Corporate talk radio has noticed someone is looking at them

Wait! There’s more good news! Talk radio is feeling the heat!

After months of stoking anger about alleged election fraud, one of America’s largest talk-radio companies has decided on an abrupt change of direction.

Cumulus Media, which employs some of the most popular right-leaning talk-radio hosts in the United States, has told its on-air personalities to stop suggesting that the election was stolen from President Trump — or else face termination.

This is big. Talk radio has been a pernicious poison in the country for even longer than the internet. Living in the big open spaces of rural America, I’ve done a fair bit of driving, and one thing I learned 40 years ago was to not turn on the car radio, ever. It was all ranting televangelists and Rush Limbaugh raving about ‘Murica and how them liberals are destroying the country, when the real truth is that it was the conservatives doing the damage all along.

Since I don’t listen to it (EVER!), I had to read about who the current stars are. Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino? Jesus.

Also unsurprisingly, it is revealed that these loudmouths have been corporate puppets all along.

“It’s naive not to recognize that a corporate imperative goes into all media,” said Michael Harrison, the publisher of Talkers magazine, which covers talk radio. “Corporations have always called the tune ultimately. Everyone pays attention to the guys at the top and always has.”

Talk-radio hosts, Harrison said, “never expected” their critiques of the election “to get out of hand” in the manner seen Wednesday. Cumulus and other broadcast companies “recognize they’re in the hot seat right now because the national eye is on them,” he said.

Yeah, right. They were only getting out of hand on Wednesday. From my perspective, they’ve been out of hand since the Reagan years.

A little glimmer of satisfaction every morning

After years of watching the news feature right-wing idjits every day, whining about being oppressed while advocating the shooting of black people, screaming “lock her up!” at politicians only slightly less conservative than they are, and posturing stupidly in racist groups and gun-toting militias, it’s nice to wake up to new schadenfreude every morning, as they receive their just deserts.

So, the guy capering about in the “Camp Auschwitz” shirt during the Capitol riots? Identified. His name is Robert Keith Packer, and I hope he’s about to suffer some severe economic stress and is anxiously twitching every time someone knocks on his door. The media are already digging through his arrest record! I thought that only happened with black people who were murdered by the police.

You know who else is twitching behind closed doors right now? The guy who inspired Mr Packer.

In other fantastic news, after months of far right jerks announcing that they were stomping off to join Parler, the new social media site for just fascists, all the rich tech companies like Amazon and Apple and Google abruptly pulled the rug out from under them and withdrew all support, and Parler has gone dark. Oh dear. Now they’re all going to come crawling back to Twitter and Facebook, those media sites they found intolerable, even though they had willingly given free reign to their Big Cheeto to spread propaganda, medical misinformation, and lies right up until next week.

Even better, they’d signed up for Parler even though it required them to hand out sensitive info, like their social security information, and now it’s revealed that all the GPS information for their criminal activities in Washington DC was uploaded with their photos and videos! It turns out that Parler was the world’s ugliest Honey Trap!

I’m going to find something in the news to enjoy every day for the next few weeks, I think. Then I think it will go back to normal as all these awful people get slaps on the wrist and go back home to start fundraising for Trump monuments and fomenting insurrection again.

How to wipe a cocky grin off a Trumpkin’s face

Aww, poor Florida Man (Adam Christian Johnson). After fleeing Washington DC, it looks like he figured he’d shave to avoid recognition…only it didn’t work.

Now the regret and rationalizations are setting in as the FBI tracks these traitors down and arrests them. Actually, the rationalizing started early.

Asked why they were storming the Capitol, one woman became angry, saying they weren’t storming, and that that was a “media narrative.” They were just making their voices heard, she said. Then she continued climbing over a wall.

They hold the presidency, the senate, and the supreme court, and they still think their voices aren’t heard. I’m personally a bit tired of constantly having to hear these shrieking assholes.

How about if we cast a critical eye on every church?

Last summer, I did some spider-hunting around Murdock, Minnesota. It’s the typical slow, sleepy, small rural town (with spiders! But that’s every town). It’s unfortunate claim to fame now is that Asatru moved in and bought a church dedicated to the premise that white people, especially northern European white people, are better than others. They probably assumed that this would be a fine, comfortable fit with the predominantly German and Scandinavian folk of Minnesota.

Except the townfolk are less than thrilled with the city council choosing to approve the founding of a church.

The decision alarmed many residents, particularly residents of color who until recently lived comfortably in the majority-white town. Ms. Barron said she and other mothers had discussed taking turns to watch their children when they play outside. When the elementary school asked Latino families to participate in a video production, Ms. Barron said, many declined.

“I don’t feel threatened right now. But I feel worried,” she said. “What worries me is losing our sense of peace.”

Many residents fear that similar groups will try “to get some sort of toehold here because they feel this is some refuge where they can come and foment this hate,” said Pete Kennedy, 59, an engineer who has lived in the town for about 50 years.

Town leaders have insisted they had no choice but to grant a conditional-use permit, or CUP, because of legal protections that forbid governments from using land-use regulations to impose a substantial burden on people trying to practice their religion.

Interesting. I wonder if they’d feel the same principled concern when a new Baptist church, or Plymouth Brethren church, or Lutheran church, or Catholic church petitions for approval to take over some real estate in town. This is not to imply that the Asatru church should be allowed to do their thing (they are truly repulsive), but that what I’ve seen around towns in this region is that every vacant building is quickly occupied by yet another cult. When our movie theater in Morris went out of business, a group of fundamentalists threatened to buy it and turn into yet another church! Fortunately, they were foiled by a local co-op.

Maybe city councils around here should question every application by every religion to take over productive real estate and replace it with untaxable dead voids in our city planning.

By the way, here’s what it costs to start a church in rural Minnesota.

In June, it was sold to the Assembly for $45,000, according to county records.

Sheesh. You mean instead of paying off a lawyer I could have bought a whole church?

Fun times

I did something yesterday to throw my back out — I’m 63, which means I probably did something radical like sneeze. Anyway, I’m sitting here trying not to move a millimeter that way or twist this other way, which would send spasms rippling up my spine, and I think I’ll be immobile most of the day…except that I’m about to get up and walk to the medicine cabinet for some painkillers, trying not to scream or die, and then come back to my chair and just stop for a while.

Fortunately, my self-imposed agenda for the day is to hammer out a couple of syllabi and get them posted to our CMS, Canvas. It’s just fingers that need to work, and so far they seem OK. Classes start up again in 9 days.

Time to gently ease myself out of this chair and gingerly shuffle to the next room. If you hear a shrieking howl out of the upper midwest, I didn’t make it.

Ice whiskers

This was a new phenomenon to me. Walking into work today, everything was covered with these long whiskers of ice, typically close to 2cm long.

We’ve stayed below freezing for the last few days, and also we’ve had freezing fog every morning, which I presume feeds some peculiar crystallization process. It looks cool, anyway.

This afternoon when I was walking home I saw that they hadn’t melted, but were gradually falling off the trees as a very gentle snow.

Can a homely old guy with no charisma succeed on YouTube?

Asking for a friend. I’m hoping to have a conversation about how to use YouTube for science communication on Sunday at noon my time. Maybe it’s not possible. Some of us just have a face or voice made for blogging. Tell me what you think this weekend.

If anyone wants to join the livestream, drop me an email and let me know, and maybe I’ll respond with a link so you can join in. Maybe. I’ll be a little discriminating about who I’ll share a screen with.

Hey, I just had an idea — more spiders. Maybe I could recruit a spider co-host to add more charm!