he demeans the intellect of Sarah Palin.  I have news for you Mr. Larson; you’re no intellectual giant yourself.

I will give kudos to the LAMA man.  You do know how to stretch the mundane into a 3 hour show.

 I admit I half listen to Mr. Larson while I work.  But sometimes it comes to the point when silence is the better choice.  I swear, this man droned on about free cheeseburgers for the man who saved 3 women in Ohio for three hours.  He also, to my amazement, was able to complete a whole show on fat homeless people.  At 11:15, I finally shut off my radio.



But what really separates Mr. Keith Larson from all the other personalities that litter the airwaves is his “red jersey, blue jersey” dichotomy.  According WBT’s Master of the Mundane, we should eschew the political process as a means of protesting political parties.  But in reality, if we took his advice, the only people not participating would be the conservative voter.  The teat squawkers would continue to vote themselves goodies at our expense.

I have an excerpt from Jesse Norman’s book on Edmund Burke that addresses those whom disparage political parties.

No human institution is perfect, of course, and many political parties are highly imperfect institutions.  But the extraordinary fact is that properly functioning political parties have long been recognized in political theory as the very essence of mature democracy.  Through them, ideologies clash.  Different political opinions and concerns are stimulated, debated, and gathered into manifestos or programmes of government.  Policy ideas are developed in opposition and presented at elections.  Individuals are recruited, educated in the craft and traditions of politics and taught to campaign.  Power passes peacefully, from one party to another.  It is only through political parties and the whipping system or its equivalents that politicians are reliably able to carry into law policies on which they have been given a democratic mandate at elections.  The cure for those who hate political parties is to visit countries in which there are no such parties, or only one.






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