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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