Savage Idiots

This evening I went to a dinner at Mills College which was introducing the UC Berkeley Chancellor to the business and higher education community. As I was driving around I tuned into Michael Savage. He was railing, I am not sure he ever does anything else, against the First Lady's speech to the Washington Press. Any normal person thought she was wonderful fun. But Savage was outraged.

For a while I listened to Air America, the low power and listener alternative to conservative radio. Al Franken, who did his best work as Stuart Smalley (and even that was a one trick pony) is on in the morning. But his routines are tired.

In LA you have narodniks John and Ken - yabber, yabber, yabber. Phil Hendrie - the guy who invented phony talk radio - is now at 570 XTRA. He is outrageously funny - creating odd and curious guests which individuals call in on with outrage. One of my favorites was a guy from the Children's smoking coalition - a guy who wanted to get more children into smoking.

Talk radio was creative for a while. There are still some interesting things on the radio - Laura Ingram has an interesting mix of gossip and guests. Michael Medved is uneven but when he is on - he is great. Can't say I can agree with him on his notions about Vietnam - but he often seems to get into issues. Dennis Prager is a bit full of himself and has some odd jihads - the nihlistic discussions about higher education are a lot over the top. And then there is Hugh Hewitt. Without his USC bashing, he has some interesting segments - some of the regulars (John Campbell's repartee is dandy) and then there are discussions like the two law professors (one from Chapman and one from Duke) and the movie and music segments.